There is an entire generation of sick people, who are hungry for Jesus, hanging out online. Gen Z is now the sickest generation in America. One in three people ages 18-25 have a diagnosed mental illness, which is why some people are now calling them, “The Anxious Generation”. They’re also spending 6-8 hours per day online, which means 

The questions that the church has to answer is:

1. How do we reach them?
2. How do we introduce them to Jesus?
3. And how do we bring them back to church?

Many people have tried with varying success in the past, but after spending $1,000s and months of testing, we believe that we have found a solution that is far more effective than what most churches are doing today.

What most churches are doing today…

Most churches use social media and Google Ads to (1) find people who are looking for churches near them and (2) share what’s going on at their church. The problem with this strategy is that:

1. Google Ads: Keywords like, “Churches near me” target a limited pool of already churched people. This does not build the kingdom, it puts you in competition with other churches in your area.
2. Social Media: People’s social media algorithms are designed to show them more of the same content that they already like. This means that your social media posts will only reach people who are already Christians.

Neither of these strategies will help you reach the lost and broken people who hang out online. If this is your strategy, you’re simply competing with other churches and the churches with the bigger marketing budgets (ie. mega-churches) will win the battle.

If you are a small or medium-sized church, you need a different approach. We believe we have found a better approach for you.

How To Reach Lost & Broken People Online

Most people who are lost and broken have wounds with religion and are repelled by churches, which is why many people will not come back to church unless they are fully convinced that:

1. Jesus can heal them, and
2. They feel comfortable walking into your church.

Our approach to reaching these people is very simple.

First, grab their attention with an ad.

Paid ads are the only option, because as we discussed earlier, organic content will only reach existing Christians. (Don’t worry if you don’t have an ad budget, we can get you a grant for that.) The best kind of ad is someone testifying to how Jesus has helped them heal of the same problem that the broken person is experiencing.

Second, teach them how Jesus can heal them.

Immediately after grabbing their attention, we must teach them how Jesus healed others and what the Bible says about healing. This requires a sermon that is best delivered as a live webinar. Sometimes, some Biblical guidance is all someone needs in order to get delivered (see Amanda’s testimony).

Third, engage them online.

At the end of the sermon, everyone will be offered the opportunity to attend an online Bible Study or Prayer Group. We’ve found a way to create amazing Bible Study and Prayer Group experiences online via Zoom. Members of your congregation may volunteer as Bible Study and Prayer Group leaders, which will allow new Christians to engage with your congregation and build genuine relationships.

Finally, your congregation can invite them to church.

By making a genuine relationship with people from your church, new visitors will feel welcomed into your church on day one. This removes the “Church shopping” experience when looking for a new church and immediately plugs them into your community, which will also increase long-term retention.

How To Get Started

To do this on your own, you would need to hire an entire marketing department, but by partnering together, we can help you get started in three simple steps that will require little to no effort from your leadership team:

1. Apply for the Google Ads grant.
2. Link our platforms together.
3. Invite your congregation to volunteer as community leaders.

Step 1: Apply For The Google Ads Grant

The first thing that you need to know is that every church has access to $10,000 per month of free Google Ads via the Google Ad grant. The first step is to apply for this grant. If you need help getting this set up, feel free to reach out to us at: [email protected] 

Step 2: Link Our Platforms Together

The second step is to set up a subdomain to your website (ie. page.yourchurch.org) so that we can give you all of our proven hooks, offers, and landing pages. We have spent $1,000s and months testing what works, so there is no need to recreate this. We can simply rebrand what’s already working for your church.

Giving us access to a sub-domain will allow us to make the edits that we need to make to landing pages without giving us access to edit your entire website. You’ll also need to add one of our team members as a Google Ads manager, so that we can set-up and optimize your Google Ads.

Step 3: Invite Your Congregation To Volunteer As Community Leaders

The final step is to tell the members of your congregation about your new online evangelism strategy and to ask if anyone would like to volunteer as an online Bible Study or Prayer Group leader. This is a fun, 90 minute commitment each week and an excellent way to give your congregation the chance to build other disciples.

How We Can Help You Multiply Your Ad Spend

Spending $10,000 per month on Google Ads is a good start, but up until now we have not been able to reach people who are on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms.

As we discussed before, in order to reach lost and broken people on these platforms, we need an advertising budget. The problem is that most churches can’t afford an advertising budget (and there are no grants available on these platforms).

Our solution is to generate the revenue we need for a larger ad-budget by creating a breakeven product. A breakeven product is simply an online course that helps recoup the cost of ad-spend. The idea is that if you spend $10,000 per month in ads, a break even product will help you generate $10,000 per month in revenue.

Selling online courses is a difficult (nearly impossible) task for an inexperienced church, but before starting the Prayer For Healing ministry, our founding director, Clark Varin, was a digital marketing consultant who specialized in selling online courses. He has worked on teams that have sold +$10 million of online courses before and is confident in his ability to make a breakeven product.

We’ve solved this problem by offering an online course at the end of our webinars on healing and deliverance. This course has proven to be a great way to accelerate new believers’ walk with Christ and get them to commit more fully to their faith.

Some churches may feel uncomfortable with promoting a paid product, but the good news is that we are not asking your church to promote the course. Rather, we will promote the course as an essential part of the strategy to reach people on other social media platforms.

Consider the value of this strategy for a moment. If you were to spend $10,000 per month in Google Ads in month 1 and you recouped that money, then you would have a $20,000 advertising budget in month 2. By month 12 you would have a budget of $120,000 per month to spend on advertising to help broken people find Jesus within your local area.

Your problem will no longer be on how to reach the lost and broken, it will be trying to figure out how to pastor all of the new people in your congregation.

What we would like to offer you:

We would like to partner with you as a para-church ministry that helps you deploy an effective online evangelism strategy without increasing the workload of your leadership team. Through this partnership, we’ll help you maximize your under-utilized resources and provide your congregation with an additional volunteer opportunity to build the Kingdom.

Remember, there is an “Anxious Generation” of people out there who are hungry for Jesus and do not even know it. They’re hanging out online and they’re too nervous to meet in person, but we can create small stepping stones to engage them online so that we can show them what church is actually like.

By partnering with Prayer For Healing, you’ll be able to reach the unreached next generation in your local area even if you don’t have an advertising budget or any additional time from your leadership team.

If you are interested in partnering together, please click here to apply.