Evotional.com - Mark Batterson

I just signed off on our Annual Ministry Report (AMR) and it's headed to the printer.

Take a deep breath.
Exhale.

The AMR is my baby so it's pretty time-consuming. I'm pretty stoked about the final product.

Four years ago I was at a conference and I happened to spot an annual report from some random ministry at one of the booths. It sparked an idea. At the time we gave guests some written information about NCC. It was nothing more than black text on a white 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper. I'd had this lingering feeling that we could make a better impression than that. Long story short, we put together our first AMR in 2003.

We do lots of stuff poorly. But I think we do the AMR right :)

We give an AMR to everyone in our congregation at the end of January every year. We'll hand it out the week I preach on Y Church this year. That AMR then doubles as our welcome packet for every guest that comes through our doors that year. It's designed to give guests a sense of who we are, where we've been, and where we're headed.

For what it's worth, we put the AMR, Small Group Guide, Invite Card, and a packet of microwave popcorn into a popcorn box and give it to guests. Seems to fit since our vision is to meet in movie theaters @ metro stops.

FYI--we'll include AMRs in our Buzz Box that we give to attendees @ the Buzz Conference.