Kenosha's Open House

Last October Pr. Tamm came to our congregation.  We hadn't had anyone in charge of our congregation in almost a year at that point.  We were taking care of the day to day operations of the congregation, but no growth was happening.  One of the first ideas Pr. Tamm came with was to host an open house to bring awareness to our church in the community.  He started having Worker's Meetings the first Monday night of each month and designated different people to handle the different activities.  Food, Children's Activities, Marketing, Media Planning, and a Choir Concert to finish off the day.  We worked within our own activities and also helped out in the other areas as well.


Pr. Tamm was in charge of making the sausages that we grilled.  He hosted a "Sausage Fest" afternoon where anyone was welcome to go and make the sausages.  Literally grind the meat, mix in the seasonings, and then put them into their casings.  Kristin Elmore and Joyce Tamm worked on the rest of the menu.

Zandre and Mercedes worked on marketing.  They designed our flyers and organized areas for us to go out and canvas.  They organized radio adds and newspaper adds.  Put out boxes for collecting donations for the Shalom Center out of Kenosha, WI.  (They are a non-for-profit organization that helps those in need.)

Maxine and I signed up to canvas with the kids one afternoon.  We walked (and drove) all around our neighbors subdivisions and put flyers in their mailboxes.  (Well not in because that's illegal, but stuck in the flag or in their advertiser boxes where possible.)

Robin, Maxine, Judy and I worked on the kids activities and crafts.  We rented a bounce house, came up with 2 crafts (bookmarkers and hats that also are horns), and Maxine hired a balloon artist to come to  the open house.  She was the best balloon artist I have ever seen - and the coolest thing was that she taught herself how to do this from watching YouTube videos.  Amazing!

Pr. Upmann was in charge of media.  He brought in 2 computers and a tv.  He made a slide show of pictures from the past 10 years, had a short movie of our church's history overt the past 150 years, and then in the other room had different movies from our past events (mostly Christmas programs) running a the tv.  We also made 2 different collages on the walls of our past pictures and poster collages so we could share our past memories.

Ernie (Pr. Tamm's son) came up with this really cool looking logo for us to use.  Janet and Cheryl took on the task of having shirts made for all of us.  Then from there the idea also came to have a photo booth set up.  Jean drew the background and Maxine painted it.  We took everyone's picture that came, printed pictures for them, and made them into magnets so they can always remember what a great day we had.

Jerry worked out all the details for our concert.  The choir sang 4 songs and the orchestra (I say loosely because it was a tuba, flute and cello) played 3 songs.

On top of all this Mercedes has signed up to host a Dave Ramsey seminar at our church in August.  She was also promoting this event at our open house.

We were prepared for all of Kenosha, Racine, and Northern Lake County, IL to come to this.  We rented a port-potty.  Worried about parking.  Planned on running to the store because we ran out of food.  All of this and we didn't need the porta-potty, didn't run out of parking spots, and never had to run out to the store for more food.

Now you may think that we failed.  We even had some of those same thoughts throughout the day.  Sad that more people didn't come.  We thought that all of our efforts were for nothing.  We even went out to the road and started waving at the cars going by with our crazy balloon hats on.  (Not sure if that helped or hurt us. lol)  But then we got over ourselves and saw what God had done for us.  We realized that sometimes you have your own thoughts and ideas, but they are not God's ideas for you.  After we had our "Come to Jesus" moment we started to really see all that has come out of this.  We had 15-20 guests that came to our event.  Other members from other congregations came to support us.  Our congregation grew by leaps and bounds through the planning of this event.  We got to know each other so much better and were given the opportunity to see each other's gifts and talents that may have gone unnoticed otherwise.  We finally have a sign on our church to let the community know we are there.  And we brought awareness to our neighbors of our presence.

Rome wasn't built in a day and our little Kenosha congregation isn't busting at the seams after our first big event, but we aren't going to let this get us down or stop us.  It's only the beginning.  Our congregation is full of love and life.  We have ideas bursting out of us.  I am so excited to be a part of something so big.  We may be small, but we are mighty!