Monday I took our staff to a local coffee shop to celebrate that we had survived the “BIG DAY” weekend and picnic.  It was a great weekend, but we were pretty tired.  So we didn’t do much hard stuff; just drank coffee and talked about what we wanted to accomplish before Christmas.  Our children’s minister said she wanted to attend a conference and had already talked to the denomination and learned that if two people went, it was “Buy One Get One” on the price of the ticket and accommodations.

I chuckled, because I’ve never heard of churches or denominations doing BOGO before.  Usually the cost involved for something is actually how much it cost and there is no profit margin.  To go BOGO implies some kind of profit motif, right?

Of course, I didn’t stop there.  The more I thought about it, I thought we could start applying the BOGO motif to church in general.  Here is what I’ve come up with so far.

BOGO–Bring one, get one.  Evangelism, right.  Bring a friend and get a blessing.

HOHO–Hear one, have one.  Come hear a sermon and have another sermon on CD (or DVD for our mega church friends) to take with you.  This could also be HOTO if HOHO sounds too Santa Clausy.  But come to think of it, HOHO would be a great promotion at Christmas, right?

POGO–Pray one, get one.  We would make this our prayer partner ministry.  So you have prayer partner who you pray for and you know your prayer partner is praying for you.

BOMO–Potluck.  Bake one, munch one.

TOPO–Communion.  Take one, pass one.

COCO–Stewardship.  Cash Only, Card on-line.

SODO–Baptism.  Save one, dunk one.  If people object to “dunk” as a synonym for baptisim, then it could be SOBO or SOWO (save one, wet one–but that might sound like preschool ministry).  The impetus of this would be if you do the evangelizing, you get to do the baptizing (which is something I encourage anyway.)

MOJO–Family enrichment.  Mary one, just one.

Feel free to use these as you see fit.  The promotional ideas are endless.