Childrens Ministry Online

Encouraging people to park in off-site parking lots

Posted on 25. Sep, 2008 by Kenny in Fresh Ideas, Resources

It’s that time of year and the buildings are bulging at the seams. Although the parking lot is totally full, there are still some seats available. We do what most churches do in this situation. We use off-site parking. We’ve been able to get a fair amount of people to park in these extra lots, but we really need more.

I remember having a conversation with a staff member at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY (A church many of my friends affectionately called “Six Flags Over Jesus”). She said that the biggest group of people to use the off-site parking (and they had many off-site lots) were families of young children, mainly preschool and lower elementary. Why? Because these kids love riding the bus. Many of these kids never get the chance to ride the bus, so for them its a total treat. In a world where kids have great influence over parents, sometimes it helps to cater to the kiddos.

We’re giving it a shot this weekend. For the last several weeks we’ve have two shuttle busses making rounds between our offsite lot and the church, which is about a mile away. This week we’ve rented a very different kind of shuttle bus. We rented the “Austin Duck.”

The “Austin Duck” is an military amphibious cargo vehicle that has been converted into a tour vehicle. Being amphibious it travels across land and sea… er, lake. It’s pretty famous around Austin and who wouldn’t want to rind on the “Austin Duck?” We’re communicating to parents this week about the shuttle opportunity and we will see how many more people use our off-site parking this weekend.

Tags: Children's Ministry, Parking