One simple change to unleash of geography for your guests

This idea is based on our biggest assimilation learning from 2015. This idea...

📈 Almost doubled the amount of connection cards we received from guests.

🐣 Lowered the average age of those who attend our First Step events by 20+ years.

🎉 Began lowering the average age of those who signed up to volunteer by about the same.

🚀 Helped increased the attendance of our 7 week First Step Experience by 38% this Winter.

I am embarrassed to tell you what it is because it is so painfully obvious and we missed it for the first 2.5 years at our new facility.

Here it is… (gulp)

We set up another Guest Central (our “One Place”) where our young families walk in and out of our building.

🤦‍♂️

Yup. There it is. 

Why was this such a game-changer in connecting with more guests and younger guests at our church?

Because our state-of-the-art, fancy-schmancy Guest Central room is just outside the south exit of our auditorium—and Kidside is just outside the north exit.

You see, young families park in the north parking lot so they can check in their kids to Kidside, enter the auditorium from the north, and retrace their steps in reverse when they exit.

They never walk past Guest Central or see the south side of our facility at all. 

Because our assimilation system begins when a guest exchanges their connection card for a gift at Guest Central, not having a "Guest Central North" had 3 major unintended consequences:

➊ The people we connected to small groups were largely 40+ years old.

➋ Our visible volunteers in the church were largely 40+ years old.

➌ We had little need for child care during our One Program

➍ We found it hard to assimilate young adults and young families in the environments we created.

So last Fall, we tried something.

We moved a cart near the north exit of the auditorium near Kidside with put orange cups on it and a Guest Central Team Member behind it.

And let me tell you—we had no idea what would happen to those poor volunteers.

Some weekends we would have just as much activity at that little cart as we had in our swanky Guest Central room!

Visiting families do not put their children in Kidside as a rule when they visit for the first time. So children from these families who attended worship with their parents would see the photo of the orange cup on the screen, hear about the cookies, and then drag their parents to the cart when they saw the cups as they exited.

These kids were our best connectors! And as a result, we are installing a permanent expression of Guest Central out in the hall on the north side of our facility.

Since Guest Central North opened up, we have had the largest attendance yet at our One Program, and child care is full during all of it.

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So the transferable assimilation principle and idea for the day is a geographical one: put your One Place where the guest are, not where you want them to go!

It makes all the difference in the world.

Now start a conversation with your team using the discussion questions below!

TO CHEW ON WHILE WE CLIMB

➊ Where do you want guests to go when they attend your church? Where are they already going? What are their existing traffic patterns?

➋ If you were to put your first contact point for guests in their existing traffic patterns, where would you put it? What obstacles need to be removed for that to work?

➌ Is there a temporary experiment that might be a geographical "tell all" for you if you did it for 2 to 4 weeks?