By NewChurches.com: In Episode 559 of the NewChurches Q&A Podcast, Daniel and Ed discuss an outline for a sermon series on church planting

“If you had four Sundays at the very beginning of the year in January, what are four big things you would talk about to begin the visioning process to a group of people about church planting?”

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

What the Bible says about church planting
How you can tie in your church history

 Shareable Quotes (#NewChurches):

“Part of the challenge is there really is no church planting series of verses.” – @edstetzer
“Church planting is so present and evident, the Bible doesn’t describe it because that is literally what they are doing.” – @edestetzer
“If you want to be a good interpreter of the Bible, what you want to ask is what did the original hearers do with the original information, and upon receiving the four commissions of Jesus the disciples went out and planted churches.” – @edstetzer
“What is our coherent approach to church planting that we should take?” – @edstetzer
“Look to the history of your church.” – @danielsangi
“Look at the missionary journeys of Paul.” – @danielsangi

Recommended Resources:

Read Planting Reproducing Churches by Elmer Towns

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The post Episode 559: Preaching on Church Planting appeared first on NewChurches.com – Church Planting, Multisite, and Multiplication.

Source: Episode 559: Preaching on Church Planting

The post Episode 559: Preaching on Church Planting appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: We live in a digital age, so why are we bothering to talk about paper invitations?

Can these little cards that announce upcoming series at your church still be an effective tool in the here and now?

Haven’t we moved beyond mass broadcasting to use platforms like Facebook to get in contact with people who might want to come to our church?

Despite the drive of the digital world, invite cards continue to be a core tool used by prevailing churches to encourage people to invite others to church. When I travel to large and growing churches, I regularly see invite cards as a central part of the communication process. There are really two important groups that invite cards motivate when it comes to seeing new people come to your church: first-time guests and those who currently attend your church.

There’s something different about handing people a tangible item in a largely digital world and saying, “Please pass these on to your friends and ask them to come to our church.” These cards end up in cars and on kitchen counters where they serve as an effective reminder to people to invite their friends to church. Even if the physical cards don’t make it into the hands of their friends, they help encourage those attending your church to invite their friends. A best practice is to hand these cards out in bundles of two or three so that people can invite two or three guests. In a very real way, this strategy is so old-school that it has a new-school ring to it, as it pushes beyond our digital landscape and ultimately encourages face-to-face interactions.

…

Source: 5 Best Practices For Using Invite Cards At Your Church – unSeminary

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by Rich Birch: Churches will often organize their Sunday morning content into series. In the simplest terms, a series is a collection of organized ideas and content that is easy for people to understand and share with their friends. As I discuss in my book, Church Growth Flywheel, leveraging the shift from series to series is a great opportunity for churches to grow.

Great titles are the key to making your series stickier. We all know that we judge books by their cover and their title, and the same is true with a message series. A good title both has the opportunity to grab people’s attention and makes it easy for them to invite others to listen in as well.

So, how do you create a compelling series title?

Lead with a Conversational Hook

When you develop a title, imagine your people talking to their friends about the series. Make the title conversational, as in the kind of thing that people would actually say in a conversation. I often think about what would happen if I were at the gym talking to a friend—could I actually say the title of the series and capture their interest in what our church is talking about? Lead with this conversational hook.

Use the tool below to measure how conversational your series titles are.

Finish the following sentence:

“You should come to my church this weekend because we’re talking about _____________. “

If you can’t finish that sentence eloquently, then maybe the conversational tone isn’t there for that particular title.

We use series for teaching because we want to make our content understandable and memorable so it’s easy for our people to then share it with their friends. Starting with a naturally conversational title is a core element for enabling content sharing.

Here are some examples of conversational titles for upcoming series:

Raising Sane Kids in a Crazy World
A New Year and a New You
Finding Peace at Work
At the Movies: Lessons from Today’s Movies and the Bible

Each one of those titles could slip into a conversation between your people and their friends. The key is to consider the following: What it is that people actually discuss on a regular basis? How can you position your series around those topics?

Use Contrast to Spark Intrigue

When I was a kid, my mom would microwave strawberries and we’d put them on top of ice cream. The taste combination of the warm strawberries and the cool, sweet ice cream was hard to resist.

This response of intrigue tends to happen when we see two unalike ideas together. The human mind is a pattern recognition machine, so when you combine two different ideas the mind is naturally interested in learning more.

Contrast is a powerful communication tool that you should try to use in your titles from time to time.

Here are some examples of series titles that leverage contrast:

Ancient Truth for a Modern World
How to Be an Everyday Hero
Living a Vitally Simple Life
Slow Down to Speed Up

Each one of those titles attempts to combine ideas that don’t normally go together. The contrast draws the reader in and begs them to look for more information. They’re intriguing.

Be Google-friendly

Churches are content creation machines. Every week you generate a tremendous amount of material that ends up online including weekend messages and notes, posts, and social media content.

People want to be able to find the series and share what they are learning, so make sure that you consider the searchability on Google and other search engines when you title your series. Sometimes I see churches use super creative titles that are not relevant to what they’re talking about, which ultimately hinders the church’s ability to leverage their content.

Make sure the titles are easy to understand and contain key words pertaining to your content.

Here are some search engine friendly titles for series:

Relationship Goals
Fast Four Weeks to a Deeper Christian Life
Jesus by John: A Look at What the Beloved Disciple Had to Say
End Times: Bible Prophecy and Your Future.

Each of those titles contains common keywords that people will use to search either your website or the broader internet to find material relevant to various aspects of their lives.

Another way to approach searchability is through the effective use of subtitles. Often, churches will have a creative title along with an 8 to 12 word subtitle. However, proceed with caution; don’t rely on this tactic to explain your series. Ensuring that the core series title is something a search engine can find also makes it easier for your people to share, so make the topic evident in the main title from the get-go.

Review Titles of Best-sellers

Strolling through a large bookstore or spending some time on Amazon can be great places to gather inspiration for upcoming series. These locales can provide you with ideas that you can generate into a title for a series coming up at your church. After all, publishers have already put book titles through evaluation by editors and audiences. Be careful to not use a direct book title for a series unless you are going to use it as a jumping off point for the series; you may confuse people who are reading or have read that book about what your series is about.

Using Amazon or a bookstore as a research tool can be particularly effective when you are looking for content that will have a broad appeal to people throughout your community. Amazon categorizes the various types and genres of books and shows you which books are the best-selling, so you can narrow down to those titles and covers that seem to be resonating most with the culture. Oftentimes, book covers contain images that reinforce the core messages of the book. This can also be an effective place to find design ideas for graphics and supporting materials for a series.

Test and Test Again!

Asking a few friends and colleagues about upcoming series titles is a good practice; however, you can go even further by instituting a process for testing titles and other content on a regular basis. It’s amazing how much information you can garner from simply sending out a small survey to people. Use a tool like Google Forms to create a simple questionnaire that asks people what questions they might have about a certain topic. By reviewing the completed surveys, you’ll likely find patterns in the words of the responses. Using those common words in your titles will draw your audience in.

Additionally, you could have a small group of creative folks at your church give you feedback on titles you are considering. Usually, a smaller group of trusted creative people provides better feedback since these folks know exactly what will resonate—and what has resonated—at the church. An evening of working together in a boardroom with some post-it notes can generate tons of ideas for upcoming series, talks, and messages that you could develop later on as you roll out content.

Getting feedback from people after a series is another a strategic way to pick up information for future series. When you ask people to fill out a small survey about a previous series, one question you can ask is, “What ideas or questions were left unanswered in this series that we should cover again in the future?” Feedback is a treasure trove of content ideas that you can leverage in the future at your church.

Every time you start a new series, it’s an opportunity for you and your people to invite new friends and families to church. You can leverage series promotion as a way to grow your church rather than relying solely on holiday services. If you want to learn more, go to www.ChurchGrowthFlywheel.com.

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Source: 5 Tips to Make Series Titles at Your Church More Sticky – unSeminary

The post 5 Tips to Make Series Titles at Your Church More Sticky appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Rich Birch: Church growth is more of a flywheel than a cannon shot. It requires consistent energy applied in the same direction over time to see results. It doesn’t happen overnight but as you gain traction the small wins start to add up and something truly amazing happens.

A year ago, the church I worked in was named one of the fastest-growing churches in the country by Outreach Magazine [ref]. As I reflected on this, I tried to dissect our strategies and what made us different from other churches. I wondered what it was that seemed to make a difference and enable our growth. I became convinced that our consistent focus on series promotion was part of the equation. For over 30 series in a row (that’s nearly three years), we would do the same thing to promote every new series. And although we’d mix up the content to ensure the approach didn’t get stale, we always applied the same core elements every time we did something new.

If you’re looking for ways to jumpstart your church’s growth and help you launch a new series, repeat these same elements every time you launch a new series at your church. The goal is to build excitement for the new series and encourage your people to bring as many friends and family members as they please. Staying focused on repeating these eight every series is a part of the discipline that will add energy to your church growth flywheel!

Heads Up Announcement – Two Weeks Before // As you near the end of the series that you are currently on, take some time to telegraph what’s coming up next. Doing this helps your people know what to anticipate next in the life of the church. It could also serve as an incentive to persevere to people who might not be raving fans of the current series. Momentum is generated in all organizations by “new” things. Our minds are hardwired to see the new and novel and be attracted to it. By articulating what is “new and exciting” in the life of your church, you can start generating positive momentum. Momentum is first an idea in your people’s minds before it translates in tangible impact. This announcement should be anticipation-inducing and explain the core “hook” for the series. A positively toned announcement on a slide with the start date and core “look” of the series would be a great start for your church!
Trailer Video – One Week Before // The week before the series launches is critical for your people. During the service, play a short trailer (45-60 seconds) that sets up the tension of the series. This video is designed to entice its viewers to want to learn more and to invite their friends to the series. Oftentimes, you’ll notice churches use questions in these trailers because it is a simple way to frame the series. A video trailer is an important communication tool because it breaks up the format of a “talking head” doing announcements and grabs peoples’ attention. This video should also be shared on your social media channels during the week after it’s played. (Bonus: email core “insiders” and invite them to share the video online so it spreads more on other channels.) Two-thirds of your church are visual learners so the stretch of communicating what is coming up through a highly visual form, like a trailer, is important to consider. If you are looking for ideas for trailers, New Spring, Elevation & Life.Church all give away their video trailers (and more) from their series.
Invite Card Packs – One Week Before // Invite cards continue to be a relevant tool even in an age of ever-increasing digital communication. These physical cards are inexpensive to produce and provide a tangible reminder to your people to invite their friends. There should be enough information on the card so it stands alone as a communication tool. The series information, as well as the dates, times and location, need to be clear on the card. In the text, ensure that the card actually invites people to attend. (You’d be surprised how people from outside church don’t know if they are actually welcome to attend your church). Work with your guest services team to ensure that these end up in the hands of as many people as possible. You could place them on every seat in the auditorium so people have to pick them up and look at them when they sit down. Another potential distribution idea is to have a team of people stand at your exits and hand them out to people as they leave. However, don’t just hand these cards out one at a time; package them into packs of 2-3 with a rubberband around them. The implicit message is that you hope your people will invite more than one friend or family member to the series’ launch.
Pastoral Moment – One Week Before // As you head into the week before the series, it is important for your people to hear the pastoral heart behind inviting people to come to the new series. This isn’t another “announcement” about the “dates, facts and figures” of the series. It is a moment to slow down and impress upon people how important it is to invite people to what’s coming up next. Explain why your church is heading in this new direction, take the time to tell them who you are inviting, and ask them to join you in inviting people to come the following week. The tenor of this time is showing the congregation how being an “inviter” is a part of their Christian faith. It also gives a clear indication to your people that the topic you’re transitioning into has some weight and is worth them investing the time to be a part of. Show some passion for the “new” topic!
Social Shareables – Week Before // We all know that social media can have a profound impact on how our ministries communicate with people. Don’t miss the opportunity to ask your people to share some content online before a series launches. The goal here is to not post something that simply “advertises” the series but rather something that has content your people would actually be willing to share. The primary goal is “shareability” and the secondary goal is that people are informed about the new series. The trailer for the series is a “must share” piece of the puzzle but you should also experiment with other content types. Over time some forms of content get more shares than others so keep an eye out for what seems to be “trending” in the networks you follow.
Team Huddles – Week Before // Your volunteers represent an important audience in and of themselves; ensure that they are well-primed to invite friends. Because they are disproportionately committed to the vision of the church as volunteers, you need to make sure you ask them directly to invite friends the following week. We often overlook this group because we think they will just catch the messaging from the rest of the “general pipelines” that you’re talking about it in. This is a missed opportunity because the group wants to feel in on the development of the church and will be more receptive to your inquiries to invite people. This could take the form of the lead pastor holding a special “all team huddle” the week before a new series launches or simply a “cascade of information” through the leadership structure of the church. The important thing is that this group gets a special request to pray for and invites friends to the upcoming series. There is just a small percentage of people who actually invite friends and these people are usually also volunteers. Thus, make sure to address this group directly.
Direct “Ask to Ask” Email – Thursday Before // Most people who make the decision to attend your church this weekend for the first time will do it the last three or four days before the service. The prime inviting time is Thursday through Saturday because most guests that will choose to come to your church during that period. A strategically placed reminder from the church on the Thursday before is a something you should do every time you launch a new series. This multifaceted email should highlight the social media that seems to be getting the best traction as well as provide some simple tools people can put into play right away for inviting their friends and family. This email should be focused on “tools” to help equip your people to invite their friends. Assume that they’ve lost the invite card and can’t remember what the series is about and provide them everything they need to learn about the series to invite their friends.
“Starts Tomorrow!” Email – Saturday Before // We’ve referenced this in the past but emails from the church on Saturday do help drive attendance. As opposed to the Thursday email, this one does better coming from the Lead Pastor, or the Campus Pastor if you’re a multisite church. The tone of this email is a last-minute request for people to attend the following day and to invite friends to come with them. The aim is to build anticipation about what is happening the next day. It should be “underwritten”, that is direct and to the point and should not contain a lot of graphics and formatting. It should look as if it was sent out from the leader to people directly. Quick and to the point. It doesn’t need a lot of frills but is just a direct ask to attend the following day and to bring friends. You could link to a single sharable item like the trailer or social media post that has performed well over the week but don’t overdo it. The email is designed to get people’s attention as they are going about their day.

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Source: Do These 8 Steps When Your Church Launches a New Series

The post Do These 8 Steps When Your Church Launches a New Series appeared first on Passion for Planting.