Is your church growing?

A pastor friend of mine mentioned a book she was reading “Go Big lead your church to explosive growth” by Bill Easum and Bil Cornelius.  This is one of the best books on church growth I have ever read.

Have you ever thought about how fast the early church was growing? It went from 120 members to 20,000 in one year and it was just getting warmed up the first year because greater things happened after that.

What was the reason for this amazing growth? They caught Jesus’ vision.   In Mark 16:15 it says: And then he told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”

The early church embraced this vision and as a result experienced crazy growth. There were no evangelism committees, no church growth studies, not even a committee to study future church needs. The early church only had people who caught the vision, who saw the mission field as the entire world and who believed that with God’s help they would reach the world.

Does this same vision and passion exist in your church? The church I attend spends 97% of it’s time and resources internally and I think that is true with most churches. Maybe it’s time we regained the same passion the early church had for reaching out.

In Mark 16:15 Jesus commanded us to: “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.”  When the early church obeyed this commandment the results were “  And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”  Act 2:47

Seven reasons your church should be on Facebook

Facebook has become a very popular place for over 350 million users.  Many of your church members and visitors are there and you should be too. Where else are you going to find so many people ready and willing to connect with your church?  Here are the top seven reasons you should be on facebook.

1. Your facebook fan page is picked up by the search engines within days. This means that anything that you post will be listed by the search engines.  How awesome!  Nothing like having Google help tell people about your upcoming Vacation Bible School and they don’t charge you a penny.  A search of a couple churches and non profits I am involved in found their facebook pages in the top ten listings.

2. You can reach a lot of people you would never normally reach.  Let’s look at some numbers first.  If you have one hundred members on facebook and they have 100 friends each you potentially can reach 10,000 people (100 x 100).  You members can also repost the information which means that it is posted on all of their friends walls where each of their friends, friends can potentially read it.   Will everyone read the post?  No but some will and they will go to your church’s page and join.   You now have the ability to start engaging with each new member.

3. Facebook is an effective way to advertise.  Suppose you are starting a young single adults group and you want  to reach outside your church.  Facebook is a very effective way to do this.  Since Facebook collects age, location, marital status, interests as well as a number of other statistics you can be very specific on who you are wanting to reach.  You can  have the ad be shown only to people who are single, in your age group, and location.

4. There is no limit to the number of friends that can join your Facebook.  Personal and group pages are limited to 5,000 friends.  That is why it is important to write consistent good quality posts.  If you do this regularly you’ll find your page adding fans every day.

5. You can engage with your members and visitors better using Facebook than any other social media site.  There are a number of reasons. First since Facebook has 350 million members, more of your members will already be there on a regular basis. Second Facebook has a number of tools that help you connect including: posts, discussions, photos of events, and the ability to tag members, videos and contests.  With Facebook you can convey the spirit of your church.

6. Facebook allows members to communicate with each other. If people have prayer requests you can post them on your  page or you can post questions that get discussion going.  This could include questions about the sermon, or anything else you want to discuss.

7. It is a great way to spread the word about an event that is taking place at your church.  All of the people on your page will see the event and they can repost it to their friends, so within minutes you can get the word out about an event to thousands of people for free.

How to create a Facebook fan page

Creating a Facebook fan page for your church is pretty easy.

Facebook Fan Page

Facebook allows your church to connect with members and visitors.  You can post your events, upload photos and videos, list new classes and engage in conversations.

First you have to have a personal account set up.  Once that is set up click on this link and you will be taken to the Facebook page to start the set up process.  Name the fan page.  If available give it your church name, then select religious organization.  Congratulations you now have a fan club.  Next you’ll want to start putting in content.

Fan clubs

Now you are ready to set up the pages.  The Wall should be the first tab to set up.  Click on the settings and allow fans to post photos, videos, links and comments.  If you get your church members involved this page will become an important element in reaching out to your community.  Posts, pictures, videos that church members put up will show on their pages giving additional exposure to events going on at the church.

The next tab is the info page where you can put in your website, mission and other information.

There are two other standard tabs, photos and discussions.  Next to that is a plus sign which will give you other options.  The ones you will want to select are video and calendar.  This will allow you to post all events that are going on at the church and also videos.

Now publish it and you are ready to start inviting members to join.  Once you get 25 members you can request a custom URL.  It would look like the following:  www.facebook.com/YourChurchName.  This will make it easy for people to find your church.

Using Facebook to connect with your community

Facebook has now passed 350 million users. That means there are probably thousands of people in your community on Facebook. If you want to reach out Facebook has become a great way to connect.

There are a lot of advantages to Facebook but for this post I’m only going to be discussing how your church can use it to connect with the community.

There are three types of pages: individual, group, and Fan Club pages. Most experts that I read recommend that you set up a Fan Club. I’ve included a link on how to set up a page.

Once you have the account set up you have two things left:

• Get members

• Write content that is relevant to your prospective audience

To get members start with your current church members and ask them to spread the word through their friends. If you have 100 members and they average 200 friends then you can potentially reach 20,000 people. If  ten percent  find your content relevant and recommend you to their friends: 2,000 people with 200 friends each = 400,000 people. You can see how this has the potential to grow.

The next question is what to write about?  To answer that we have to remember what our goal is: to reach out and connect with your community.  Two types of message work best.  The first is updates about what is going on at the church: Christmas events, Children’s events, special services, new Bible study, etc.  The second message is a devotion or inspirational message.    Between these two types of messages you will let people know about what is going on at the church and also start reaching them on a deeper level.  Make sure you allow your personality to come through.  People want to connect with people they like.

Another question that is often asked is how often to post?  The answer depends on the size of your church and the number of other people who can log in and post.  If you post to much people will get tired of hearing from you and to little and they’ll not remember who you are.  It seems to me that one to seven times a week is enough to build relationships.  You can either post on your wall or send an email out to everyone.  Devotions are probably better sent by email, but shorter ones can be posted on your wall.

Consider doing something special for Christmas, Lent or other major events.  Again make sure you ask members to repost the messages.

If you do this you should find your Facebook group and your church growing.

Warning to Baptists: Turn or burn

I’m reposting part of an article by Olivia St. John first published by the World Net Daily.

The church is in crisis.  Outgoing president Rev. Frank Page estimates that only half of Southern Baptist churches will still exist two decades from now.  The decline appears to be particularly acute among young people in the church.  In 2005, 55 percent of Southern Baptist churches baptized no youths, according to Ed Stetzer with the North American Mission Board.

“They are discovering, as other traditional denominations are, that their future is tied to reaching younger people and more diverse people,” said professor Lovett H. Weems Jr. at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Ed Gamble, Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools executive director, said, “our denomination grew at 1.2 percent last year, not even enough to match our birth rate.  Rick Hughes, Baptist State Convention of North Carolina senior consultant for discipleship, states, “We must face the fact that much of the American church is declining for a very biblical reason: We have failed to be and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The entire article can be read here. Olivia goes onto talk about the need for Christian parents to consider homeschooling or enrolling their children in a Christian school.  I agree with her conclusion but her article also talked about the need for the Church to reach out to their community.  Most mainline churches are not growing because they are not reaching out to their community.

The great commandment that Jesus gave us is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel.  That also includes the neighborhoods around your church.  Many churches are not growing because people don’t know they exist or what is going on inside and if they do they don’t feel welcome.   That is my passion.  I want to help your church grow and reach out.

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Stay in touch with your visitors

I hope you have begun to look at your events as one way to fulfill Jesus’ commission to go into all the world and preach the Good News.  If so you have taken an important step toward increasing attendance at your church.

So now what to do with this list? In business we’d say market to them. In the church we might call it something different but the idea is the same: create a plan to reach out with information that is relevant. The Gospel offers a number of very powerful benefits. How much would companies spend if their product could offer peace, love, joy and eternal life?

We then have two types of messages that we can send out. First is informational, what is going on at the church that they may be interested in: Christmas concerts, Easter Services, VBS, fall events, special programs, children’s events, and other special programs.

The second message is the benefits that become ours when we become a follower of Christ: Peace, joy, love, patience, everlasting life …

How is the best way to reach out? There are three options:

• Phone calls
• Mail
• Email

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Will discuss email in a later post.

I tend to recommend the use of the phone for announcements or informational gatherings. If they attended your VBS program they will most likely appreciate a phone call about your upcoming children’s events.

So how do you go about setting up a print program?

When developing a print campaign you have several options depending on the size of your church and the internal resources that are available to you. If you have someone who can write copy, a graphic artist and a printer within your church then consider putting together your own campaigns. You should design the program for the entire year along with dates, even if you don’t have all the details yet. Most studies say you have to touch people seven times before they start to think about you so plan on reaching them that many times.

The best times to contact people is at Christmas, Easter, summer programs and fall events. Consider reaching out the other three times with a evangelistic message.

If you do not have access to a copywriter, graphic artist and printer consider one of the companies that are designing products aimed at helping churches reach their community.

There are two that I’m going to talk about. The first is Outreach. They are the largest and have thousands of messages premade in a variety of formats that you can run through your laser printer and add your message. Because they produce thousands of each item you can buy them at a very reasonable price. They also have print products that support many of the popular programs and Bible studies.

The second option is Memory Cross. I want you to know that I am involved with this company. Memory Cross is similar to Outreach except that it allows you to customize your message instantly online. (Outreach can create custom products but it is an offline process that takes a week)

There are two options. Let’s say you wanted to create a postcard to send out to people on your list. If you have access to someone who could write copy and a graphic artist have them create a PDF and you can upload that to our website.  If you can’t create a PDF we have a driver that you can download to your computer that will install a PDF driver.  To access it you’ll need to create an account and when you log in you will see the PDF driver on the left hand side.

Once you created the PDF then you choose the upload my artwork option from the Memory Cross site and then place your order.

If you don’t have someone to create the artwork then you can choose from one of the templates and add your images and copy. You will be able to see a proof instantly before you place an order.

The difference between Outreach and Memory Cross is outreach is generally less custom but less expensive when you are ordering quantities of 1,000 to 2,000.

Next post making use of email marketing.

How to use special events to bring in visitors

Does your church have special events during the year? Easter, Christmas, VBS, Sports camps, Fall Festivals, Trunk-or-Treat, bake sales, yard sales or consignment sales? All of those are great. They get visitors into your church, but what happens after the leave? Do you have any way to start connecting with them?

A little extra planning and you’ll be gathering up the names of people that you can continue to reach out to. When you plan the event, make sure you have some way to capture people’s name, address, phone number, email address and other relevant information such as what event you received their name from, whether they have kids, etc. (You might want to make the phone number optional. Many people don’t want to give out their phone number) You want to do this so that you can reach out to them with information about other events that may be of interest and with the Gospel message.

One of your goals of these events should be to take them from a visitor to a active follower of Jesus Christ. To start this process they need to feel a connection with your church and most people connect a little at a time.

So how do you get their information? The easiest way is to give them something in exchange. Some examples are:

• If you are having a Trunk-or-Treat event consider giving them a ticket for free hot dogs, chips and a drink. In order to receive the ticket ask them to fill out a card. You can do a variation on this for most events that you are having at the church. If it is a concert, ask for their contact information if they want to know more about upcoming events or even collect names for a free drawing during the event.
• For VBS, summer camps, and other similar events ask for the parents contact information when they sign their children up.
• If you have a preschool or after school program you would have another list of people you could reach out to.
• At our church we have a Fall Festival, Trunk-or-treat, Christmas bazaar, yard sales, consignment sales, VBS, Sports clinics just to name a few. If you plan it out all these events can be used to gather people’s names that you can then send them additional information.

Another idea is to give them information on your next upcoming event. If they are coming to your Trunk-or-Treat and your next big event is Christmas, hand out tickets to that event.

If you do this you’ll begin to gather up a list of names that you can reach out to. In the next post I’ll talk about ways the church can use this list to start connecting with its community.

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