Sharing Church Growth and Assimilation Ideas
After Service Hosts
Visitors determine the friendliness of a church in the first 10 minutes following the conclusion of the service. For this reason, we created an "after service host" program. We broke our sanctuary down into sections. Then we assigned people in our congregation to those sections. During the service, they looked around their section for people that they did not know or had not met. Once the service was over, they bee lined to those people and made sure to meet them and get to know them a little. This was very effective and made visitors feel at ease. The beginning of service nerves were gone and they were more comfortable speaking to people. It was important for our after service hosts to not only say hello and introduce themselves, but also to strike up a conversation and get to know the visitor a little. I encourage every church not only to focus on visitors when they walk in the door, but also to really focus on getting to know them after the service. This will help church growth. This is when you can show the friendliness of a church body.
Get Connected Area
We have an area in our church called the "get connected area." This is an area that our pastor talks about every Sunday. He invites visitors, attenders, and members to visit this area after the service to find out more about the ministries of the church and how they can get involved. Each ministry has a representative that talks about their ministry and gives them a pamphlet of information so they can attend an event or get plugged in. As each ministry grows, we experience fresh church growth. We also have event sign ups and information in the get connected area. It works great for getting people to step out and get involved.
|