Evangelism Coach

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Last month, I posted an entry on Surveying 1st Time Visitors to help improve your church’s welcoming.

I contacted each church mentioned and discovered the effect of such an online survey was a zero.

One was a broken link.  The second seemed to have removed their form since I couldn’t find it on the website. 

The 3rd hasn’t used or promoted the form for a year or so, leaving only one of the four functioning.  In conversations with the webmaster, I learned that not too many people fill it out because there is no effective means of getting visitors to fill it out.

Survey of visitors seems  like a good idea, but  . . .   

The question is:

Why would they come back to fill it out? 

The people who wrote

Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church

have an answer. 

They actually use online visitor surveys and have been very successful in getting them completed.

Here is the key:

Visitors who leave an email address on the visitor card get an email on Monday (personalized) from the pastor who taught that week, with a link directly to the visitor website.

This begs the question — how do they get an email address from visitors?

That church uses a response card system, where everyone fills out a response card, not just the visitors.  When people enter the sanctuary, they receive a program (bulletin in church speak), a pen, and a response card.

At an appropriate time in the service, everyone, including members and regular attenders are invited to fill it out and place it in the offering basket.

The hospitality team processes  the cards and by Monday afternoon around 3, the first time visitors get the email from the pastor who taught that Sunday.  In that email is a link to a short survey and they have found a pretty good click thru rate.

Order your copy of Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church to see their actual response card (I couldn’t find a reproducible one on line).

Let me ask you this:

What do you do to make contact with visitors that come to your church?

I found this interesting article on line about surveying first time visitors who visit your church for the first time. 

The basic premise is put a survey form on your church’s website, ask first time visitors to go there and rate/comment on the service.

The article goes on to comment about such a survey and why it might be a useful addition to your web page.

Questions about a guest’s experience at the church can inform you about your facilities, your staff and members, the efficacy of your ministries, and what worship looks and feels like to new people. Many churches break these questions into categories of hospitality, worship, teaching, music, etc., to better identify what exactly did or did not resonate with guests.

How do they get the information?

What the article doesn’t address is the response rate. 

• Do first time visitors fill it out? 
• How are visitors invited to fill out the web response form? 
• Is there a notice in the bulletin? 
• Some kind of response card they go home with? 
• Maybe an email from the pastor if they left an email address on the visitor card?

I’ve sent an email to each of the churches to ask these questions.

There are samples from four church web sites:

• Kailua Baptist
• New Life Fellowship
• Valley Family Church
• Crossroads Community Church (broken link)

A review of first time visitor surveys

Kailua Baptist is short.  It uses both check boxes for yes/no questions, and a comment field for any extended comments.  Simple.  Easy to complete.

New Life Fellowship has a simple one that is little harder to read (the colors don’t work for me — I find that I have to squint to read the print.  The Red asterisks on a green background is awful for a color challenged person like me.)  While it has 11 numbered questions, some of them have additional parts. 

Valley Family Church has a more lengthy survey (several wheel scrolls of the mouse to reach the bottom.  It is a more readable form in terms of its color scheme.  But the 0/14 status indicator suggest 14 long pages if information might be requested of me. 

The last one had a broken link, so I can’t visit, but the color combinations on their website made for difficult reading and unsettling color contrasts.

(Image Source: Jnuemaker)

Let me ask you this?

Beyond the information on a visitor card, what does your church do to collect "experience" data from your visitors, particularly those who may not return?

Feel free to share your comments below.

Evangelism Committee

Sometimes the question is asked of me

• “how to start an evangelism committee?” or
• “what does a committee do?” or
• “where does a committee start?”

There can be evangelism committees at a judicatory level (such as the Presbytery) or at the local church level.

Evangelism Committees: Judicatory Level

I have served on the evangelism committee for several years, and have been the moderator of it.

We saw our role as helping the local church with their evangelism efforts.  We’d sponsor Evangelism Training conferences and workshops about evangelism, we’d talk with churches that are doing successful outreach, we’d help serve as a network of information about what is working and where.

Things we did:

• Sponsored Evangelism Training workshops by nationally recognized experts.
• Connected presenters with various Evangelism Training workshops on evangelism methods.
• Organized conferences about evangelism and all the various breakouts.

Evangelism Committees: Local Church Level

In my work, I have met with several committees as a consultant to help them think through what they might want to do.  I’ve seen evangelism committees who’s purposes were

• new visitor follow up.
• doing the servant ministries like food pantry or homeless shelters.
• training on the welcoming of visitors.

I have not personally encountered an evangelism committee at the local church that actually does evangelism through sharing their faith as part of their purpose.  I’m sure they exist, I’ve just not run into it. 

Is the evangelism committee simply a hospitality committee?  Surely hospitality is a vital function of church life (thus all the articles here on welcoming visitors).  Yet, it’s not evangelism.

So what can a local church evangelism committee do?

I suggest the following, perhaps you have ones to add:

• Get familiar with books on evangelism.
• Find an evangelism program that fits with your Church’s DNA and implement it (Just Walk Across the Room Video Curriculum, Alpha).
• Gather testimonies of recent stories and share them in the newsletter
• Be the champion for evangelism themes in sermons and small groups.
• Pray for the evangelistic work of your congregation (do you actually pray in your committee, more than open a meeting with prayer?)
• Help shape outreach events, and remind the congregation that such events are meant for bring a friend type stuff.
• Get creative — think how your church can have a local impact.
• Organize a local Evangelism Training Seminar for your church or area.  We can do those for you.  See our various options at our Evangelism Training page. 

There are lots of ways a church evangelism committee can do more than just sit around and drink coffee and remember how it used to be in the old days.

Let me ask you this?

Does your church have an evangelism committee? 

What does it do? 

I invite you to share your comments here.