Update: Summary of Light Up The Church 2022
November 17, 2022
Summary of Light Up The Church 2022
This summary was written by Gidon Ariel, CEO of Root Source and principal of Light Up the Church.
Background:
On November 8, 2021, I found out about the Light From The Synagogue project, which a kibbutznik from the north in Israel had been running for close to fifteen years. I naturally made sure the lights in my local synagogue would stay lit the next day, and already started thinking about how I could get to churches with a dedicated program toward 2022.
After sharing my idea with friends and the Root Source Advisory Board, I was encouraged to move forward with a pilot program.
We registered a domain www.lightupthechurch.org and fashioned the website, with a signup page, a list of participants, a page dedicated to the story and history of Kristallnacht, About Us/In The News, and Contact Us. We added a Donate page toward the end of the campaign and raised over $1000.
From the start, we saw this as an opportunity to expand the reach of Root Source among Christian people and leaders who had never even heard of Root Source. Thanks to generous grants from the Nathaniel Foundation and the Carson-Myre Foundation, we set out on Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns with the goal of adding thousands of names to our mailing list. We retained Avery Ratz, a leading Facebook marketer in Israel, and to a lesser extent, Arnie Draiman, an Internet and Fundraising consultant. Our major goal was to see how working with both of these consultants felt, and from this perspective, the campaign was a major success, with plans to move forward with Facebook and Google marketing campaigns for Root Source as well as focusing with Arnie on our fundraising.
On our site, we have listed 72 churches, 18 parachurch ministries, four businesses, and 19 individuals. These numbers will probably grow. Close to 2000 people registered with our “I Stand With The Jewish People” declaration.
Our plans now are to stay in touch with the thousands of people who signed our “I Stand With The Jewish People” declaration and thereby subscribed to the Light Up The Church monthly newsletter, subscribe them to our Root Source newsletter, and reach out to any of those subscribers, especially church leaders among them, to strengthen our relationships and reach.
Sincerely,
Gidon Ariel
CEO, Root Source