4 Behaviors That Handicap Church Growth
If you have ever tried to make a soufflé, you know what a challenge it can be. You try to follow the directions, but all your anticipation dissolves into heartbreak as you watch it deflate through the oven window. Something as simple as over-beating your eggs has a significant impact on whether you have a beautiful soufflé or fancy pudding.
It is essential to remind your congregation about the importance of experiencing your church through a visitor’s eyes.
Fostering church growth is very similar to crafting a soufflé. When it is not going well, it can be frustrating to identify where things went wrong. Sometimes the smallest oversights can undermine all your preparation. When attendance does not rise as you expected, you end up scratching your head.
Here are four mistakes churches might not realize are sabotaging their best efforts.
1. Fostering a “just us” atmosphere
Sometimes you do not realize how messy your house is until someone drops in for a visit. Suddenly, you see all those little problem areas and projects you have neglected. Your church environment can be the same way.
Once a congregation gets acclimated to their environment, they stop noticing things that anyone else would see. It could be the unpainted parking lot, the rundown feel of the nursery or even the insider sermon jokes that only make sense to people. It is natural for churches to slip into an “just us” mindset. Once they do, they stop being great hosts.
It is essential to remind your congregation about the importance of experiencing your church through a visitor’s eyes. Help them think through a Sunday morning from different perspectives. If someone has never stepped into a church before, what kind of experience will they have at your church? What if they are new parents looking to return to their Christian roots?
When churches members become outward focused during a Sunday morning, it makes all the difference.
2. Smothering or ignoring visitors
Even if you have been a committed Christian all your life, walking into a new church is tough. Most people experience low-level anxiety about doing something foolish or having an awkward experience. At the same time, they want to feel welcomed and noticed.
Finding a balance with visitors can be rough. If the church struggles with the “just us” atmosphere, then they will fall back into the habit of talking to the same four people they spoke to last week. Standing around after a service and watching a people retreat into their cliques can make you feel incredibly lonely.
If visitors go too long between their visit and your first contact, the chances for their return begin to diminish.
On the other hand, you do not want to be surrounded by a lot of manic energy either. Sometimes you visit a church and you are completely overwhelmed by an overly friendly church member who is giving you a rundown of the church calendar and all the opportunities that are available—and you are not even sure if you are going to come back.
It is helpful to train your congregation to honor the five-foot rule. It is easy. If someone is within five feet of someone that do not know—who is not already engaged in a conversation—they greet them and introduce themselves. They are not required to have a long, drawn-out conversation (unless the chemistry is there), but you want them to at least say, “Thanks for joining us today—we are glad you are here.”
3. Not prioritizing contact information
If someone shows up at a church service, do you have a plan to contact them again? If you do not, you are missing out. Many churches use connect cards as a way to get visitor information, and this puts the ball in your court. If you do not get contact information, you miss out on the opportunity to influence another visit.
Connect cards only work if you:
- Highlight and promote them every week
- Follow up within 24 hours of receiving contact information
It is not enough to get contact information—you need a plan for actually connecting with them. The sooner, the better. If visitors go too long between their visit and your first contact, the chances for their return begin to diminish.
Connect cards (whether you use paper or digital) do more than help you capture contact info. They also give people a way to engage with you. First-time visitors can use them to request prayer or ask to meet. It is a low-stress way for people to reach out when they need you.
4. Bad or poorly used technology
You do not need to incorporate a lot of technology into your services to get people to come back. In fact, sometimes too much tech can be a distraction and a turn-off. You might be comfortable preaching with an open Bible and no other bells or whistles. As long as you are engaging, people will be on board.
While media tools like PowerPoint or other presentation software can be helpful to your service, they can also become distracting. It depends on the quality of your content. If you are going to implement tech solutions, it is essential that you do it well. Have someone invest time in learning how it works and getting the most out of it. Otherwise, you look out of touch to people who are increasingly comfortable using tech in their everyday life.
It is not enough to get contact information—you need a plan for actually connecting with them.
Take your website as an example. If someone wants to learn more about you, they are going to visit your website. They are used to using websites all the time and it reflects on your poorly if your site is out of date, poorly designed, or does not have the information they are looking for. The problem is that you will never know when someone checks out your website and then decides not to visit.
When you incorporate technical solutions, commit yourself to do it right. Otherwise, you might be hurting yourself more than you are helping.
Covering Your Bases
Having an outreach plan is a lot like shopping for soufflé ingredients. You might have the best ingredients available, but if you are not sure what to do with them when you get home, you will struggle to create a masterpiece. In the same way, a good outreach strategy without a plan to assimilate visitors does not work.
Once your church begins to see itself through the eyes of visitors, you can capture your visitors and turn your outreach into real, sustainable growth.
