5 simple but effective hacks for increasing attendance at your “One Program”

This is Next Steps at our Park Rapids campus a few years ago. Since then, these two (David and Paula) have become good friends of my wife and I. We’ve even vacationed with these two! You never know what God is going to being you personally when he connects new people to your church.

I often share with churches that all your communication with guests needs to be like a lazy river: all the jets need to point the same direction if everybody is going to end up in the same pool.

The pool you want your guests to flow into is the one program you invite them to that helps them find their small group and ministry team.

If the jets that are not all pointed the same way at your info counter, your welcome center (the one place you send guests to exchange their contact info for a welcome gift), announcements and all guest services teams, your guests will never wind up there.

We recently had a record breaking attendance at Next Steps: 186 people in one weekend. There were some new things we did, and one old favorite we dug up that delivered in spades that I want to pass on here so you can maximize the attendance at the event or experience you invite all your guests to so they can make a real connection to your church.

Five hacks to increase guest attendance at your one program for guests:

➊ Have your Senior Pastor ask people to go to Next Steps (or whatever your program is called) in his sermon the week before it starts and the day of.

This has the highest impact of anything we have tried.

Having our pastor Gene Appel say during his sermon that taking your next step spiritually at Next Steps is the most important thing he could ask them to do produces more results than any other tactic.

It shouldn’t be overused so ask him to do it just 3 times a year: The last weekend of January, the last weekend of April, and the last weekend of September.

Why those dates? They are all one month after our biggest guest weekends: Christmas, Easter and Fall kickoff.

As a result, our best attended months of Next Steps are February, May, and October. People’s experience with our church has had about a month to percolate by those dates since their first visit at a “high invite” weekend.

This makes the call for these guests to take their “Next Step” from the lead pastor perfectly timed for a felt response.

➋ Put a sign up button with an auto reply on your web page.

When Gene made that announcement, we tried something new this year. We had him ask guests to sign up for Next Steps.

We transitioned our One Program to the 4 week Next Steps format 6 years ago, we didn’t have any sign ups. Our thinking on that was that the increased attendance that came from being able to jump in any time would be diminished by the thought that you had to pre-register. Our solution? Invite them to sign up at Eastside.com/NextSteps or if they want, just show up.

By offering both options, we created the opportunity to send people an automated confirmation of their attendance (which makes those prone to signing up feel committed) and a reminder the day before.

This helped push us toward our record breaking attendance, even by pre-COVID standards. This sign up button made something else possible that made a difference…

➌ Offer a well-timed personal “nudge” from the Pastor (or Campus Pastors).

Having people sign up created the opportunity for our campus pastors (or in single campus churches, the Senior Pastor) to nudge a person towards enthusiastic commitment to attending Next Steps by texting them.

The text read something like, “Justin, I saw that you signed up for Next Steps this weekend and I cannot say how excited I am for you. You’re gonna love it! Looking forward to seeing how God reveals to you the many reasons he led you to our church.”

Sometimes a text stream would follow that let the guest now they were noticed by the person they see on the platform each week and I believe it increased engagement as well as overall attendance.

➍ Encourage them to do a make up online if they have to miss a week.

When we went to the 4 week format of Next Steps where you could start and finish on any week of the month, we assumed that people who missed a week would just keep going and finish up that missing week the following month because that was simple to do. We were wrong.

For example, take a person who went to Step 1 and 2 and then unexpectedly had to miss Step 3. Instead of going to Step 4 and making up Step 3 the following month, we found that a large number of people wanted to do it in order so they decided to do Step 3 & 4 the following month.

After the 3rd weekend rolled around and they realized, “Oh, I was Step 3 LAST weekend? I forgot!”, they told themselves they would try and remember to finish next month where often times the same thing would happen again.

This created a scenario where those who missed a week had I high probability of never finishing. That’s when we formed a better play. S

ince we created an online version of Next Steps during the shutdown in 2020, we continued using it for our online campus. Now we tell that person say who missed Step 3 to do it online this week and finish with everyone else the following week at Step 4.

We are learning that giving them that online opportunity to stay in the game so to speak, increases the odds they will finish and become a Next Step graduate.

This led to a final new learning that increased attendance and engagement with new people…

➎ Follow up with people who missed a week and encourage them to keep going.

This is an every week task but we are discovering its value. I have to give credit to our newest Build Community Team member Danielah Germon for this one.

She designed a process and report using Monday.com that allowed her to follow up with any person who had been to Next Steps but then missed a session (Example: they came to Step 1 & 2 but missed 3).

She then reached out to them by email letting us know we missed seeing them, inviting them to make up that step online and join us for the next step session this coming weekend.

People responded to these emails by letting us know what their plans were for coming sessions, and thanking us for noticing.

I believe this reduced attrition and kept our attendance up for a record breaking May while we connected more guests to a small group and a ministry team.

If a lazy river has jets that aren’t working or pointed the right direction, then those floating down it will just spin or sit in place. Eventually, they just get out of the river. The right kind of invitation and communication will make share they all end up where you want them to go….fully connected to your church.

To land the plane for great attendance this Fall, talk through the questions below with your team.

• Would your senior pastor be willing to invite guests to your one program? If so, what weekends would be most strategic to have him do it? What copy or thoughts would you want to share with him so his invitation has maximum impact?

• How can you make sign ups a stronger invitation and not a requirement?

• Who at your church could offer a “nudge” that would serve as a tipping point for guests debating whether to attend or not? What medium (a call, a text, an email) would be most effective? When is the most ideal time for that nudge be received by a guest?

• Do you have a way for guests to make up a missed week? If not, what could be created so they don’t lose momentum and energy for completing their connection to your church?

• If you could only do one of these 5 hacks for this Fall, which would it be?