Welcome back to our Playbook series. This series is designed to unpack some of the things Justin and Brian have been learning from our interactions with churches around the country. The world is changing rapidly and the church has to constantly re-think what we are doing and how we are doing it (semper reformanda!).
Last week we talked about the need for the church to Get Better. That’s a hard word and so I wanted to get it out of the way. I know we are all working hard and I am not trying to add burdens to your plate.
If getting better seems like a monumental task, start by getting organized. Cleaning up the organizational aspects of your church will likely have the highest immediate impact of any of these approaches. What do I mean by organizational aspects? Things like assimilation processes, check-in for kids, follow-up with visitors, signage, clarity around how to sign up for events or classes, directions in the parking lot and building, internal and external communication, staff management, role descriptions, and meeting schedules. In short, all the things they didn’t teach you in seminary.
I knew I wanted to be a pastor when I was sixteen. I interned at my church, volunteered for everything, and was mentored by my youth pastor. I studied Theology and Philosophy in my undergraduate and got a seminary degree. In all of those years of study to become a pastor, how many times was I taught how to build a staff team? Zero. How many times was I told how to build and manage a church budget? Zero. How about building a groups structure, choosing children's ministry curriculum, setting up background checks, hiring or firing staff, leading a staff meeting, managing people, doing leadership development, creating assimilation pipelines, or any number of things that actually take up all my time and have direct, weekly impact on the people in my church? Zero, combined.
So it should be no surprise that our churches mostly struggle with these things. I was recently talking to a pastor at a church of almost 2000 people and they don’t have a staff management system, at all. Meaning that they don’t do reviews, there are no goals, measurables, KPIs, detailed role descriptions, nothing. These are the kinds of things that burn out staff, create confusion, and open up gaping cracks in our systems, through which actual people fall.
If people show up to our churches, enjoy the service, and want to get connected but (1) don’t know what that even means because they aren’t churched, or (2) don’t know what to do because you haven’t told them, or (3) are intimidated because the step they have to take is so big that any reasonable person wouldn’t do it, or (4) they never receive any kind of follow-up because you don’t have a working system to do so, then our churches will simply not survive the next 20 years.
We need to build working pipelines that begin with clear external communication and end with people being connected in community with a full understanding of what is expected of them. This will require your whole team to work together, with clarity about roles and responsibilities and a commitment to building the kind of church you envision.
This pipeline should include:
1. A clear identity for your church.
2. Compelling and plain-spoken communication of that identity to outsiders.
3. A strategy for marketing that talks about your church in ways that are relatable and compelling, while also clear about your convictions.
4. A call to action in all of your external communication that outlines what a person’s first step should be (likely a Sunday gathering).
5. A plan to welcome and integrate people into your Sunday gathering that includes directions, signage, and a user-friendly process.
6. An honest and friendly environment that reinforces your core values through visual, verbal, and interactive means.
7. A well-planned worship service that doesn’t have to be perfect, but should reflect the value you have for the time you spend in worship.
8. A simple step for a new person to communicate interest in getting connected to the church
9. That step should include the gathering of at least a name and email, if not also their phone number and city (where applicable).
10. Once you have gathered that information, you should be able to enter it into a process that includes multiple invitations, check-ins, and offers of service.
11. The first invitation should be to some sort of welcome lunch or coffee with the pastors. It should be something that outlines the main identity of the church and an opportunity to get to know some of the leaders.
12. Those invitations should outline the next steps and options that people have to join a group, class, team, or whatever your structure may be.
13. The system should have intermittent check-ins at 3, 6, and 9 months to make sure people have remained connected.
If this seems daunting, I get it but we haven’t even talked about what staff management should look like or how to keep people moving towards discipleship and leadership. Hopefully, this can serve as a starting point for your conversations. In reality, these thirteen steps are fairly elementary things that nearly every successful coffee shop or clothing store will do to meet and retain customers. All we’re trying to do is find and connect people who are interested in joining your church and making it easy for them to do so.
Increasingly, people don’t know how to do this on their own. Many of our visitors are new to the whole thing and you have to take the time to walk them through it. Some of you will inevitably feel like this is too organized or corporate and you will want to do it “organically” or “incarnationally.” Fine, but remember even weeds need an environment of healthy soil, regular sunshine, and plenty of rain in order to grow. There is no such thing as systemless growth.
This is a way for you to love the people in your community by making it easy for them to get access to the message of the Gospel and the community they need. If you are convinced that you need this but are overwhelmed by the prospect of doing it, call us. We help churches build systems that go from outreach to connection.
