Last updated on December 19th, 2019 at 09:38 pm

While business owners see brochures solely as a marketing tool, religious organizations like Wildwood Church see them as instruments in spreading the word of God. Today we highlight the Tallahassee-based church and their cost-effective approach to reaching out to fellow Floridians.

From Humble Beginnings

In 1976, a few families met in a living room in Tallahassee to celebrate their faith. No one back then could have predicted the heights Wildwood Church would reach today. To date, they have 1,200 members and they’re not slowing down anytime soon.

The Official Wildwood Church Logo

Members are bound by the same vision. They want to establish a meaningful presence in their community. And they are serious about that. In fact, a decade-long project of theirs had just come to fruition. In March 2018, the Northside Community Center opened its doors to the community as a shared space to connect and enrich the community.

Not bad given the church’s humble beginnings.

It’s All About Family

Speaking to Director of Communications Josh King, I was able to get more insight into some of the factors that make Wildwood Church special.

“You will hear us commonly refer to Wildwood as a ‘faith family’ or ‘church family’, and that is intentional. This is not just an expression for us. We believe Jesus invites us into the family of God, and we want to invite others to be a part of that family.”

The Wildwood Church Community

Josh was quick to clarify that they are not perfect nor do they claim to be perfect. However, there’s no questioning their deep care for each other and desire to freely serve the people both inside and outside of Wildwood.

“We want others to experience the same hope and love of Jesus that has powerfully transformed us, and so our mission is to make disciples, move hearts, care deeply and serve freely.”

Not Your Average Church

If we’re being totally honest, most of us have an archaic view of what a Sunday service looks like. Sadly, that turns us away from attending mass. But times have changed and so has the way people celebrate their faith.

Music is a big part of the Wildwood Church experience

For starters, Wildwood encourages people to attend in comfortable clothing. Most members come in jeans and dress shirts. No need to suit up.

They also incorporate music into their service — a blend of traditional, modern, and pop. They’ll even throw in some bluegrass once in a while.

In addition, they have a number of open community groups that meet throughout the week. Every spring they hold their Daddy Daughter Sock Hop dance. They hold a free community BBQ event around Easter. Students can look forward to a number of summer camps that they organize.

The Daddy Daughter Sock Hop dance

Anyone is welcome to join the growing community.

“Just as the gospel message is for everyone, we want to be for everyone. Anyone can become a member of Wildwood Church, as long as they go through our membership process, which is available twice a year.”

Sharing the Faith One Brochure at a Time

While the church has been around a long time, they still face challenges that require actionable solutions. They need to be able to grow a church culture where people can connect with one another and make them stay.

“We want people [to] experience a community where they know and are known by others. That kind of culture doesn’t just happen automatically. We have to be very intentional to make accessible and approachable channels for people to move into [the] community.”

Everybody is welcome to join

Part of the problems they face is addressed by the aforementioned community groups as well as designating people whose sole responsibility is to engage new churchgoers every Sunday. But they needed something more.

“It’s common for Christians to refer to ‘the gospel’ and claim ‘the gospel’, but do Christians really understand what the gospel is? Recently our senior pastor wanted to ensure our own church family had a clear understanding of the gospel message. After all, our entire theology and identity as Christians are rooted in the gospel!”

With that, members of the church sprung into action and printed custom Wildwood Church brochures.

“We took inspiration from several other church leaders and produced a custom brochure outlining the four points of the gospel. The target audience for this resource was not people outside our church, but the people within our church.”

This was an important part of their vision of making “mature and equipped followers of Jesus who live with gospel purpose”. As Josh puts it, “We can only live with gospel purpose if we understand the gospel.”

The UPrinting Experience

Early on, Josh had a vision of what he wanted their brochures to look like. So all he needed to do was find an online printing partner that would be able to meet his needs at an affordable price.

“UPrinting quickly made it to our shortlist, because they were one of the few that provided the template we needed for our custom brochure.”

Our customer service team understood immediately what was required and not long after that, they have started working on Wildwood Church’s custom brochures.

“They even made some minor modifications on their end to ensure the folds and cuts would be correct. I was very impressed throughout the process. When the final brochures arrived, I was relieved to see everything exactly as we had envisioned it.”

We have real people looking into possible file issues to make sure your brochures come out as intended.

“I truly was impressed by the artwork team at UPrinting for noticing a few formatting issues that other teams might have missed altogether. Honestly, if they had missed it, I wouldn’t have blamed them, and would have chalked it up to an oversight on my end (which has happened when working with other printing companies).”

Print your own custom brochures at UPrinting

In the end, Wildwood Church produced awesome brochures that they can proudly share with their community.

“I knew we were in good hands when UPrinting brought the issues to my attention. And not only that, they let me know they had actually corrected it.”

Special thanks to Josh King for taking some time to entertain my questions.

Follow Wildwood Church on social media:
Facebook – @wildwoodtlh
Twitter – @wildwoodtlh
Instagram – wildwoodtlh

Do you have a UPrinting story to share? Tell us! Email us at blog@uprinting.com

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