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Launching a Preview Service

By New Churches Team

It’s time for your first preview service. But who should you invite and how should you advertise? What should your preview services look like? Here are some tips for how to handle these three areas of your preview services.

Advertising

While you can begin to advertise with your first preview service, do not spend all of your advertising budget right away. Use a small amount to advertise the first service, then more with each additional service. By the time you get to your fourth service, be prepared to go all out for advertising. In between the preview weeks, reach out to your community with block parties and other events to funnel them into your service.

Invitations

For your first initial preview service, consider keeping it to just your launch team. They will give you a lot of grace as you work through some of the bumps that come along with that initial run through. For the next service, encourage them to invite friends and family. Continue asking these people to attend every preview service you have. This repetitive invitation and opportunity to be a part of something new often leads to a good response.

Service

1. Prepare your sermons ahead of time. The weeks of preview services you want to be mobilizing your launch team, holding block parties, and raising awareness of your church. You don’t want to spend your time hyper-focused on your sermons. Knock that out early.
2. Do as much of your normal service as possible. Do not invite outside people to lead worship. Acknowledge that it is a preview service at the beginning and at the end, but in the middle keep it to what your worship service will traditionally look like.

Adapted from the New Churches Q&A Podcast Episode 441: Preparing for Preview Services. Click here to listen to more to church planting, multisite, and multiplication tips.