The pre-service is your first opportunity to interact with everyone who sets foot on your church’s property – from first-time guests to long-time members – but its purpose and influence is particularly important for first-timers. Think of it this way: Your pre-service mission, if you choose to accept it, is to do everything you can to take your guest’s guard down (and even … Read More
No Second Chances- Making a Great Impression on First-Time Guests
You won’t get a second chance. Seven minutes is all the time you have to make a positive first impression on the first-time guests who walk through your doors. In the first seven minutes of their experience with your church, your guests will decide whether or not they’re going to come back. That’s before a single worship song is sung and before a … Read More
New Eyes For A New Year – What Are New People Seeing At Your Church?
2012 is here, and this year’s “MUST HAVE” resource is The Assimilation Seminar! Here’s why: Every week, God entrusts our churches with First Time Guests, and your preparation and capacity to be a good steward of those guests will largely determine how quickly your church will grow this year. Since these people and families will be attending your church at … Read More
How to Responsibly Handle Your Church People’s Vital Information
As you may know, one of the hallmarks of my Assimilation System – for integrating newcomers into the life of your church – is the weekly use of a Connection Card. This is an information card that is filled out each week by everyone in attendance and includes contact info on one side and next steps and sign-ups on the … Read More
Who’s Writing Your Notes to First Time Guests?
We had a great crowd for The Fusion Webinar last Thursday and I wanted to follow up with a couple of the more frequently asked questions from participants. Probably the most asked question any time I lead an Assimilation training has to do with the handwritten notes that you should be sending to all of your First Time Guests. And … Read More
What are New People Experiencing at Your Church?
For all of you who have read my book Fusion or listened to The Assimilation Seminar, you know that part of the Assimilation System that I teach is emailing out a brief online survey to every First Time Guest that attends The Journey. There are a couple of reasons behind this survey: 1) To get an idea of their first … Read More
How to Follow Up with New People
With the popularity of the Fusion book and all of the other Assimilation resources and training that I get to do, you can imagine how much feedback and how many questions I get about how to best integrate, or “assimilate” new people into your church. Here’s one of the more common questions: Since we already email and call (and possibly … Read More
What Do Guests At Your Church Experience?
If you have read Fusion or listened to the Assimilation Seminar, you know that we send out a brief, 30-second survey to each of our First Time Guests every Sunday. It provides good feedback to leadership and helps to reinforce a positive Sunday experience to the guest. And from time to time, these surveys remind me of why we take … Read More
Are You Reaching Non-Christians This Christmas? (Part 4)
This week, we’ve been thinking about how you can work with the natural surge that God has built into the Christmas season to influence those who don’t yet know Jesus. We started by making sure we are outwardly-focused this season. Then, we talked about how to increase the number of guests at our Christmas services. Yesterday, we learned how to … Read More
Are You Reaching Non-Christians This Christmas? (Part 2)
Welcome to Part 2 of the “Are You Reaching Non-Christians This Christmas?” mini-series. Yesterday, we talked about the importance of making sure your church is outwardly-focused, especially during the Christmas season. If you missed that post, you can check it out below. Now that you realize how important it is to focus your attention on non-believers this season, let’s jump … Read More