As it turns out, not every good idea is high-tech. “Cookies” are the little files that help your web browser to remember the websites you’ve visited. Low-tech cookies, real world ones, can actually do the same thing, I found out.

This is an idea as old as the hills brought to life again in the most basic way. In real world communities, many times, the overwhelming issue for churches is simply ebing known. If any of you have ever done a door to door campaign just to get to meet your neighbors, you already know how unremarkable the response can be. That visit appears to be no more welcome than the phone pitch from a telemarketer.

Add one more ingredient, and one that makes the visit serve two purposes, and the reception can change significantly. In an effort to meet and greet, as well as to our bit for the local neighborhood businesses, we took packages of three cookies, baked by the owner of our wonderful, local Italian bakery, and handed them to each person we talked with.

On occasion, when people peeked out their windows with that “the last thing I’m going to do is open the door” look, waving the little packages of cookies brought smiles and open doors.  Now, we have no doubt that many people chuckled after we left, thinking perhaps that we were kind of silly, but what better way to be foolish for Christ.

We do know that the church has just a little more identity now, even if it is the “church with the cookies.”

Authored by Rev Jenna Zirbel. Written by Rev Andy Little.

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