Want to grow your church attendance by 20% this year?
I once coached a church that set that as their goal. Is it realistic?
Visitors are the key to growing your church.
Without keeping visitors, your church will not grow, nor will it replace the members who drop out, move, or die.
The key to keeping visitors is helping them decide to come back and connect with your congregation.
Assumptions
I’m assuming your church is
- healthy
- making disciples,
- helping people mature in their faith.
- helping people find some place to belong
- serving its community.
Those are all factors in growing your church. We also know that the church is a spiritual organization and there are lots of spiritual influences involved in the growth of a church. Today’s focus on numbers doesn’t take away from any of that.
The point here, is let’s do the math of growing your church by 20%.
This is where I wanted to help the church I coached see if this was a realistic number.
Do the math
20% is a huge growth rate, so let’s look at it using some of the commonly available statistics about church visitors.
Some of the statistics may have changed since they were published. This more of an example of the math involved.
For this example, current attendance is 100 people a week.
To grow your church 20%, you’ll want 120 by the end of the year.
1. How many second time visitors does a church keep?
An old statistic suggests that churches can keep 85% of second time visitors who come back the week immediately after their first visit.
To grow this congregation 20%, they will need to have 23 first time visitors come back immediately the 2nd week.
Question: What are you doing to help people decide to come back a second consecutive week?
2. How many people need to visit your church for the first time?
Another commonly quoted statistic is that churches only get 1 to 2 out of 10 visitors to come back a second week.
For this congregation of 100 to grow to 20%, they will need to have 115-230 first time visitors during the year.
Question: Is that an achievable number in 1 year?
If they can increase that percentage to 3 out of every 10, they only need 76 first time vistors to get 23 to come back for a second time.
See what happens if you can increase the number of 1st time visitors who come back for week 2?
Suggested areas of focus
Do the math for your congregation.
Question: What can you do increase the % of first time church visitors come back the second week?
In looking at the system of helping first time visitors connect with your congregation there are plenty of variables and places you can focus.
- Greeters
- Ushers
- Welcome process
- Quality of the service
- Getting contact information
- Followup contact after the first visit
- Easy connections to build relationships
Each area can be improved to help you increase the number of people who stay with your congregation.
Likewise, the level of impact that your preaching, education, children’s ministry, your church’s mission, and worship all come into play as well.
People will invest their time where they find growth, significance, and a place to serve.
Does your church provide that as a community?
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