Our family was the first time church visitor as a result of moving our home office to the state of Florida. We visited a few churches around our new little area of Port St. Lucie. Since we have no church going friends in this city, we are dependent upon advertisements and the internet to find a …
One consistent question on church hospitality processes that I receive is how to follow up on your first time church visitors. Questions like: What are good thank you gifts for church visitors? How often should we contact visitors after their first visit? How do we get church visitor contact information in order to follow up? …
Helping your church visitor become a regular attender is not rocket science. Church visitor assimilation is ultimately a matter of personal relationships and connections. But there are plenty of good strategies that churches have tried to help those connecting relationships form naturally. If you want to do some good reading on the subject, here are …
“I wish more church visitors would come back and get involved.” This is common lament I hear from church leaders. They might be leading small churches. They might be managing large churches. These leaders have put forth valiant efforts to improve their hospitality, increase their marketing, and even provide some programming that would attract new …
As Easter is not too far away, what are you doing to help your church visitors and invited guests to come back the following week? The following article is from a friend of this ministry, Gary Rohrmayer, who writes at YourJourneyBlog. Read on for what Gary shares. To read the development of each of the subpoints, visit …
Our family experienced a temporary life transition that involved us moving to another state in the US for a period of four months. We left our work, our church that we are planting, our friends and support networks. During this temporary time, we chose a local church in the community we lived in. We chose …
Over at http://www.ChurchHospitalityTraining.com, I’ve released video Number 3. In today’s video, I address one of the biggest barriers that churches put up to visitors who do come back for several weeks in a row. I once attended a local fellowship for nearly 6 months and still had no friends. It was a fellowship with about 100 …
Today’s guest article comes via George Bullard’s website at Bullard Journal. Below are excerpts from the article called “Why do People Leave Churches.” George Bullard of The Columbia Partnership, a Columbia, S.C.-based organization that helps churches pursue and sustain vital ministry, said churches face an “assimilation challenge” in the first year after new people begin …
Want to grow your church attendance by 20% this year? I once coached a church that set 20% as their goal. Is 20% growth a realistic? Visitors are the key to growing your church. Without keeping your first time church visitors, your church will not grow. Likewise, you will not replace the members who drop out, move to …
I finished reading Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church. This book is sure to be on the top of the list for Church Visitor Assimilation texts. Comparing a Ferrari to a Pinto Note: I read Beyond the First Visit: The Complete Guide to Connecting Guests to Your Church, Gary McIntosh (see …
What kind of impression do visitors get when they come into your church for the first time? Every church thinks it’s friendly. I and many others have experienced the fear factor of walking into an unknown place and knowing immediately that we don’t fit and are not really welcome to remain. During my last book …
Last month, I posted an entry on Surveying 1st Time Church Visitors to help improve your church’s welcoming. I contacted each church mentioned and discovered the effect of such an online first time visitor survey was a zero. One church visitor survey was a broken link. The second church visitor survey for first time visitors …
Update: Read my review here: Fusion Visitor Assimilation. I think this is the best assimilation book available right now. I’ve not read Sticky Church, but that is next on the list. A new book has been released about turning Visitors into Members, also known as church visitor assimilation. Fusion: Turning First-Time Guests into Fully-Engaged Members …
Outreach’s website reports in “Coming Home – Outreach & Evangelism (link broken)” some statistics about why people leave churches and what churches can do to reach back out. Why people drop out of church The Number One reason people drop out of church is a change in life situation (almost 60%). I think of the …
