"What's the worst thing that can happen to your direct mail campaign?"  The worst that can happen is not people complaining. It's people ignoring you. That's why above all you have the speak the language of the people you're trying to reach.   Most Pastors of contemporary churches say they do this, but we make this mistake as well.  How often have you sent something out talking about your "worship"? Guess what? If you're trying to reach unchurched people, they don't know that worship is music.  We do this with our children's ministry: we essentially advertise to the kids (who … Read More

"How do you know you're direct mailing enough?"  The answer to this question is simple: when people start calling and complaining. It sound funny, but think about what someone has to do to call your church and complain about your direct mail piece: they have to receive it, read it, get annoyed by it, and then find your phone number and call.   There's stuff I'd rather not receive in the mail (like invitations to join the AARP – I'm interested, I'm just 30 years too young), but I've never gotten so annoyed as to call them and ask them to … Read More

"What's the appropriate number of times to do direct mail for an event?"  Allow me to be blunt: if you're only going to mail once, don't bother mailing at all. It takes more than one mailing for people to notice you. I would suggest narrowing your list and increase the number of mailings.  At Calvary Fellowship, we always mail at least twice for an event or big Sunday. For Easter, we'll usually do 3 mailings to make sure we saturate our lists. For other events, we'll send a mailer 10 days before the event and then the week of the … Read More

– I didn't teach this morning.   – Yes, it's been a while since I taught.   – For those keeping score at home, I'll be back on August 30th to teach Revelation 20.  – I heard that Pastor John did a great job teaching Revelation 18.  Not an easy area, but he did a great job.  – I've had a great time with my family these weeks that I've been off.  – My close Pastor friends strongly encouraged me to take some time off when my son was born, but with my wife's complications in the last 2 weeks … Read More

I got an email this morning that I had been quoted in an Illinois newspaper about being a portable church. What's funny is that I don't remember actually talking to the newspaper,but I think they got the quote from my book Zero to Sixty where I have a chapter on portable churches.   I have a passion for churches that are portable. I've spoken at conferences on the subject, consult with churches that are portable and I even created a resource to help churches that are seeking to build a church without a building.   The resource is called, "The Portable Church … Read More

I wrote this originally for the www.church-strategies.com newsletter, but since this is a question we get all the time, I thought I'd post the e-strategy that I wrote here. By the way, you can sign up to receive the www.church-strategies.com Newsletter here. The #1 Factor to Creating a Culture of Evangelism in Your Church I believe one of the most critical factors in creating a culture of evangelism is people seeing evangelism happening in the church. At Calvary Fellowship, we present the Gospel every week because we know there are people in the crowd who don't know Jesus. Thus, because … Read More

After sending out a 50,000 piece mailing that got dismal results I said, "That's it! I'm done with direct mail!" But before I totally gave up, I decided to learn about how it works for companies that were achieving tremendous success during direct mail. That's when everything changed! The next time we did direct mail, we employed new strategies that allowed us to spend a fraction of what we were spending previously and get a 300%-400% better return for our investment. These strategies have been a game-changer for us and recently I taught these "secrets" to a group of Pastors … Read More

There seems to be 3 types of people that church leaders can learn from:  A = Those who can teach the stuff, but haven't done it B = Those who can do the stuff, but can't teach it C = Those can do the stuff and teach it My recommendation? Look high and low for as many "C" people as possible. There's a lot of "A's" out there and some "B's" out there, but every "C" we can find can help us immensely in becoming better leaders. 

– I didn't teach this morning.  I've been fighting a cold and I can't talk much.  When I do, I sound like an 80-year old chain smoker.  – We showed part 2 of Dave Ramsey's Life. Money. Hope.  – It went great.  People received both messages really well.   – I spent most of the day sleeping.  It's been a pretty "interesting" week for me. – I'll spare you the boring details because it involved Carey being in and out of the hospital again and Mia and I both getting sick.  – Mia is doing much better thankfully.  – Our … Read More

This is going to be a "different" Sunday Stuff than normal, but here goes… – I didn't teach this morning.   – On Wednesday, at my wife's Dr.'s appointment, they found her blood pressure to be higher than they liked and being 36 weeks pregnant, they sent her immediately to the hospital.  – So she's been in the hospital since Wednesday.  – What makes things a little tricky is that my daughter got a fever last night and so I've been treating her for that and letting her rest at home.  – My daughter has never been sick – ever. … Read More