5 Ways To Reach Your Neighborhood With Drive-Thru Events

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Get creative with drive-thru events to reach your neighborhood! Drive-thru events provide maximum visibility, are visitor-friendly, and are easy for small churches with limited volunteers. They are a great way to show your town the love of Jesus in just a few short hours.

Do you want fries with that? No, not that kind of drive-thru! But we are taking the basic principle and turning it into a creative way to reach your neighborhood! Why do people like a drive-thru? It’s fast, convenient (you don’t have to get out of your car, and if you have littles it’s even better), and it’s kind of the way we roll nowadays, right?

So, if people are comfortable with the drive-thru model, then host some fun outreach events at your church using that same model. It’s a creative way to reach your neighborhood, and chances are no one else has done it before!!

Drive-Thru Outreach Event Ideas To Reach Your Neighborhood

These drive-thru events are meant to be quick and convenient. Most of these events can take place in 2-3 hours.

1. Donut Day Or Muffins In The Morning

Provide a donut or muffin in a bag, along with a free cup of coffee or a bottle of water.

Hint: Make sure to have individual creamer, sugar packets, and coffee stirrers ready for the coffee. Always include a napkin!

Our church and the town loved this event! We made up stickers with our church logo and service information to put on the front of the bags with food. Also, we had church flyers with information about an upcoming special church event we gave to each car. We provided donut holes as an alternative for kids (less messy, not quite as much sugar!), and we even included a wet wipe packet just to be thoughtful to parents!

To attract attention and give direction, we had someone in a costume (we did this event in the spring close to Easter, so we had a bunny suit, but you could do almost anything). We positioned our bunny at the entrance to the driveway on the street. The bunny held a sign that pointed the way and it worked great –– not to mention that it was a huge hit with traffic going by and the children. Many pictures were taken!

2. Hot Dog Dinners

Keep it simple, a wrapped hot dog in a bun, a bag of chips, and a can of soda or water is all you need to make someone’s dinner a dream come true!

Let’s face it, with the pace of life nowadays, who wouldn’t love to be able to drive-thru a church parking lot and grab dinner for free?! Now, I will talk about that with my co-workers the next day for sure!

Make sure to put on your list sheets of foil to wrap the hot dogs, individual mustard, and ketchup packets. Have coolers ready to keep your drinks in, and even offer a wrapped cookie for dessert if you have those people in your church who just love to bake!

Grill the hot dogs, wrap them, and keep them warm in crock pots or in the church oven, and then bring them out as needed. If you don’t have a grill available, steam big batches of hot dogs in a crock pot by standing them up on ends, no water needed, and cooking them on high for 2 hours. They taste just like a hot dog you get at the ballpark!

3. Hot Cocoa & Christmas Cookie Stop

Provide individually wrapped cookies and a hot cup of cocoa for your guests. Provide trays for people to pick 2 or 3 cookies to place in a decorative bag, complete with a sticker on the front listing all your church’s Christmas services and events. Don’t forget the napkins!

What better way to get in the holiday mood than stopping for a hot cup of cocoa and some delicious Christmas cookies for an afternoon snack?! If your church is located near a school, this is a perfect way to reach some of your local families. Time your event so that it corresponds with the release time of the school.

Play up the Christmas theme and have your volunteers wear Santa hats and festive aprons. Play Christmas music as well. Decorate your staging area with some garland, perhaps a small tree, or even some lights! For extra holiday cheer, have someone in a snowman suit directing your guests in and out of the driveway –– what fun!

4. A Popcorn Pit Stop

We purchased popcorn bags like they have at the movies and made stickers to put on the front that read “Thanks for popping in!” and our church name. We also had bottles of water to give out.

Several years ago, our church invested in a professional popcorn maker, and it has been well worth the investment. We have used popcorn giveaways at several outreach events in our community, for our youth group, and for all our church events. Also, we are located near several bus stops for different schools, so it makes for the perfect location for this event!

We timed our event to coincide with the release of school. This was a wildly popular event with both the kids and the adults. We had cars coming in line, but we also had some walkers stopping in on their way home from school. This gave us an opportunity to get to know people in our neighborhood and to hand out flyers about our summer youth group program, a win-win situation!

5. Reach Your Neighborhood With A Prayer Stop

Put up a canopy tent with one table for your literature and prayer cards. Two people on each of our teams would approach the car, find out the prayer request, and pray for the person/people in the car. Then we gave them a church business card if they wanted to discuss anything further, and we kept a prayer log of all the requests and continued to pray for them throughout the week. We did give people an opportunity to give us follow-up information so we could check back in with them, but only if they desired and were comfortable doing so.

We posted about doing this in advance on our Facebook page and encouraged our church family to spread the word. Also, we placed an announcement on our church sign as well as put a banner up in the yard. We committed to doing this event each week throughout the summer. I must admit it started out slow. People were unsure, but once others started to see cars stopping by each week, we saw God moving and working, and we soon had multiple visitors each week. Some were incredible connections leading to salvation, others were people struggling to get back to God, and still, others just wanted prayer for their family.

It was an amazing event for our church people to be involved in, and we will definitely be doing it again.

Tips For A Fantastic Drive-Thru Event

What do you need if you want to set up a drive-thru event at your church?

Determine which drive-thru event you would like to do.
Get your team excited! Some of these events can be done with just a handful of people, but it’s always great to have a team to encourage excitement within the church body!!
- Volunteers to make sure the traffic flow keeps moving correctly
- Volunteers to serve at the staging area and engage with your guests
- A setup/teardown crew is always good to have. Make sure to provide them with a detailed map of how things need to be set up.
- Volunteers to acquire and gather all supplies
- Those to promote and advertise, including signs and roadside banners
Plan the staging area (could be a pop-up canopy, tables on a porch, or just set up along the driveway). It can be simple, but if you can decorate it up, you will draw some attention from the road!
Create a list of all materials needed for the event, (food items, packaging, cups, napkins, etc.). Think about table coverings, trash cans being available, gloves for people handling food, and a promotional handout about your church.
Make sure that you can have all traffic flowing in an organized manner through your property. A clearly marked entrance and flow up to the “give away”/staging area and then another clearly marked exit. A church carport is a great opportunity for this kind of event!
Create signage and promotion –– make signs (or have them printed if you will be doing this again). Engage your youth to make the signs for you –– provide the materials & instructions and set them free!!
Promote your event in your town on local websites, town bulletin boards, on your church website and Facebook page, Craigslist, your local newspaper –– anywhere you can spread the word, get it out! The most important way is your church family telling others!

Drive-Thru Do’s And Don’ts

A few final words of advice for when you decide to do a drive-thru event of your own:

Do consider having some gluten-free options available when you have an event that involves food.
Do make sure your whole church knows about what’s happening. They may not be involved, but you want them to be excited and spread the word.
Do enlist prayer warriors to be behind the scenes!
Do an evaluation after each event and note what went well and what could be improved for next time. Make sure to ask all that participated for their input.
Do thank all of your volunteers. This is super important!
Do remember the smiles –– it is perhaps one of the most important things that you can do during an event like this. Remember, we represent Jesus’ love!

Don’t be discouraged if you only have a few at your first event. It’s okay. Events like this take multiple tries to build up a reputation and trust from the community.
Don’t expect people to be busting down the door of your church the next Sunday. These are “connection” points in your community. These types of events are “get to know you” and “building a reputation” kinds of events. If you have read about the Ministry Funnel, they are at the top of the “Ministry Funnel” events. (If you don’t know what that is, check out this blog post to learn more about it: The Ministry Funnel.)
Don’t be afraid to try a new thing –– it could be just what you were looking for!!

For more event ideas, join our Creative Solutions for Small Churches Facebook Community.

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