When we planted Three Rivers Community Church 2 ½ years ago, we realized that there was a spot for us in this town to do outreaches that speak to families with young children, as that is a large demographic in Carlisle. We’re certainly not the first church to bring in inflatables and have a carnival, but we believe that it has been a great tool to engage people and introduce ourselves to our town!
On Sunday, August 26th, we hosted our third Totally Free Family Fun Fair. Our vision for this event is to provide a free, fun, and creative event for families of Carlisle and surrounding towns as a way to introduce ourselves.
One of our core values of our church is to Serve our Community in visible ways. Nearly every regular attender at Three Rivers volunteered to either set up/tear down, run a booth, supervise a game, or serve food. It’s a great cooperative effort to bring us together as a church and we wear matching shirts to make sure our town knows who we are. We even had our friends from LifeChange Church in Des Moines come and make snowcones for everyone! We were also blessed to have our local partners from Freedom for Youth, an after-school ministry, and Ruth Harbor, a new home for single mothers in Carlisle, come and share with families about their ministries.
We had inflatable bounce houses, obstacle courses, slides, a petting zoo (with a real camel!), face painting, bubble soccer, carnival games, a water fight, video game truck, and more! We even had a visit from MercyOne helicopter ambulance come and show off their aircraft!
Although it rained off and on, we estimate that between 500-700 folks from the community came out. We had 14 families indicate on their contact card that they were searching for a church home, so we hand delivered a gift and personally introduced ourselves to them. Several families have visited our service as a result of meeting them at this and past Fun Fairs.
We hope to keep this an annual event and we thank the Baptist Convention of Iowa and the North American Mission Board for their partnership!
Pastor CJ Nissen
Three Rivers Community Church
www.threeriverscarlisle.com
Check out photos from the event at: facebook.com/ThreeRiversCarlisle
