Christmas Eve is this Thursday and lots of first time guests will be at your church. Also, many will make decisions to follow Jesus in your services. Here’s my question: how will you help them come back next week? Rule #1 for effective follow up : Get contact information so you can follow up with them and help them take their first few spiritual steps. I’m always surprised to see churches fail in this simplest of keys to follow up. I mean: how are you going to contact them if you have no contact information? Our church has at least … Read More
What Star Wars Can Teach Us About Church
It’s hard to avoid the buzz about the new Star Wars movie coming out today. Everybody’s talking about it. Disney’s done their share of advertising but right now, they are getting more free promotion than they know what to do with. I think there’s a lesson in this for us as Church leaders. I remember years ago when getting the word out about our church was hard. We would spend $10,000 on direct mail and see only a handful of people attend. It was like surgery with no anesthesia. I finally understood what cruel and unusual punishment was. Then we … Read More
Church Staffing For 2016
A great goal for some churches as we start 2016 is to hire the right people. When it comes to staffing, most leaders start with a person they’re looking to hire. I believe that’s the wrong approach. When you’re looking to add someone to your team, the place to begin is with a job description. This is important when staff come to you and say, “I need help. Can you hire me an assistant?” The first thing that should should happen is for that staff member to write a job description of the position. The key here is to answer … Read More
1 Surefire Way to Sink Your Christmas Outreach
I love reaching people at Christmas-time. It’s the only time of year that people are singing songs about Jesus in the mall. The truth is that Christmas is one of the easiest times to reach people with the Gospel in our culture. This year we’re doing Christmas services AND we’re doing a separate Christmas Concert. Our social media and direct mail efforts are in full effect and this is where I see so many churches go wrong. I see their ads to reach people and the biggest problem is this: Clarity. Unclear ads and mailers are dead on arrival. Talk … Read More
6 Free Church Flyers
I get a lot of questions about how to promote events, especially on social media. And since I’m excited about the new year… I want to share some free church flyers that you can use to reach your community: • Church Cookout Flyer: This is an event that you can do when it’s warm outside. It doesn’t have to be a holiday to create a big day with good food! • Guest Speaker Flyer: It’s crazy but just announcing a guest speaker at your church can become an event that draws people. Your congregation has an excuse to invite friends … Read More
Church Budgeting For The New Year
2016 is here and there’s lot to plan and pray about. And that includes the church budget. So here’s a few thoughts I’d like to share with church leaders about budgeting for this year: 1. Remember that God’s vision is bigger than yours (Eph. 3:20) 2. Remember the widow’s mite (Mark 12) 3. Money spend on evangelism is not an expense, it’s an investment (Matt. 28:19-20) 4. Ask, “Is this a want or a need?” (Phil. 4:19) 5. Am I being generous to missionaries and other organizations doing important kingdom work? (2 Cor. 8:7) 6. Is the staff being compensated … Read More
The Christmas Time Crunch
We’re coming up on one of the most important evangelistic opportunities of the year: Christmas Eve. Some are saying Christmas Eve is even bigger than Easter in terms of attendance in their area. I know this: Christmas is a great time to reach people. It’s the only time Christian music is playing in the mall and the unchurched are singing along! But every year I hear about Pastors who missed this golden opportunity to reach people. Why? They didn’t plan far enough ahead. Right now we’re in the middle of planning our services, a Christmas Concert, an outreach, direct mail … Read More
[FREE Training] Why Churches Grow and then Decline
Have you ever had a big day in your church, only to have attendance drop back to normal the next week? There’s a reason for that. I recorded a video where I talk about why this happens and the #1 thing pastors have to engage in to prevent it. When you have a big day, you don’t stay at that number. However, you shouldn’t go back to your old number either. The big day should give you a bump in your attendance. If you don’t see it, it might be because of what I talk about on this video. You … Read More
3 Targets For Your Church This Summer
Most Pastors tend to take their vacations during the summer for a variety of reasons (kids are out of school, attendance is flat) which I think is a good idea. But sometimes we can lower the bar a little and say, “Hey, it’s summer. It’s no big deal.” WRONG. 3 Targets for Your Church to Focus on this Summer: 1) New Guests. Most people move during the summer time and that’s also when they check out churches in their neighborhood. Fourth of July was a lower than average attendance for us at Calvary and we still had 35 first time … Read More
Kickstart Your Church’s Growth
Two months ago we launched what I believe to be the most comprehensive, practical, an strategic coaching we’ve ever offered at Church Ninja.We completely transformed our coaching from topically based (Evangelism, Leadership, Preaching, etc…) to a format that helps churches grow based on addressing growth challenges depending on church size. A church of 200 needs a different evangelism strategy than a church of 800. A church of 400 needs has different staffing needs than a church of 40. Churches looking to break 1,000 in attendance have leadership and stewardship challenges which a church of 100 hasn’t needed to address yet. … Read More
