Category: Company Ready

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Plan a Visit Page

Turning an Internet Search into a First Time Guest

Our church websites are primarily not for your regular attenders. The people who most see your website are people looking online for a church to visit. That makes it your most important foot in the lives of poeple you have yet to meet! You must have information on your website that online church shoppers are looking for.

I came across this idea through a marketing email for Nucleus.Church. It is an idea slathered in good marketing philosophy that helps get people to pull that trigger on a weekend visit to your church.

The ‘Plan A Visit’ Church Framework

The idea is to take all the passive information on your website and turn it into an active invitation to join you for worship! Pack what a visitor needs to know about coming to your church for the first time on to one page and link it other relevant information throughout the rest of your website.

Make it Easy to Find

This should be the easiest link to find on your front page. Since we are looking to attract people searching online for church it ought to grab their attention and direct them into your clear invitation. If people searching for a church can’t navigate your site then your carefully crafted page is worthless.

Start with the Basics

This page should start with service times and location. Don’t put your whole schedule of events there. Probably the place you are most prepared to receive guests is your weekend worship.

Then tell people where you are. An address may be sufficient, but if there is any trick at all to arriving at your place of worship you should put it here. For instance, if crossing traffic to pull into your parking lot is a problem, then help people make a right turn into your place. If you have designated guest parking, then say where to find it.

If you are like us, many times the front parking lot is full by the time first time guests show up. Tell these folks in advance where to find the best parking and how to enter into a door your greeting team is hosting.

Speak Culture

What kind of atmosphere are you building in your church? Is there an expected dress code? Can you bring coffee into the sanctuary? Do you have a monthly event connected to worship? Tell people what to expect!

Directions for Parents

Dragging your kids to a new church can be a horrifying experience. Single parents often visit alone and distracted. No matter how good your signage is there will be questions about when and how to check kids into your classrooms. Concisely tell them the whole procedure.

Call to Action

The “Tell us when we should expect you” part is brilliant! It is a simple contact form and I don’t think anyone will actually use it. What it does is get those online searchers a chance to subconsciously understand that we want them to show up and that we want their first time worshiping with us to be a great experience.

Our Attempt

Here is how we put these ideals to work in our online content. Post yours in the comments!

http://eastavechurch.org/plan-a-visit/
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Just Listen to You Talk!

Yeah, just listen. Record your weekend message and listen to yourself. If you can do it by video, that much better!

I know,  it is painful. We are our worst critics, but we stand up on Sundays and speak for a living. We owe it to ourselves to be the best communicator we can be.

Listen, I want others to show up and hear what I have to say. It only makes sense that I should also actually hear the words that are coming out of my mouth! What I think I say and how I think I say it can be very different from the way my congregation experiences it. If I am going to get better I must actually watch and listen to myself.

So spend a year of recording yourself and watching on Monday morning. Listen for your verbal stammers, jingling change in your pocket, monotone inflection, and painful pauses. Watch for the point at which you know you lost some people. Were you as clear as you wanted to be? Did your message make logical sense? Did you take your congregation from Point A to Point B, or did you meander around a bit? How much time do you spend speaking in a passive voice? What was the Big Ask at the end of your message? Did you inspire or beat up your people? What is it you wished you would have said?

Only after you listen to yourself for a year will you begin to see the progress you will make! You will begin to recognize your bad habits as you are speaking and correct them. Your notes will get better and your strong, inspirational voice will begin to come out.

If you want to take it a step further, find a partner to watch with you. Give him or her permission to hurt your feelings. Begin to hear the same things. Get better at your craft!

You don’t have to be the best speaker in town. You have to be the best speaker YOU can be. Take the time to listen. After all, you expect others to do it!

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Special Music isn’t so Special Anymore

20 years ago I was sitting with a bunch of friend that worked as a planning group for an immersive worship service. We were talking about the value of special music in the Sunday worship services. Jim says, “Well, I place a high value on it. Sometimes the message won’t speak to you but the music will. I remember a Sunday about four years ago when that happened. It really moved me. My wife and I still talk about it.” I pointed out that the experience was four years ago and it hasn’t duplicated itself since then. I am a big fan of music, I just not a big fan of what church performance has brought to us week after week.

I am a musician and I grew up singing in church. When I showed up to church on a Wednesday unaware that the youth group went dormant, the pastor picked up another chair and carried it to the choir loft. It was the one and only place I ever qualified as a bass! I sang in choirs and played in bands through college and performed in a boatload of churches. I still play many weekends and on rare occasion I still lead worship.

I am not a hater of music or music in church.

Somewhere along my journey I realized that I could not define the line between worship and performance if I was the only one singing.

Worship is bringing glory and honor to God through our time, attention and talent. Performance is bringing me glory that I can, at times, point towards God. If I am garnering the attention of a congregation or an audience how do I make the distinction? For me, I decided that if I am the only one going to the throne of God and I am inviting other to watch me go there, it must be Christian performance. If I am inviting other people to join me on the journey as part of the team, then it must be worship.

At the beginning of Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Freddy is giving a big press conference after unmasking another caper. Under the big lights with the attention of all the media, Freddy says: “People ask me why Mystery, Inc is so successful. And the answer is: Teamwork. I do a tremendous amount of teamwork….”

I hear the same hollow humility from Christian musicians and vocalists. We want to be honored for our talent and our veneer humility. We are willing to give tacit honor to God because it seems the the thing to do. I think Freddy is honest in his assessment, and still dead wrong. The spotlight can bring out the worst in all of us.

It is difficult to work hard as a musician without a place to perform. It is hard as a worship leader to not save a little piece of the worship for yourself. Music is such an integral part of both ancient and modern worship, yet has so many humility traps in it. How can we navigate out?

For our church, we have decided that we just don’t do “special music”, where people perform Christian music for others to enjoy. We focus on corporate music, where everyone is invited to participate in singing. For us, this means a bunch of new songs (as many as 15 new songs a year) and a few ancient ones. We have songs that every church sings. We have songs that you many only sing with us.

We also look for musicians that don’t need the church for a stage and a spotlight. I love it when we have musicians that play in local bands at local parties, bars and weddings. These guys understand the difference between performance and worship. They have also spent the years to hone their craft. When it comes to leading people to the throne of God they simply have more to offer those that follow them. They do not need to keep any of the worship for themselves because they can get that other places.

That is why, at times, you can find me in a bar on Saturday night listening to live music. If my musician friends invite me to their performance, I go, no matter where it is! But, that is a subject for another time….

We sing a bunch of the KLOVE top 40 because people who are hurting often turn to KLOVE for comfort and find it in the music. Then eventually they decide that trying out church again might be a good idea. These hurting folks should find music that sounds familiar.

What’s the Consequences?

Now, I will admit that all of this is short sighted if it stops there. I became the musician I am today because I was given a chance to learn and perform in front of my home church — poeple that loved me! And that is true. I was in 10th grade when I was given the chance to perform special music at our church. It was a Sunday evening, but it was a Sunday! I can’t imagine it was pretty or that I made it to the parking lot, let alone the throne room of God!  What will happen to music in the church if we never have room for poeple who are learning? How can we encourage people to continue to practice if there is never a stage to perform?

Frankly, this is a point of concern for me. The music budgets in our public schools are squeezed. Private schools are worse. Private lessons are easy to find, but they can be quite expensive. How is it that the church can encourage people to learn instruments and have performance opportunities if the church isn’t encouraging it? Where will the next worship leader learn to sing in front of people?

For our church, we have started two initiatives. First, we have started School of Guitar. Three of us that play guitar have banded together to teach a few students to play guitar. Most are kids, but also some adult are learning. Many of them are building the skill set necessary to lead worship in the future. We are encouraging youth kids to be useful in youth group by learning a few songs so they can lead worship in midweek services. This can be a valuable time learning to hone the musicianship we will need in the future.

Second, we have instituted an open mic night. Right now we have only hosted it on Fat Tuesday as a precursor for our observation of Lent. But, how cool is it that we can give our own musicians and vocalists a chance to perform in front of people that love them! We don’t care if it is specifically Christian or not. We just want people to come and share something musical that is important to them. We also encourage our School of Guitar students to practice something to bring, so it is a kind of recital for them.

Somewhere along the way, we need to take responsibility for the care and nurturing of our musicians so we have musicians in the future. We also must take serious consideration what we consider “worship” and appropriate for a worship service. How we define this will teach the future generations how to define worship for themselves.

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The First Time Guest Box

We have always wanted to give out something significant to those who come for a visit for the first time. When we started we had no idea what we were supposed to give out. We tried to do a cool tiered pocket folder with each ministry in the church highlighted for visitors to take home and peruse. We failed at keeping that updated immediately! We settled on a sad handled craft bag with uninspired cookies and a letter of thanks for dropping by. Lame! We gave these out for years knowing how lame they were because we could not think of anything better.

One day I noticed the care and thought that our worship leader put into boxes she sent out to her photography clients and got inspired. Here is the current edition resulting First Time Guest Box we give out after every weekend service.

The Box

We buy these in boxes from uline.com. They are 9x8x2 inches and cost $0.63 when buying 100 at the same time. We print an invitation to connect on our website and facebook. We trim it up to fit nicely on the box and attach it with a glue stick. As you can see from this one, the corners were not glued well, resulting in that lived in look. It is a good reminder that quality control is essential!

The Crinkle Paper

We also get this from uline.com. It comes in big 10 lbs boxes that last us a very long time. It is $33 a box. It really sets the box apart by the feel of the quality and thought that went into the design.

The Good Things to Eat

We buy a dozen cookies from The Cookie Shoppe, a local gourmet cookie bakery that everyone loves! Having only one in the box seems kind of lame, but it is an awesome cookie of a size worthy of sharing. We want everyone to know it is a cookie from The Cookie Shoppe and proudly wrap each cookie individually with a sticker from The Cookie Shoppe! (Yeah, the wrappers are from uline.com as well.)

The tin is Espresso Pillows from Trader Joe’s. It is a scrumptious espresso bean and chocolate creation that is outstanding! They are $2.30 a can.

Good Things to Read

We include two books I really like. The first one is How Good is Good Enough by Andy Stanley. It is a good starter book for following Jesus. Andy talks about how people seem to think that the entrance requirements to heaven are based on our behavior. As it turns out, not one of us is good enough to earn heaven on our own. That is why we need Jesus! These books come in packs of 6 for $12.

The second book is The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. These books are $12 a piece. Keller tells the story we know as the Prodigal Son from each of the character’s perspectives. The kicker of book is that the flagrant spender turns out to be God, who lavishes His wealth of us. He spends a lot of time helping us understand that the older son wasn’t just indicative of the Pharisees of the day, but also those of us who grew up in church.  It is a power book to inspire those who are already kingdom people who happen to be looking for a new place to worship and contribute.

Each book as a bookmark that says READ ME at the top. I wrote a small description of why I liked the book enough to include it in the box. It is cut to just the right height that READ ME sticks out the top of the book.

Also included in the book stack are Invite Cards. This box has our worship invite card as well as an invitation to download our app. When we have special events coming up we also like to include a quarter cut card stock invitation to that next event.

All of this is held together by elastic loop ribbon, also purchased at uline.com. It holds everything together and looks great! They are $45 for 1000 loops.

Every Guest

At the end of the service, our worship leader prays and thanks everyone for coming. She will also say something like, “The pastors are making their way to the lobby. IF you are a first time guest with us they want to meet you and give you an awesome box with some great stuff in it! Be sure you find them!” People find us in the middle of the lobby. We give these out to every first time guest. If they come in a family, we try to give one to the family, but we don’t stop people from taking more than one. If there is a hoard of people in the family, we try to supplement with extra cookies, but they don’t need extra books!

Yes, the cost of each box approaches $20. It is a whole lot of money and, frankly, we don’t have any extra to throw away. We think this is an important investment. Once a person has decided to come for the first time, it is our job to get them to think about coming back. The boxes give guests a reason to come find and chat with one of the pastors and the quality of the items speaks to how valuable we think their visit was.

Do people come back because of the box. No. Well, not that alone. It is part of a larger effort to help people come back. No matter what you put in the boxes, it must feel like it is something valuable to you, otherwise it will hold no value to the person receiving it. That would be worse than not having anything to give in the first place!

 

 

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52 Weekends a Year

We only have 52 weekends a year to make an impact with weekend worship. That might sound like a lot to you. It is not. When much of what a pastor does is predicated on how the weekends go, we must work had to not let one weekend go to waste! Each weekend is filled with possibilities. You cannot control when new people darken the doors of your church. As such each weekend you must be ready for company!

Most of what falls into this category won’t be noticed by your regulars. That’s because they may be used to things being broken. First time guests won’t know it was broken last week. That’s actually what you are aiming at! You are taking away objections that people might have experienced otherwise!

For our church, we care for every weekend with these maxims in place:

Fix what is broken before Sunday

Most any issue in a church can be fixed in just a few days. The question is, which few days is your church going to choose to solve the problem. Sometimes it is a buzz in the sound system. Sometimes ballasts in the lobby lights need to be changed out. Sometimes it is the street signage. Whatever it is, if it can be seen during weekend worship, it needs to be handled immediately!

There are times the cost will be such that you will need board action to care for it. Don’t let the issue go to the back burner just because it involved multiple people and multiple weeks.

In the first month after arriving in Chico as the pastor of East Ave Church I did a complete walk-through of the campus with two of the board members in charge of buildings and grounds maintenance. When we got to the nursery there was a whole host of wrong! There were too many corner to hide, the cribs looked more like tiger cages stacked on top of each other and the standard rocking chairs had been chipping paint off the wall for year, leaving the carpet behind the chair covered in paint and sheet rock. When I pointed this out, one of the board members said, “You know, if we ever get some babies around there we will have to do something about this room.”

What?! No self-respecting parent will ever come back to this church after seeing the low value we place on children. I made it perfectly clear that we would never have families with babies again until we fixed the nursery.

It was obviously going to take many months to solve all the problems in that nursery.  That doesn’t mean we waited to get started! Before the next Sunday we had gliding rocking chair donated and fixed the paint on the wall. What can be done by next Sunday should be done by next Sunday.

Avoid random guest speakers

Your weekends are precious. The phone constantly rings with evangelists, guest choirs, the Gideons, local compassion groups and the like. Not only that, but you will also get emails about visiting missionaries on deputations and international denominational people who would like to have some face time with your people.

Be wise in how you implement these options in your ministry. If you think about your congregation as a static group of people who show up 50 weekends a year, then bringing in a music evangelist for variety and to give you a week off sermon prep sounds like a good idea. The way I look at it, we have the opportunity to have guests show up unannounced this weekend. I would like them to choose whether or not to come back based upon our regular worship, not some musician who will never be back.

Do not take your leaders out of church

Early on in my tenure at East Ave Church we hosted a Family Camp Out for anyone who wanted to go camp with us. We took about 50 people with us! When we were averaging around 80 in weekend attendance, that was a big deal! Since we were taking all of our leadership, we asked a local mission to bring in a band and provide testimonies from the men in the program. They were such a great draw that, even though we had 50 people out of town, attendance was about average!

When I got back I met with a young family that had just moved to Chico. They had been in church three times. The first two they found a lively bunch of friendly folks. The third weekend, no one talked to them. They stayed for the monthly potluck after and no one sat at the table with them. They felt abandoned and heartbroken. I tried to explain that even though the sanctuary must have looked the same, most of those people were also visiting. The reason why no one talked to you is that the only poeple from the church left in town were the anti-social people who did not want to camp!

But, we lost that family anyway. And I learned a valuable lesson. Every weekend is important! That was the last Family Camp Out.

WYSIWYG

For us, what you see is what you get! We do the same stuff every weekend. We do some awesome music, teach through books of the Bible, pray, take communion together and take an offering. That’s it. We want to always give our best foot forward. We work within that frame to keep things fresh. We do less things and try to do them better every weekend.

On occasion we will have a missionary speaker, but in such a way as to fit into what we do every weekend. If you share your church culture with most missionaries they can find a way to relate their message to the new audience. Sometimes we might bring in someone to talk about an opportunity to give or participate in something cool, but we don’t give more than 15 minutes to anything! That way we can still do all the regular things that we want new guests to judge us on.

Keeping 52 weekends a year sacred takes much work. It means not mailing in the message. It means not giving up your platform for impact. It means being ready for company at any time, because consistency is a vital part of a healthy church.

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Clean

My colleague, Jeremy Rhodes, was leading a campus Christian club at a local junior high school. The students were freely sharing why their parents didn’t take them to church anymore. One student confessed that they tried a bunch of different churches in Chico, but none of them ever quite made the grade. Evidently, there are too many “dusty” churches and the mom just couldn’t handle it.

I thought, “I wonder if that family was one of the once-and-done visitors we have had!” Maybe! We have a few dusty corners complete with cobwebs and abandoned stuff. But life is so much cleaner than it used to be around here!

When I arrived at the East Ave Church to interview in July 2002, there are several words that would describe the church campus. The most descriptive may be “cluttered”. There was stuff stored everywhere! Literally! Everywhere! It was not valuable stuff. It was not trash. It was all something in between. And it was everywhere!

Every classroom had it own supply cupboard with a pile of classroom fodder along side. The lobby had an old sectional couch someone donated. There was a misplaced privacy rail in an alcove hiding bags of donated clothes and such.

My favorite piece of clutter was the electric organ – the kind that was installed with furniture sized speakers behind grill cloth on either side of the platform. It was in a lobby off the sanctuary platform. It was kind of a big guy, with the seat and floor petals all stacked up along side. I asked why it was there. I was told that 10 years before it was moved out of the sanctuary because it could no longer be kept in tune with the piano. Ten years it had been sitting there! I asked why it was still there. I was told, “You know, in case someone wants to move it back in.”  Like someone is going to reinstate a tone-def organ!

In my first six months I got a 20 yard dumpster and filled it: broken furniture, clutter in the legitimate storage rooms, Christmas and Easter cantata music from the 70s, and anything that we would replace rather than repair to put back into service. Then we did it again three months later filling another 20 yard dumpster.

Some of it was easy to dump. The church people needed to be reassured that every small church and Christian campground had all the off-pitch organs and mimeograph machines they could use. They needed to be reminded that if we ever did reconstitute a choir we would want to buy new cantatas and that there was no end of surplus WWII era desks in Chico.

Other things were more delicate. No one had used the old pulpit for decades in our church. Yet, for all that time it never was far from the center of the platform, living for years in sight on the back wall. Not knowing if anyone thought the pulpit was sacred, I moved it from a visible storage spot to one no one would see. I thought if anyone would miss it, they might ask after it. No one did. It went in the second dumpster!

We cleared the lobby of anything resembling clutter to open it up. We moved all the children’s classrooms resources into a single closet. We cleaned the carpets, chairs and tables — and the walls! Anything that stayed either cleaned up or got a coat of paint. It was a remarkable transformation! Within months the campus began to clean up and appear spacious, maintained and cultivated. It would take years before we actually renovated every room that needed it or fixed every broke resource, but until then, the broken stuff at least looked clean!

Now days, I wonder what I don’t see anymore. It was easy for me to spot the problems when I walked in the doors in 2002. Now, all of the clutter is my clutter. The mismatched furniture and kitschy decor is stuff I moved in. I must regularly ask people to be a fresh set of eyes for me. What has to go? What must be cleaned? What project did we start and never complete?

We must be ever vigilant as to what our church campuses look like to a first time visitor. Bring in friends that don’t go to your church to hurt your feelings. Let them tell you all the ugly your church has to offer. It is better to hear about it from them rather than let everyone judge you!