by Greg Curtis: It’s a humbling experience to be speaking alongside thought leaders of this caliber. I am so excited about this conference and the help it will give to all of us who strive to serve and connect guests….and it’s coming in just a few weeks from now!

Are you concerned about the number of guests you are able to connect in the current and post COVID world?

Sherpas leading guests on their climb to connect at your church will benefit greatly from this conference.

Register for the conference now and enter promo code CURTIS to save $20!

I will be doing a session on how to create an online program that actually connects guests to small groups and ministry teams. Others in the line up will be bringing their A-game on other topics that are crucial to understanding guests in the New Normal. With people like Rick Warren, Carey Nieuwhof, Nona Jones, and Bob Goff speaking reality and empowering insights to steady us and our teams, this conference is not be missed.

So, if you want to become a more welcoming church and help your in-person and online guests take their next steps, then click here to get your ticket for the First Impressions Conference.

Can’t wait to see you there, my friends,

Here are just some of the others in the line up…..

P.S. Click here and enter promo code TEXT to save $20 when you register for the First Impressions Conference so you can lead your church with innovation, purpose, and clarity.

Source: Ideas and strategies for church guests in the “New Normal”.

The post Ideas and strategies for church guests in the "New Normal". appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Greg Curtis: The quarantine has made it easier than ever to access good teaching about Jesus and the life his death and resurrection makes possible. It has not made it easier however to connect with others to experience that life everyday.

Or has it?

Sherpas-leaders at your church are the ones who help guests reach the summit of a full connection with God and others. How much more are they needed when the guests are climbing the “cyberssimilayas?”

Here are some things we learned about connecting people during the quarantine that we never anticipated. I chatted about these for a half hour on facebook live last week (watch that here) and he is a brief summary of that chat.

Four lessons learned after the 3rd weekend of doing church exclusively online:

Decide on an online gift for guests that has value for them

Our guests leads online are staying between 25 and 40 per weekend. Though much lower than when we physically gathered, we are getting traction by offering a free 5 minute daily video from Gene Appel (our Senior Pastor) to start their day. It’s informal and from his home while he is under quarantine as well. It is important to make sure the video is offered to guests after they experience Gene and know him enough to want to hear from him more.

Determine your new way of recording attendance.

The number of devices logged-in during services has replaced the number of people on campus for our weekly attendance number.

The trouble is there are multiple people watching your service from one device, sometimes just one. Andy Stanley and others have data to support that your real worship attendance in this new world is the number of devices logged-in times 1.7.

Another discovery was that our average time a device was logged-on our website was 22 minutes but only 2 minutes through facebook (no clue why. If you have a clue, let us know in the comments at the bottom). So we subtract facebook attendance from the total altogether.

So our equation for weekend attendance now looks like this:

All Devices times 1.7 minus Facebook =total weekend attendance

Drop your most important ask in the sermon.

If the average attender is staying 22 minutes, odds are they are logging-in late and leaving early. That means that if you make your announcements before or at the the beginning or your service or at the end, they will not be heard.

So pick your most important “Ask” and have your Lead Pastor share it at the beginning or appropriate part of his message.

Develop an engagement pathway not an engagement pitstop for guests online.

When we went online, we fell back into the “engagement pitstop” plan most churches invite their guests into when they gather physically. Pitstops are places you stop to take care of an issue but that’s it. They are one-offs that lead no where else and it is easy to offer announcements that lead to dead ends, offering no clear next steps at the end.

An “engagement pathway” is where you take all your asks of guests that lead to pitstops and begin asking them one at a time in the order that respects the current trust level your guest has with your church.

Not sure what to ask of a guest when? During the Facebook Live, I used this illustration/exercise:

In a dating relationship, what order would you put these asks in?

Saying I love you

Meeting the parents

Spending a day together

Asking them out out a date

Asking for their phone number

Think about it. Mentally put a number next to each bullet point that would put these asks in a reasonable order given where the relationship is at.

You probably noticed that I simply placed these asks in reverse order of what a normal dating relationship would experience.

So if I flip them back in the correct order, you can more easily see the equivalent ask you would initiate in your online relationship with a guest:

Asking for their phone number=Asking for their email at your digital One Place to receive a welcome gift)

Asking them out for a date =Inviting them to your One Program for connecting guests

Spending a day together=Being with them online for all the sessions of your One Program

Meeting the parents=Discussing service with a ministry team leader or attending an online small group for the first time

Saying I love you=Committing themselves to Two Placements on a ministry team and on a small group for the long haul

This creates your engagement pathway, each stop ends with an ask to the next one. Can you also see why asking something too early in the relationship with a guest might result in disengagement?

Engagement, not your Content, will get a guest to return to your church online.

So I also suggested another online engagement idea that is getting traction at Canyon Ridge Church in Las Vegas. It involves inviting guests at the end of a service into 15 minute group chats at the end of the service. I would suggest they wrap around the 3 questions they are asking themselves during the quarantine:

How can I manage my money different during the quarantine?

How can I parent differently during the quarantine?

How can I help someone else in need during this quarantine?

Each chat group could be organized by an expert in your church or on your staff in each area. They could follow a similar format:

Financial Management during Quarantine:

Introduce yourself and set up of Financial Peace University Online

Show the promo video for FPU

Q & A

Share link for sign up. (plan to launch small groups out of the experience)

Parenting during the Quarantine:

Introduce yourself and set up of Online Groups for students

Show the promo video for your online groups for teens (see ours here)

Q & A

Share link for sign up.

How to Help Others during Quarantine

Introduce yourself and set up of Idea of local compassion

Show the promo video for your local compassion efforts (see ours here)

Q & A

Point out how to sign up.

I am very excited to share some things we learned about incorporating text into guest engagement online, the dos and donts of that, and how we ended up with more decisions to follow Jesus than I can ever remember when we met physically. Join me live at Facebook.com/gregcurtis63 8am PST Tuesday April 14.

To hear more about how to increase guest engagement online during this season, let me know here:

Name

*

First Name

Last Name

Email

*

Church Name

*

Church Website

*

Thank you!

Source: Creating an online engagement pathway, taking attendance online, and more (Facebook Live session 3 summary)

The post Creating an online engagement pathway, taking attendance online, and more (Facebook Live session 3 summary) appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By Greg Curtis: I loved spending 25 minutes on Facebook Live with many of you, sharing what we are learning right now about engaging guests online at my church. I promised a written summary of that discussion with linked resources so here it is!

The session was built on a new conviction for Sherpas leading guests toward the summit of a fuller connection with God and others online:

“Engagement, not content will win the day. We will rise and fall during this quarantine on our ability online to engage people in community, not our ability to lead them in worship or deliver a great sermon.”

Here’s why your church’s growth will hinge on guest engagement, not worship services during the quarantine:

There’s too much competition

If someone wants to get a great sermon, they can go online at any other church. In fact, they could google and find the exact message they need to hear by topic. Or, due to the scaleability of the internet, we could all attend Saddleback Church and hear Rick Warren this weekend.

Your teaching still has to be effective. But believe me, no matter how good your sermon is, it is not the primary reason people will stay with your church during the quarantine.

A friend of mine is on the Executive Team of the largest church in his denomination. He did not attend his own church online last Sunday. He attended a small church of 200 online in Central California. Why? Because they know him when he logs on and he can chat with them and pray. He was a part of that church back in the day and loves the connection.

Great services are plentiful on the internet. Great connections are not. Which leads to this reason why online engagement wins the day.

There’s an increased need for community

Families are quarantined, so are singles and seniors. The need to know that we are not alone but part of a community that knows us, cares about us and will be there for us is more important than ever. Online engagement is how people access that now.

To create community for guests online, follow the same “Four Ps” of a successful assimilation strategy that work when churches gather physically: Send guests to One Place to share their contact info for a digital welcome gift. Use that contact info to invite them to a digital expression of your One Program. Incorporate discussion and fun into the experience, designing the program to get guests into Two Process that lead them to Two Placements (an online small group and a digital team to help others locally until we regather physically).

Because name and email is the primary ask of online engagement, there is a 3rd crucial factor to keep in mind…

There’s a huge desire for consolidation

Right now your inbox is full with emails from your kids school, your bank, as well as everyone’s thoughts on living through the quarantine. Let’s not even talk about social media. If you’re a part of a church, you are probably hearing from the pastor via a daily video encouragement, the Communication Team via e-news, and emails from your ministry team leader about the latest digital application of your ministry. Information overload is a distinct sort of stress that people are under right now, so here is how we are addressing it as a church:

We are currently consolidating emails to guest by making our pastor’s daily “video of hope” our free gift. This is in lieu of emailing an Amazon gift card (which is what we did our first week online) followed by emails that invite them to our One Program. It saves money to do this too. We increased our new guest leads from 29 to 40 when we did this.

We are asking staff to list any emails going out to groups of 30 or more on a shared calendar spreadsheet. This is to insure they go out on different days and our paced well so people don’t get overwhelmed with too much communication or redundancy.

This desire for consolidation of information is not just for our guests. It goes for you and I as Sherpa leaders as well. There are so many emails just trying to get my attention focused on the latest thoughts on ministry during the COVID19 crisis that I have decided to only open ones that come from 3 friends/colleagues that I will recommend to you now:

Carey Nieuwhof’s blog (on leadership, assimilation and church online, Carey is Canadian, an author and is a pastor at Connexus Church in Ontario. Love it podcast too)

Danny Franks Connective Tissue (Danny’s laser focused on first impressions and guest services and is from Summit Church in NC)

Jason Young’s Saturday Rundown (A Saturday morning email on hospitality and leadership. Jason was on Andy Stanley’s Exec Team at North Point in GA).

If you are an Executive Pastor or on an Exec Team, than my friend Rich Birch at Unseminary is the one to be listening to. Check out his “COVID19 and the Path Forward Webinar” here.

That’s it for me. Everything else get’s deleted no matter how informative it looks. You need to come up with a quick decision making filter about your inbox during this time. I realize, I may not make the cut! That’s OK. Or you might pick only one or none of my recommendations. You know what resources energize you so open or delete with courage, confidence and wisdom.

The last 2 reminders I gave on the Facebook Live session on Tuesday were these:

With probably around 2 months of not having physical church ahead of you, this may offer the margin you needed to get a new assimilation strategy designed or upgraded. You just need someone to walk you and your team through the necessary steps in 6 online sessions and a checklist. I would love to be that guy and my video course is the ticket. Find out what you need to know to make that decision here.

You can watch the 25 minute video of last Tuesday’s live session on my Facebook page by friending me and watching it on my timeline. Share it with someone who needs it, and join me for the next Facebook live this coming Tuesday at 8am Pacific Standard Time and friend me first at facebook.com/Gregcurtis63.

This week I’ll be taking your questions and covering…

A formula for figuring out what your real attendance is online

What to ask of online guests and when

Ideas for creating an online engagement pathway not just a pitstop.

Much more.

See ya on the climb (even if it’s virtual),

Need this kind of stuff in your inbox once a week or so? I don’t post often so don’t worry. I wont bug you unless I have something new to say! Just let me know below.

Name

*

First Name

Last Name

Email

*

Church Name

*

Church Website

*

Thank you!

Source: Connecting Guests to your Church Online during the Quarantine (Facebook Live session 2 summary)

The post Connecting Guests to your Church Online during the Quarantine (Facebook Live session 2 summary) appeared first on Passion for Planting.