In last week’s first of this two-part series, I mentioned how on a Sunday not too long ago, at one of our Journey early services, we had zero first-time guests.

It’s very rare for us to have zero anything, so we began to drill down and figure out why there weren’t any first-time guests identified at this service.

We have a table at the exit doors with about 50 Unshakable books stacked up. We measure how many books we put out and how many are taken each week. On the Sunday in question, zero people identified themselves as first-time guests, and zero took a free book after the service. But I thought some regular guests would still take one, even if they didn’t complete a connection card.

This was a huge clue and we soon uncovered the big mistake we had made:

The table with the 50 Unshakable books was NOT put out that day for the early service.

The Journey campus caught the mistake in time for the second service, but for the early service, there were NO books out for first-time guests.

Do you think this is coincidence that no books were out for first-time guests and no first-time guests actually showed up for first service? I don’t.

I strongly believe that God chose to not bless us with first-time guests because we were not prepared for those guests.

So this is the big takeaway from our mistake: God chooses to bless us when we’re prepared and God chooses to withhold blessing when we’re not prepared!

You may have heard me teach on this before: it’s called The Principle of Spiritual Readiness. Its definition: “Your preparation precedes God’s blessing.” In this case, there was a correlation between my readiness to receive, assimilate and do all that is humanly possible to move people to Christ, and God actually blessing me with those opportunities.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve coached and trained thousands of pastors on the key system of Assimilation. So I know that when you make a critical mistake in this area of Assimilation, it limits the blessing of God on your church.

So my question to you today: How are you doing with your Assimilation system?

Your partner in ministry,

Nelson

© Nelson Searcy. All Rights Reserved.

About Nelson Searcy

Nelson Searcy is an experienced church growth strategist, pastor, church planter and coach, consulting with churches around the world. As founder of Church Leader Insights and the Renegade Pastors Network, he has personally trained more than 3,500 church leaders in over 45 denominations through live events, seminars and monthly coaching. Nelson is also the Founding and Lead Pastor of The Journey Church, with locations across New York City and in Boca Raton, FL. Nelson and his church routinely appear on lists such as “The 50 Most Influential Churches” and “The 25 Most Innovative Leaders.” He is the author of over 100 church growth resources and 18+ books, including The Renegade Pastor: Abandoning Average in Your Life, Ministry and The Difference Maker: Using Your Everyday Life for Eternal Impact, and At the Cross with the People Who Were There. He and his wife, Kelley, have one son, Alexander.