fresh & practical ideas for your journey to the summit
The Need for Speed (Part Two)
Like climbing Everest, the lack of appropriate speed can create a cold or even hostile environment for guests. I'll share 2 things to know about a 1-wk One Program, 2 reasons to rethink your first ask, and 8 things I'm learning and recommending right now.
The Need for Speed (Part One)
Whether it’s going online the moment Taylor Swift tickets go on sale or camping out at an electronics store before Black Friday kicks in… we live in a world where being too slow to buy reserved seats for a movie can determine whether you can go or not.
It shouldn’t surprise us that there is a need to act quickly when it comes to important aspects of life and ministry as well.
In other words, there is a need for speed.
The value of knowing what to expect
Everybody needs a Sherpa when we enter the unfamiliar. It is extremely valuable to know what to expect when you step into something new. Here are a few simple steps you can take to ensure your guests know what to expect.
5 simple but effective hacks for increasing attendance at your “One Program”
Your “One Program” for guests is always going to require the best kind of invitational promotion you can create to connect the most people possible to your church. Here are 5 hacks for this that we did recently that really made a HUGE difference…
A simple but effective follow up hack to make sure no guest at your church gets overlooked
Over the last year, I have discovered a new hack for making sure no one visiting our church gets forgotten. Whether they are first time guests, just made a decision for Christ, just checked in the kids for the first time or gotten baptized, I can count on this one hack to connect with them all.
How to engage your guests using "The Power of Place"
In this post, I am going to create a short photo scrapbook from a location in Israel to demonstrate something I call The Power of Place which I believe can make or break your engagement efforts with people at church.
8 ways to maintain attendance during your multi-week assimilation program
There is nothing that can deflate a Sherpa leader (one who leads guest on the climb to connect with your church) quite like these 2 things:
An empty room.
A full room missing guests who attended last week.
That’s why when I am talking to leaders who want to see their guests go the distance and get connected to their church, I always share these 8 attrition busting practices I have learned over the years.
Host an Experience — Not a Class
I want to take the next four posts to share some creative things that 4 different churches have done in creating environments and processes that connect guests to God and their church.
8 Questions to Ask Every Guest (plus when and where to ask them)
One interesting way to mark the journey of a relationship might be the important questions asked that brought the relationship to new levels.
I believe the questions we ask guests at our church also have the power to take the relationship we are building between them and our church, and between them and God, to a deeper level.
Here is a list of 8 questions to ask your guests, and great places to ask them:
What to do when you want to see different results (2 of 3)
If the definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over again but expect different results, then it follows that sanity would be to start doing more of the things that give us the results we want.
That's what we started doing in 2016 in our assimilation ministry at Eastside. It was a bold move.
The key to promoting your assimilation environment
Your Yelp app is pointing to a new reality in how guests at your church make decisions about where they are willing to spend their time and why. So here's what I'm learning about promoting our assimilation environments…
Design this right, and assimilating guests will happen automatically
I have learned something about entertaining in my home: people don't always sit where you want them to. But when I dragged 2 $17 chairs to the edge of the lawn, my guests started to bee-line for the best view in the house—the one they would consistently forfeit before.
That’s when I learned that the key to changing behavior is actually changing your environment—and I see 2 principles we need to keep in mind when it comes to the guests of our church.
The four ingredients of an assimilation system
There is an episode of "Friends" where Monica and Phoebe are desperately trying to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's cookie recipe. It is beyond words.
This scene from America's favorite friends shows us that sometimes the most elegant and powerful realities boil down to a simple recipe.
The 2nd mistake many churches make when assimilating guests
Have you ever taken a "free" vacation to a time share resort? You go because you feel the need for a break, have the need for a deal, and are willing to pay the price which is sitting through a presentation and a pitch for a few hours-one that could result in your buying-in to the "resort lifestyle". If you are like me, you have been willing to pay that price as long as they a willing to hear a "No" at they end of it.
Despite our aversion to this experience, this is unintentionally how we treat guests when they want to become part of our church.