Church Plans to Call 20,000 to Religion

Using a method associated more with sales than salvation, members of a Granada Hills church are calling 20,000 residences this month in hopes of increasing their flock through telemarketing techniques.

“With the rise of secured-gate condos and fenced-in homes, the best way we have of ‘reaching out and touching someone’ with our church’s message is by telephone,” said the Rev. Ed Krueger, pastor of Our Savior’s First Lutheran Church.

And, in contrast to door-to-door forays by Jehovah’s Witnesses, low-key telephone evangelism reaches more people in less time.

Only half of the people called by phone are going to be home, project director Ken Koppenjan advised a group of volunteers on a recent evening. And half of those contacted will say they are already with a congregation, he said.

“If they say they’re active in a church, we thank them and hang up. But if not, we ask them if we may send them a brochure about the church,” Koppenjan said.

The eventual goal is to invite potential churchgoers from Chatsworth to Sylmar to a new, 11 a.m. service starting Dec. 6 at the church. If 20,000 calls are indeed made, the church has been told to expect 200 or more people at the inaugural service.

Our Savior’s First Lutheran is one of thousands of churches across the country that have purchased a $225 telemarketing kit from Church Growth Development International in Brea, which pioneered the concept for congregations that either want to add to their membership ranks or found a new church.

“We estimate that we have started or expanded a little more than 7,000 churches since we began in 1986,” said Norman Whan, Church Growth Development’s founder and president.

St. James Presbyterian Church in Tarzana, for instance, tried it three years ago, making 12,000 calls. Yet, said the Rev. Kenneth Baker, the church got more than 100 people willing to take a look-see. “It was worth it,” Baker said.

“Out of that group, we ended up with seven to 10 new members, most of whom are still active with us,” Baker said. “It also got us in touch with the questions and anxieties of people who have not been to church lately--questions that we would not have anticipated without this undertaking.”

Several San Fernando Valley-area churches, however, have yet to use the instructional kit they purchased from Church Growth Development. Sylmar Assembly of God and Northridge Community Church of the Nazarene, for example, have changed pastors since they bought the kit and may not use the approach.

It is a major project for an average-sized Protestant church such as the 300-member Our Savior’s First Lutheran, which averages 200 adults at its regular 9 a.m. Sunday service. Nearly 100 volunteers signed up for some of the four-night-a-week sessions, poring over sheets of telephone numbers arranged in numerical sequence and using up to 16 phone lines installed in the church offices, choir room, nursery and classrooms.

Although relatively few callers got hostile receptions, it doesn’t always go smoothly.

Volunteer Bill Volkert, who lives in Northridge, said he was copying down the Granada Hills street address of a woman willing to receive a church pamphlet in the mail when he asked what the ZIP code was for Granada Hills. “You mean you don’t know the ZIP code for your own church?” she asked suspiciously, then hung up.

Virginia Edmonds, another volunteer, had one old-timer who started out, “Speaking of religion . . .” and kept her on the phone for 15 minutes.

Another time, she talked to a woman who said, “We’re interested in finding another church, but we’ve been to yours and we don’t want to go back.”

Early results were good, however. An August trial run of 1,000 calls yielded a 13% favorable response, and the first several nights of the project produced about 8% interested in receiving information in the mail.

The series of five mailings ends with printed invitations to the Dec. 6 service. Other brochures in the series have a picture of the pastor and broad descriptions of what the church has to offer, including “a warm friendly atmosphere . . . dynamic music, Bible teaching to meet your needs.”

It doesn’t mention that Our Savior’s First Lutheran is affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and not, for instance, with the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

One mailing summarizes church beliefs but does not mention the characteristic Missouri Synod adherence to a literally interpreted Bible, to creationist views of human origins and to a strict anti-abortion stance.

Koppenjan said he was surprised to find that the Missouri Synod affiliation was missing in the literature but added that “very few people ask which denomination we are.”