by unSeminary: Your parking lot is the very first of first impressions that guests at your church experience.

When was the last time you thought about how to improve that experience?

Is the parking experience at your church turning people off before they even get to your building?

What is your parking lot communicating to people who are looking to attend your church?

Recently I reached out to some church leader friends and asked the question: “What’s the biggest “facility lid” that is holding you back?” It was fascinating how often parking issues were raised as concerns that church leaders had. Here are just a few examples of what leaders like you had to say:

Not enough parking along with unpaved grounds too soggy to park on.We are full in the parking lot when our auditorium is only about 65-70% full. By far, the biggest issue is parking given we share a lot with another church that moved in across the street from us.

Your parking lot is an essential piece of infrastructure that can easily be overlooked by church leaders. If you don’t address the parking issues at your church, you might be limiting the redemptive potential of your church.

Consider what other people-oriented organizations do for parking. Have you ever stopped and looked at the amount of parking at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in relation to the size of the actual theme park? Or look at how much parking space a Walmart has in any town across the country? How does that compare to what your church is attempting to do with your parking? Here are five ways to improve the parking situation at your church that (mostly) won’t break the bank.

Get Clarity on the Issues

When was the last time you saw your parking lot on “game day”?

Most church leaders arrive before the majority of people get to the church and are gone long after the crowds have exited. This fact can give you a skewed sense of what happens with your parking. You need to get clarity on what happens in your parking lot during any given week.

Zoning bylaws have created a situation that causes parking issues in lots of churches. In most cases, the zoning requirements when your building was put together means that you don’t have enough spots to function comfortably as a church. The issue is compounded when you’re settling on the project costs because parking can be expensive to do well and means that fewer interior spaces are built in your building. These two realities have left lots of churches with not enough parking to go around.

Here are a few ways to get clarity on what’s happening in your parking lot on Sunday mornings:

Greet Guests // Spend some time on a few weekends in your parking lot greeting guests. You’ll pick up what happens and some potential areas for improvement. The real-life input from your people will be invaluable as you attempt to get better at this. Video  // Mount a small video camera, like a GoPro, on the roof of your building and record your parking in action. You’d be amazed how a time-lapse video quickly identifies problem spots on the operation of your parking lot. Data // It would be good to get some measurable data on how many cars use your parking lot. What is the ratio of vehicles to actual attendance? I’ve seen lots of time that it’s one car for every two people attending. Getting data on how your parking lot functions will give you options to move forward.

Get Team Members Out There … Every Week!

One of the fastest and most effective ways to improve your guests’ parking lot experience is to build a volunteer team to make it better!

Your team should focus on making the parking experience both “faster and funner” for your guests. If your team can help your guests get to their spots quickly in a more pleasant manner, that would be a win!

3 Ways Your People Could Make Parking Faster

Direction // Giving clear paths of exactly where to go as guests enter the parking lot will reduce hesitation and potential bottlenecks. Load Balancing // Rather than people just picking where they want to go, have your team fill the parking lot one section at a time. Fine Tuning // Sometimes certain spots are a little tricky to navigate for guests. Ensure team members are proactively helping people.

3 Ways Your People Could Make Parking More Fun! 

Extra Help // Empower your team to look for guests that need extra help getting from their car to the building. (Single parents, elderly, etc.) Lending a helping hand goes a long way! Music // What if your team set up speakers and had high energy music playing as people got out of their cars? This communicates joy and builds anticipation for what’s about to happen. High Fives & Big Waves // You’d be amazed how far a great big high-five or a goofy wave to kids in the backseat of a van go towards making a fun parking experience! ?

Ensure that you build a team that’s committed to being in the parking lot every weekend of the year. In the northern climates, that means suiting up your squad with winter jackets! In the south, that means ensuring the team is well-hydrated in those long summer Sundays!

Increase the Signage 

After your team has been in the parking lot for several weeks, it will become apparent where they could use some signage to help guests.

Signage can be a relatively inexpensive solution to making your parking lot experience better. You’d be amazed at how a few hundred dollars could go a long way to make this a clearer and more pleasant experience for your people. Here are just a few examples of simple signage to improve your parking experience:

Welcome | Thank You A-Frames // Simple A-frame signs that welcome guests as they arrive and then on the back, thank them for coming as they leave!Feather Flags // These add energy to the parking lot and can serve as guidance for people on which entrance to head towards. “New Here” Parking // Signs that help point guests towards special parking for people who are new to the church. Parents with Kids Parking // There might be a part of your parking lot that in which it makes more sense for parents with young kids to park. Walk This Way // Signs that point people where to head once they get out of their car.

Multiply Services 

Church leaders are most likely to see a packed auditorium and be motivated to launch a new service. Sometimes they will respond to children’s ministry workers who are talking about the fact that those environments are too full. However, a full parking lot is one of the last-to-be-noticed growth “pinch points” that could be holding back your church.

Count the number of available spaces, and work with your parking team to maximize those spaces or find other reasonable solutions. Like the main auditorium, if you are reaching somewhere around 70% capacity in your parking lot during a service, then you need to start thinking about adding another service.

If you don’t have empty spaces in your parking lot, it’s time to launch more services. 

The multiplication work that is required to launch another service will help your church develop new leaders and will stretch your team to reach new people. Particularly when you consider the financial cost of acquiring more parking spots, this is usually the best option.

Resurface & Restripe 

Finally, you might just need to exercise the most capital intensive option and change the parking lot.

A civil engineering firm could do a parking study on your space that could garner you more spots on the same size parking lot. They can look closely at the current “best practices” for parking lots and squeeze more cars in.

Over the years, the way we design parking lots has changed, and often a second opinion on the layout is worth the investment. (Also: you might have a volunteer within your church who does this work for a living and could give you an educated guess before you even invest any money!)

Investing in a resurfaced parking lot with a new parking scheme not only gets you more parking spaces but improves the visual appeal of the church. A freshly resurfaced parking lot looks fantastic! You’d be surprised at how economical this cost could be for your church to pursue.

Feeling the Growth Pinch? 3 Free PDF Resources for Church Leaders.  

If your church is feeling the pinch of growing, we have some additional resources to help you! These three PDFs are designed to be great discussion starters for your team. Use them to help guide conversations with your team around growth issues you might be facing. Click here to download free resources to help your church. In this download, you’ll receive 3 PDFS:

5 Ways Your Parking Lot Might be Holding Back the Redemptive Potential of Your Church5 Factors That Should Move Your Church to Add Another Weekend Service21 Easy Ways for Your Church to Be More First-Time Guest Friendly

Click here to download these resources!

Thank You to This Article’s Sponsor: HarperCollins Publishers

Grab Liquid Church: 6 Powerful Currents to Saturate Your City for Christ and read it with your team. It’s an inspiring & practical guide for reaching people in a post-Christian culture.

Pick-up your copy and enjoy the other free resources for your church at www.LiquidChurchBOOK.com

Source: 5 Ways to Improve Your Church Parking Without Breaking the Bank

The post 5 Ways to Improve Your Church Parking Without Breaking the Bank appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By Greg Curtis: Nathan was a high schooler when I first met him in Next Steps. He was such a great guy, easy to talk with and helpful beyond belief. I began to think that his helpfulness came from the fact that he grew up as the oldest of 8 children. I was wrong.

Nathan was a Helper because he was a 2.

Nathan and I at a Compassion event at “The Farm” in Anaheim.

I have known many a firstborn without that helpful spirit. Nathan outshines them all in the help department. As a high school graduate at 18 years of age, he become my youngest Table Host at our assimilation events, volunteering for the job so that he could include other teens and young adults in our connection environment. He wanted to see all of them get plugged into a small group and a ministry team. He knew what happened in his life when he was allowed to serve in the ministry for guests I was hosting at the time (I can’t even say invited….it was his idea) and he wanted all his friends to have that same opportunity.

There was no task too small for Nathan. If it would help you or the ministry to get it done, he was your man. Half the time you didn’t even need to ask-he just did it and was happy to. Nathan easily became a go to person for our Jr High and Kidside ministries. He even learned how to play the guitar and lead worship when we were short on worship leaders in Jr high for a time. You could not pay me to learn an instrument and stand on stage in front of everyone and sing to fill a need like that.

Nathan didn’t need to be paid. It energized him just to help.

How do these awesome people see the world? Twos on the Enneagram see their environments as a potentially fearful unloving place, fraught with the possibility of relational loss or emotional chaos. Twos see themselves as the Helper, the ones who can create relational stability, emotional equilibrium, and order where they may be a sense of chaos.

Helpers like these are highly motivated to change the spiritual and relational temperature of any room they find themselves in through serving others, making other people feel noticed and secure. They look into your eyes to discern if you are “OK” and if your not, they make it their personal mission to make sure you will be. At least they want you to feel that way.

What Twos inwardly struggle with is the desire for someone to do that for them. They secretly want others to love them in the same way they are showing love to others. When that doesn’t happen, they may get withdrawn, introspective, or pull away. They could also get demanding and a little vindictive. It just isn’t right in the mind of a two to give so wholeheartedly and have it continually go unreturned, taken for granted, or to then be taken advantage of by self absorbed people.

This is just a thumbnail sketch of a Two. By this description, many of you reading may emotionally relate to the Helper profile or see your own commitment to serving and helping others and say to yourself, “Hey, I’m a Two!”. But don’t be so fast: Twos are the number one false diagnosis among Christians and among women when it comes to the Enneagram. For obvious reasons, Christians and woman are trained by most churches and sometimes our culture at large to be servants and to be helpful. That doesn’t mean you are a Two. A Two’s knee jerk response to life is to help. It is their default.

That’s why Twos experience your church as a “Partner”.

How Two’s see your church

As Twos. Helpers see a community of Christ followers as potential partners for the task of helping. In other words, they see someone with a need (physical, emotional or spiritual) and the church is their para-helper (think the role of the Holy Spirit) to meet those needs. They are happy to do all they can, run point, ask and network but the church becomes a resource or environment where needs get met and help gets received. A church without a heart to help is no church for them or for their friends. A church that has the heart to help? A Two will invite someone every weekend to that place.

Do’s and Don’ts for connecting a Type Two

Do: Wow their guest.

A guest who is a Two rarely comes alone. They bring with them people who need God in their lives, help or hope of some kind. When they do, they need to know that those guest will be overwhelmed by the helpful heart of your church. Twos need to know that your church doesn’t just see them, but they see any person they would bring through its doors. When that happens, your church is fertile ground to connect not just a two, but they entire relational network of people they want to help.

Don’t: Take advantage of them

Since Twos are Helpers, they could be taken advantage of by unhealthy or clueless ministry leaders or even just needy “church folk”. The most horrible thing you can do to a Two is to not see and value them for who they are by just seeing them as a means to an end. When that happens, a Two will lose respect for you and possibly your entire church and you will not be able to connect them at all. Their difficulty in saying no to anyone can make them easy prey for the selfish or narcissistic. A church culture with too many “takers” can burn a Two out quickly and lose their trust. You then ultimately lose them.

All of this points to their Superpower…

What is the “Superpower” of a Two on a volunteer team?

Their superpower as a volunteer is tirelessness. I have rarely seen the end of a Twos rope when it comes to their willingness to help someone. This means their place in your church’s ministry is on a team that helps people in some way, even if the help is directed at a ministry leader they respect enough to want to set up chairs or stuff bulletins, and the like. It just has to make someone happy in a way they can see and know they are appreciated for. When that happens Twos will…

show up anywhere

stay long afterward

tackle even the most menial or daunting task

fill in any gaps

thank you for the opportunity!

Their tirelessness will add drive, energy and consistency to your ministry if you are able to deliver on the “do” listed above and appreciate them along the way.

Bottom Line: Twos are worth the investment. They always yield a return. So if you need to figure out how to help people in financial need through a simple form and an easily identified contact person, do it. You will become the perfect partner for a Helper.

Nathan and Oliva….engaged!

If you need to grant health and support to your Recovery Ministry so that a Two knows where to take their friends in need of sobriety and freedom, then do it. Twos will meet them at the door and attend with them whether they themselves need recovery or not.

If you need to do a series on marriage or offer small groups on marriage to help people in marital difficulty, do it! Twos will invite every maritally challenged person they know and may even start a small group to better include them in the study.

Nathan grew up and later became my son’s roommate, an extended member of my family, and a Kidside staff member at our LaHabra campus. I also had the privilege of marrying he and his wife Olivia-a Biola graduate, also a staff member at our LaHabra campus, and a member of the focus group that served my research for this Enneagram Series (she is a Six). They are an awesome couple and they certainly take their place in the Pantheon of couples who keep the influence of Jesus spreading in their generation, in our community.

Why? Arguably because Nathan is a Two and he came from a mailer to visit our church one Sunday. So partner with the Nathans visiting your church right now. Help and wow the people they love with the Spirit of Jesus in you. You’ll be glad you did.

Is their a Two on your team? If not, bring one in and have them share what they love about your church and what their greatest concern about it is right now. It will be a clinic for learning the emotional landscape of any Twos visiting your church right now.

Name the place in your church a Two could take a friend who is:

Struggling with addiction

Needing financial help or temporary housing

Experiencing a marital crisis

Losing a loved one to a health issue

Needs a new circle of friends.

What are three ways that you can show appreciation to volunteers with a Two bent? What is a “tripwire” that would tell you if you crossed into the place where you would be taking advantage of someone with the Helper profile on the Enneagram?

Have the next post in this series delivered to your inbox.

Name *
Name

First Name

Last Name

Email *

Church Name

Church Website

Thank you!

Source: How a Type 2 on the Enneagram experiences your church and how to connect them

The post How a Type 2 on the Enneagram experiences your church and how to connect them appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: This weekend new guests will arrive at your church. Some will be visiting for the very first time, and they will want to know what your church looks like on a regular weekend. Church leaders who want to make a difference always look at how to make their church’s experience more compelling and engaging for new guests. Here are 21 things you can implement to make your church more first-time guest friendly:

Don’t Be Weird

As a general principle, please don’t be weird. Seriously, people coming to your church for the first time may be worried that it’s going to be strange and unfamiliar territory. They wonder if it’s going to connect with them and the life they are living today. Guests arrive at your church looking for people like them; they aren’t looking for people who are weird and strange but rather those they can connect with comfortably.

Clear Website

We all know that your church website is a critical communication piece for people deciding to check out your church. In fact, somewhere around 50% of new visitors will first visit your website to learn more about the church before attending. [ref] While it is important that your church website follows modern design approaches, it is even more critical that you consider the website from a first-time guest perspective. Ensure your website has everything they would need to facilitate their visit, including the following:

Easy to find address and service times
Access to past messages
Information on kids ministry
A sense of “what is important” to the church

“What to Expect” Content on Social Media

Your church can do a lot of different things on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and whatever other social media platforms you’re using. However, perhaps one of the best uses of these platforms is to provide a sense of “what to expect” for your first-time guests. Post lots of images from inside your environments so guests can see them in action. Use live video features of Sunday mornings to invite people to get in the car and join your church. Make highlight videos of your weekend experiences and share them. Think about these channels as a way to document and demonstrate what the life of the church looks like. (Check out what Road to Life Church in Northwest Indiana does with their weekly highlight videos on Facebook! So fun!)

Signage at the Road

First-time guests are likely very nervous when they drive up to your church. You can remove some of that fear by making sure that you have clear and compelling signage at the road in front of your church. Learn what the local bylaw limits are on temporary signage and go right up to those limits! Flags are a popular option for many churches because they might be categorized differently by your town, but they pack the same visual punch as other types of signs. “Sandwich board” signs are great tools to point people in the right direction in your parking lots. Even something as simple as branded safety cones give an added touch to indicate to first-time guests that you are ready for them.

Signage at the Doors

Count the number of doors on the outside of your church. Most leaders will be shocked by how many different ways people can get in and out of the building as we often think people only come in through one or two sets of doors. It needs to be super obvious where you’d like people to enter. If you have a door that’s better for families to arrive at then make that clear too. Think about this signage from multiple distances from the building. Is it obvious when they get out of their cars? What should it look like in order to direct the people who are 35 feet away? Is there something you can do for the people who are right at the door?

Decluttered Lobby

Entering the lobby needs to feel peaceful and inviting. Someone should be assigned the role of decluttering the space on a regular basis. It often seems like church lobbies can be magnets for all kinds of stuff over time, and we need to intentionally remove the visual and spatial noise to ensure that our guests can focus on their experience when they arrive. Be vigilant in removing anything and everything that isn’t 100% needed to help people throughout their visit. Be ruthless and even remove those extra plants and pieces of furniture that aren’t adding anything. Airports are a good benchmark to use with your team on how our lobbies should feel. A good airport is visually appealing, has great signage, and is designed to move people somewhere. Our lobby spaces should do the same!

Clear “Wayfinding” Signage Inside the Doors

A big part of our role when responding to first-time guests is to remove all the guesswork from their experience. Our job is to make it as simple as possible for them to experience what our church has to offer. Stand at the various entrances to your church and ask yourself how you could use signage to make it even easier for visitors to understand where to go. Too many churches are designed by looking at drawings, and we subconsciously assume people will be naturally drawn to where they should go next. This problem is exacerbated by architects who think their designs are inherently intuitive and put too much trust in subtle features like carpet colors and wall angles to move people along. As soon as people step into your building they should see clear and bold signage that answers four questions:

Where do I drop off my kids?
Where can I get a cup of coffee?
Where are the bathrooms?
Where is the service happening?

First-Time Guest Check-In at Kids Ministry

First-time guests who are also parents can be nervous leaving their children with your kids ministry team. In an age of “helicopter parents” you need to ensure that you go out of your way to make this entire experience as engaging and welcoming as possible. Your church no doubt has some sort of secure check-in process for kids ministry. At that location, it’s important to dedicate a team member to help first-time families through this process. Ensure this person is well trained and free to walk these guests through the drop off and answer any questions they may have. This person might not be busy the entire morning, but the moment a first-time family arrives they should jump into action and be ready to help.

“New Here?” Kiosk in the Lobby

Are guests a big enough deal to your church that you dedicate a space to them in your lobby? Have you ever noticed that first-time guests arrive earlier to your church than your average attender? What do those guests do when they arrive? If your church had a dedicated “New Here?” kiosk in the lobby hosted by some fantastic team members, they could start the connection process right away. During your service if you offer your guests a gift, then the natural place for them to pick it up would be this location. Too many churches lose the chance to connect with guests because it’s unclear where they should go after the service to pick up this gift. A dedicated “New Here?” kiosk provides a simple landing zone for guests and helps your volunteers prepare better than if they were at a general “information desk” fielding a wide variety of questions.

More Greeters and Ushers

Your church needs more team members dedicated to ensuring guests are finding their way. This means more than just “human signage”; greeters and ushers help to humanize the experience. They should be trained to guide people through their visit but also be keeping an eye out for people with that “I’m new here” look on their faces. When they encounter these guests, they need to leave their posts and help these people in whatever way they can. In order to do this, you need more greeters and ushers to backfill when these team members jump into helping new guests. Some churches designate specific members of this team to “swim the lobby” and look for people who might need a little extra care and connection. Either way, this team can’t be staffed at a minimum level and provide the sort of service that prioritizes first-time guests.

Sparkling Bathrooms

Bathrooms are a big deal. I’m convinced that guests make a lot of assumptions about your church based on your bathrooms. They need to be clean and in good working order; additionally, having a team member wipe down the counters multiple times on a Sunday morning is a nice touch. If you are looking for a way to add an extra “pop” to your bathroom, you could add those convenience baskets full of supplies like hand lotion, mouthwash, and other helpful items. Think about that time you went into a restroom at a theater or restaurant and it literally “wowed” you. Is there any way to aim your amenities towards that standard? The bathrooms need to be more than just clean; they need to sparkle!

Team Members in T-Shirts

A part of helping people who are new to your church feel welcomed is to ensure that they know where to direct their questions. We ask team members to wear t-shirts because it allows our guests to identify those individuals who can answer their questions. Prevailing churches have been employing this tactic for a long time, and it really does help guests know who to connect with. The t-shirts need to be in a color and design that stand out and get the guests’ attention. The goal of these shirts isn’t that your volunteers will wear them in other contexts but rather should stem from the intention to help your guests!

Put Away the “Backstage” Stuff

When you have guests over to your home you tidy up and put stuff away. You close the garage door because nobody wants to see the lawn mower and fertilizer when they first arrive. In our house, we put away the blender that normally sits on the kitchen counter because it doesn’t quite match the look we’re going for in that room. The same principle should be true at your church on the weekends. Look around your space and make sure you put away things that just don’t need to be out in the open. There’s no need to have that vacuum sitting out over there in the corner. That stack of chairs that gets used on Wednesday should find another home. We don’t need people to see into the utility closet where the HVAC system is humming along. All of those supplies that help prepare our spaces should be out of sight every weekend.

Calming People in Kids Ministry Area

Kids ministry can be a high energy, exciting aspect of our church. We need to have a lot of over-the-top, fun leaders that infuse these programs with lots of energy. However, this area can sometimes be overwhelming for people who are new to the church. Beyond that first moment when people are guided through the check-in process, it’s helpful to have team members roam the halls of our kids ministry areas during critical check-in and check-out times looking for parents to reassure. Lots of new parents struggle with leaving their kids and do the long, slow walk away while looking back. This is perfectly normal and understandable! Inviting churches will have leaders attuned to parents who are having a bit of trouble separating and will reach out to reassure them with a calm demeanor.

Unassuming Worship Leaders

Worship leaders who don’t assume that everyone in the room is on the same page are a gift to guests at your church. A worship leader that realizes that it’s not about the people in the first couple of rows but rather about engaging the guys who stand at the back sipping coffee is worth so much to your church. Worship leaders do this through knowing (and loving) their community, careful song selection, thoughtful verbal transitions, and a desire to constantly improve. It’s not about watering down the worship experience, but making it more broadly accessible to everyone in attendance.

Jargon Free Service

Language at our churches can be littered with confusing jargon if we’re not careful. Jargon, by definition, is a subtle social tool used in groups to define the boundaries of who is a part of the group. We need to go out of our way to explain exactly what we mean when we communicate. Our goal as leaders that want to create space for people in our churches is to break down these terms so that they are more inclusive. In fact, if you listen to those who excel at teaching churches filled with unchurched people, you’ll notice that a large portion of their time is spent on defining terms. Find the jargon in your midst and root it out! Here are a few terms to start working on removing or at least explaining to people when or if you do use them:

The Lord is working in my heart.
During my quiet time…
…a lost sheep, straying from the fold.
We will have a time of communion and fellowship…
…hedge of protection…
Let me share my testimony with you.
I’d like to share one of the burdens on my heart.
Do you know where you’re going to spend eternity?
Lord willing…

Clear Acknowledgement of Guests from the Stage

Going back to the example of guests visiting your house, can you imagine how weird it would be at Thanksgiving dinner if your large extended family had three to four guests with you and you never stopped to acknowledge them? In fact, imagine if everyone just spoke to them like they were always with your family for dinner all the time. By the end of the meal your guests would be totally creeped out by the fact that no one acknowledged that they were indeed visiting and were new to the family. When your church doesn’t go out of the way to acknowledge from the stage that there are guests attending it puts people in a strange spot. They are left wondering if the church never gets guests or, even worse, that maybe the church doesn’t want guests! A simple message of welcome paired with a clear “next step” is an important piece of the puzzle. Regular attendees might feel weird that you are calling out to guests every week, but you need to push through this resistance and keep acknowledging them!

Invitation to a Clear “Next Step”

How do people get connected at your church? If people want to go beyond just “checking out” the church and get plugged into community, what steps do they need to take? Having a simple, obvious, and clear next step for your guests reassures them that not only do they have the opportunity to get connected further, but it also lets them know what steps to take in order to do so. If it’s unclear to our guests what they should do when they want to get plugged into community, then only a small fraction of them will take those steps. It’s up to us to make it clear for them!

Parking Lot Team

I was recently visiting a growing church on a Sunday morning. After one service, myself and a senior leader left one of their campuses and were en route to another location. We got stuck in the inevitable long line of cars leaving the parking lot that happens at so many churches. This leader commented to me that they’ve never seen this line up because they are always inside the church at that time of the morning. As we chatted while waiting, you could see the wheels turning in the leader’s head about launching a parking lot team. Most churches would benefit from a team of people in the parking lot to help facilitate guests as they arrive and leave. This added level of care reassures guests that we are expecting them and helps ease this process as much as possible. We know how important first and last impressions are on people who attend our churches, so let’s invest in launching teams that will help us craft those experiences well!

Faster and Friendlier Follow Up

Many churches ask for guest contact information in some form or another. Lots of churches ask for this information in exchange for a gift that costs the church money to acquire. Most of our churches have invested significantly into database infrastructures to store and access guest contact information. All of those investments are wasted if we don’t follow up with our guests when they visit with us. How quickly? You should be following up faster than you are now. If you wait until Tuesday to email people who came last weekend, I would recommend moving that follow up back to Sunday evening. We should also be pushing towards our follow up being friendly and engaging rather than mechanical and digital. Phone calls or hand-written notes always beat out emails. We live in a world where people don’t just throw around their contact information. When someone gives you their contact information they are making it clear that they expect you to be in contact. Exceed that expectation and help people get connected!

A Compelling Reason to Come Back Next Weekend

Guests journey through visiting your church with one question filtering everything they experience: Why should I return to this church? From the moment their car enters your parking lot until they leave for home, they are wondering if they would ever come back. A part of our job is to give people a reason to come back the following week. Whether it’s a plug about a juicy question the speaker is going to talk about next week or something fun happening in kids ministry the following Sunday, you need to lace the experience with reasons for people to come back. Ask your guests to return the next weekend and give them a reason to do so! Ensure that you weave hints throughout the morning as to what’s coming up to encourage them to visit your church again!

Download PDF Article

Source: 21 Easy Ways for Your Church to Be More First-Time Guest Friendly – unSeminary

The post 21 Easy Ways for Your Church to Be More First-Time Guest Friendly appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Patrick Bradley: You may need to find some temporary launch team members if you find yourself short a few hands as you gear up for the launch of your worship gatherings.

Building a Launch Team is hard work. Some planters get a head start through several families coming with them from a sending church. Some convince friends or family to move across country to the new community.

But whether you have a head start or not, you still have to recruit plenty more from the community. Believers and not-yet-believers both.

You need somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 40-50 adults on your launch team to fully staff weekly worship gatherings. The ‘new normal’ weekend experience with excellent music, quality children’s ministry, hot coffee hospitality, video projection, etc. creates a serious demand for volunteers.

With fewer than 40 workers, you won’t be able to fully staff the various ministries. Or worse, you’ll use every volunteer every Sunday to pull of the gatherings and burn them out quickly.

About a month from your launch of weekly worship gatherings, you need to have most of the 40+ adults on the team. Every planter puts in lots of prayer, time on the ground, and hard work. Even so, some planters I’ve supported over the years found themselves with no more than 30 workers about a month out. Finding another 10 committed launch team members in the last few weeks is unusual. And it’s certainly not enough time for them to fully catch the vision and get adequate training in their ministry area.

Barrelling ahead with only 30 yields predictable results: volunteer shortages and burnout. One alternative to postponing launch is finding…

Temporary Launch Team Members

I’ve heard them called lots of things over the years:

short-term missionaries
scaffolding
SWAT Team (servants willing and temporary)

The basic idea is that you approach other churches in your region. The temporary launch team members commit to a fixed term, often 6 months, with the express understanding that they will return to the sending church at the end of their term. The sending church doesn’t feel threatened that you’re stealing anyone. And the workers don’t feel like they’re signing up for a life sentence.

Start with churches in your tribe or network. But God may very well have been preparing another congregation in your city and they’re just waiting to be asked. I’ve seen it.

You’d work with that church to provide already-trained workers for specific ministry roles, like:

playing in the band
teaching kids (make sure they’ve passed a background check)
ushering
hospitality

Though they come trained, you will need to brief them on your church plant’s mission and vision so that they can live it out while they’re with you. They also need a basic understanding of your church’s values, strategies and events calendar.

One question that you need to think through in advance is whether you’d be asking for their tithes, too. Work that out with the sending church. They may or may not be OK with the temporary launch team members transferring their giving for the 6 months.

Having them, especially for a fixed term, creates some stability and buys you time to grow your indigenous team.

But it’s not a viable solution for much more than 6 months. The workers will get tired, long for home or resent the situation. Your church will be addicted to the extra workers and hit crisis when they inevitably depart.

Instead, at the end of their term, find ways to celebrate their contribution and send them back with a blessing.

If you find yourself short of the number of launch team members you’ve been praying for, consider recruiting some temporary ones.

The post Do You Need Temporary Launch Team Members? appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Do You Need Temporary Launch Team Members?

The post Do You Need Temporary Launch Team Members? appeared first on Passion for Planting.