Assimilating People Into Our Church Pt. 4
A lot of things happening.
No, don't want to. I don't doubt the goodness. Don't doubt his presents. Don't doubt his wisdom, don't do that. We do that. Then the devil have us right? Where he wants us. And you know I can't do that.
I'll tell Martha on the way over, we'll talk about gas prices, how high they are. And there was a guy out in California yesterday. He ran one of these, like service, like stations of whatever kind of like sheets or something. And They got there, all the gas tanks filled up, and he went back inside, and he was putting any supposed to a put $6.99 per gallon. And he move the decimal point by mistake and everybody got their gas for $0.69 a gallon. And the first guy got it and he called his family and friends. And, and the guy working at the store, took him two or three hours to figure it out. He said, why is everybody pulling up here to get gas? And I'll and they went through just about all the gas before, he figured it out and corporate fired him of course, but it was honest mistake. But they lost around $40,000 because of that. So that if I saw it for $0.69, I think I would run get in line to it knew I would too. So 69c, just put the desk in the wrong spot. So you hate that for that to happen, you know, to anyone Alright, well, we're simulation simulating people into our church. We're on part for tonight and if you does, he want, everybody have their hand out, I hope. Okay, if you need one I've got one up here I think but Anyway, if we're where did we leave off at witness like the on the last page?
Okay, so last week be caught a little bit about the closing script which would be something that I would say while I'm up here before we have our offering and then remember exiting, you know, we all say well we'll see you next week. You know will say that the quality of child you if you're teaching children. A one good thing to do is if you're teaching children give them a page or something of homework something to carry home. So you can say will bring this back next week and we will, you know, we're going to go over there like that cuz a lot of time should we tell our parents know Miss so-and-so said I've got to bring this back next week enough so you know if you're teaching children or whatever, just have them a little take-home homework or or something. For our service in in people that see our website, if they want to know if they, you know what our services like I have those questions answered on the website. So tonight, what I want to do is finish these fill in the blanks here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through these fill in the blanks, then I'm going to go back and talk a little bit about it and then at the end, maybe we can get to the point where we can start doing some things and writing something down. That we need to do based on this simulation cuz we've covered right much stuff. You think about it inside outside the grounds, greeting the service, make sure it flows well. And now tonight, we going to talk about post service contact in this is where we going to need one or two. People whose pretty savvy. With the internet. Can get on faith life and and put some stuff in a database that we're going to have on there. So let's look at that. So personable and press it, post service contact rules on first-time. Guess well we can't contact anyone unless we have their what contact information. Now what it what is that? Where I brought a sample connection card in our connection cards are going to look similar to this? It says, connection card, name spouse name, children's name, then it's got a circle. They can bore about Christian, just hold it up and see if you see that interior is different from a call from guest, you know. But if it's one or two or three, put those people in the database and put out beside that in comments or whatever, first-time visitor, when I look at it, Sunday afternoon that will tell me that they need a contact, you know, either that afternoon or no later than Monday afternoon. I'll probably give the first to contacts for a new. I will. I will email them and I will send them a personal note. Or I will call them by Thursday. But we'll, we'll get more to that in a second. So I call from a volunteer is, did Ice Cream. Both are important. If first Contact takes more, in two days, it doesn't count a phone conversation that last more than 5 minutes drastically increases, the likelihood that the gas won't return. They don't mind the church calling them. They just don't want someone to call and just keep them on the phone for 20-25 minutes talking. They just don't want that. We're glad that you came and I hope you got your gift. Yes, I did. Well, it was good having you. We just want invite you back and let you know that we're so happy that you chose. We see you as a gas, a very important person, blah, blah, whatever. But shorter than 5 minutes 2 or 3 minutes will be fine. For the first phone conversation, e01 the form letter. A form letter. In other words, a computer-generated letter. That says we were glad you were here Sunday with a digital signal here, no one likes that. So when we send something first-time visitors after we send them an e-mail say I'm going to write them a personal note and sign it. And we going to have to put it in the mail so they get it by Thursday or Friday of that next week. So we need to mail it by probably Tuesday, but I'm, I'm going to ride it.
Yeah, probably, so yeah. But like I said, we're not going to visitors here. You know, so so we'll send a letter a handwritten, not a letter but just a little something, I'll go over, we open hand address notes first. That's what I just said, we don't get many handwritten notes anymore. Everybody knows that you don't get many handwritten notes. matter fact, most of us have have trouble writing I have trouble writing, I have trouble writing because for so long, I worked on a computer and signed everything. When I left nor tail, when I had to sign a check, I almost had to just I got down there and my handwriting was awful because I never right, you know, so I'm about to learn the right before I send these notes, you know, in our email inboxes are usually full Monday morning, they're usually empty by 10 a.m. alright next page.
Every gas gets a gift before they leave the church. That's the first time I guess we're going to have these little gift bags. Hopefully, I can, we can get them to wear Scott. The church name on it. Maybe logo, or, maybe a night or something. And inside the little bag we can Give him a pain like this whatever color we choose for our connection card will carry that same color throughout and everything else we give whether it's invite cards, pins, whatever will carry. That same color out this. Here's the size of pain, it would be, it would have new Grace Church on it, it could have our email and can have our website on it. So we'll get bad as a gift. We can give. I've got a little book that I'm going to get everybody about God questions about God, and then we might be able to get a little notepad with the church name and all on it. Or we could just give a little treat, a little sweet treat or something like that. In one of the bags, we can leave the bags out here, have them there again, someone's going to have to fill the bags, will have to have them ready, you know, on Sunday mornings and things of that nature, but we have time to do that. But every first time getting gas will get a gift before they leave. Every newcomer should receive a welcome call. By Monday night. So that could be an email or call. If it's a call or an e-mail, it will probably be be from me. And then I'll write a note that they will get by Thursday and then someone else a volunteer can call on Thursday. And just say, well we hope you can come back. Hope you'll be back this Sunday because we going to continue our series by Bob bought something like that but it's good for them to hear not only from the pastor but also from someone else in the church. Okay, every newcomer receives email from the pastor between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday, I will do that. Everyone who checks? I need bass box. If we have one of those on the connection card, gets a call from someone in that Ministry. I don't know if I'll put that on there now, because we don't have Children's ministry. We don't have Sunday school Ministry. We don't have all of that right now, so I'm not sure. I'll put that on there. At this time, I may put you want to be contacted by someone at the church or trucks Church leader or learn more about our church or learn more about Christianity but I'll probably not put you no children or Ministry or whatever like that. Because we're just kind of getting started. Every newcomer gets a handwritten note in the mail by Wednesday or Thursday from the person who spoke, which would would would be me inviting them back this weekend. If every newcomer gets in turn to the church Church's database and so will need someone on Sunday afternoon to enter the people. We can do that and Faith Life. And it's not hard to figure out how to do that and there's plenty of videos on how to do that. We just we're going to have to have a volunteer to do that everyone in the database, gets an email on Friday about the weekend service so we'll start doing that. This is everybody that's in the database. Every second time gas gets a handwritten note from a volunteer, so if someone comes back after the first time, then a volunteer, can send a handwritten note. Now, most of the time does the statistics, say, if someone visits your church for the first time,
Most of the time, they won't come back the next week, but if they're coming back, they'll come back within two to three weeks. But people who visit your church for the first time, you know what percent chance it is for them coming back at all. 9%. Just think of that 9%. So somebody visits our church and we give them a gift. And we're friendly. And we contact him that next week, me twice about interior, there's a 9% chance that they'll come back. If they come back a second time, there's a 23% chance, they'll come back a third time. And if they come back a third time, there's a 48% chance that they'll become a regular tender. So you see why it's so important that you make a good first impression. So important that we do that,
And then the last one, J. Every newcomer gets a checkup phone call, 30 days after they visit. So whether they have come back or not, they get a check-up phone call, I didn't the last laugh. First Time GIF gets a gift for the Levi. I said that this is would be much later down the road Coffee & Donuts, all available. After the service, this would have to be much later down the road. We really don't have the facilities to do that. If we had a big area, when you walk out that wouldn't just expand. We can have tables over there. The pastor could be over here with his wife. Anybody want to talk to them? Can do that. Y'all practice 2 to 10 Rule and people come out and all the sudden you got some donut holes there, a little stuff like that but we're not there yet that would be much later of pain when your church information makes note-taking easier good long-term marketing. And that's that's true. I showed you that every guest is asked to take an online survey so I can put up a survey either on fake life or on our website, just a short survey and they could tell us what they liked. If there's something they didn't like
So we can do that second time. Yes, gets something like a little gift card or you can even you can even get water bottles, you know, smaller water bottles with the church name and things like that. So, That's our post service contact. Kind of sounds like a lot but it's really not. I mean, you going to get one or two visitors, maybe take you 5 to 10 minutes on Sunday afternoon to put that in and it take me 5 minutes to look at it Sunday night or Monday morning, send them a quick email, you know. So if it won't we're not going to be inundated unless the Lord just really blesses us and he feels the pews and everybody feels out of connection car, you know, if he does that then you know, that's fine. I don't mind sitting there three or four hours contact and if he does that. So Oh yeah, it is possible. I mean, there's churches now who averaged more than 11 conversion a day. I think about that. There are churches that averaged, that more than one a day. If you look at it over the year, so there's over 300, almost 400 people coming to Christ a year.
Exactly. Yep. Like to ask about the Zachariah and the times that we live in, you know, the times we live in right now is really a good time. To get the attention of people because people struggling. Right. Is that the right people are struggling? Gas, inflation jobs. People are struggling and they want answers. And if the church can give them biblical answers and counseling. They will be drawn to the church, if we'll do that. If we'll just do that. If we have answers Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a problem with it. I don't know how everybody else feels. I don't have a problem with that at all like a right. I don't have a bit of problem with that matter, fact, when I start going out and going, Ever, how I do it, whether it's in my own neighborhood or somewhere, I'll invite whoever I come across. Whoever it is, I will, I will invite. I'll give them an invite card really in the back of my mind. What I, what I'm kind of thinking about is this If we can get through this in the next, say, two weeks and have people in place to do these things and then we moved to the Outreach, that'll take us a month month-and-a-half to go through that. Decide what we want to do. I'm really thinking after we do that, let's try to put this into practice by, let's just say the middle of September to the 1st of October, and I'm thinking about it that time, starting a series on something like God, I need answers and I'm on a preach on is God real baby. The first sermon, how do we know God's real after that? What is my self-worth? Just questions that people are asking today. It'll be about a 6 week but what we going to do is, we will Zero in on that first Sunday and will put into practice what we've done here. So, let's just say middle of September to the 1st of October will call that our first big event day. If someone shows up someone comes new will know exactly how to assimilate them. And we're going to know how to go out and invite people and how to get the word out and we'll run Facebook ads. I'll give everyone invite cards, you can invite people in your neighborhood, Family Friends neighbors, people that, you know, and let's just see what the Lord us. So that's what I'm I'm kind of looking at right now middle of September after Labor Day, of course, around October 1st having a series like that and trying to bring in people who are, you know, questioning was God. You know, a lot of people question. Now, while I need God is God real, you know, in this would be a perfect time to do that. So I think that it will work out, and then we'll try this out been October and we'll put it in the practice. And we probably won't do a big event for Christmas because it'll be kind of close to that. So are one big event. This year will be this in the middle of September or the first of October. Then next year, we can look forward to Easter. Mother's Day is a good time, you know. So we'll probably do two or three if we can big events where the last 2 weeks prior to it, we're really going out inviting running Facebook ads and things of that nature. That's that's what we're looking at right now. But again, a part of a good assimilation system is a, a rapid follow-up. And so that's what you want to say something.
Haha.
Right.
Yeah, that's that's true of a lot of neighborhoods around new will have to figure out what we can do and what we can't do. That's one of the reasons I really want to do the Facebook ads because if there's places you can't go, you can put these ads out and we can put in this address right here and it'll go out five, six, seven eight miles around. And people will see that when they're on Facebook, when I add come up, that they'll be able to see that we're all. So we can just do, we can just do three little videos ourselves, inviting people to church. I can I can do a little video. I posted on Facebook and say hey guys this is Pastor Mike we're doing a new series God I need answers talk about it for a little bit. Have the address of the church the pop up while I'm talkin a 30 or 40 s. Dad is all it would take. Yeah. Yeah, that's all it would take. Just think how many people everybody is not going to listen to it but somebody someone might so we can you know, we can do that weekend but we need some folks who's good at social media who can think a little bit outside the box. You know, doing things like that. Think outside the box how to you know read some people and you know and you know this is going to cost a little bit of money. You you order these things it's going to cost a little money. Invite cards are going to cost Facebook ads. You can spend $100 and let your ads run a week. The more you spend the more your ad will run if you put $5 a day. Not going to run too much, that's all you want to put, but if you put a hundred a week say, and you only going to run it for the week prior to it. Anyway, the big event it will run, it will run more, so I think, I think that this will work and another thing We can go around here to businesses. This business is up here. I'm going to take, I'm on. I'm on a take. The dentist office up here next to the pet store. I'm going to take him a dozen donuts. One morning. And tell him. My name is Mike Wilkie, and I'm passing, you Grace Church, and we just one time, we're trying to get out. And let you know that if we are here for you, if you need anything you need, you call us or whatever and give him an invite car.
Write write our closest school is an elementary school about 3 miles away. Every school. Need something. People don't keep up the mowing around there to way they ought to power washing, things like that. If there's something that we can do as a church, I can go and talk to that principle and say my name is Mike, will pass new Grace Church? Look, we're about two miles up the road. Just wanted to say that we are here in community and we wanted to help out. Is there anything we could do for our church can do for your school? Anything you need? Any type of yard work, anytime anything there's something I guarantee you that we can do And you have a staff of teachers there and people get to know well how she keeps coming by here all the time and all like that. They come over here and they do stuff and they're nice to our children. And all that means a lot. That's exactly right. Exactly, right. So you go to the schools and say, look if we can we can have a teacher appreciation day saying, August or July, before teachers go back to school and invite teachers from around the area to come. You know, we can have him come up here and we can pray for him. Give him a little gift or something like that. Law enforcement, we can recognize damn, f***, you know, something like that. We can do those things that will get the word out that that we're serious about the Lord in that. We want to serve the community where we worship in it. That's what we that's what we want to do and who knows? You liable go to elementary school and we could do some things for us. And they say, when we like you a lot and then the Lord just start packing this place out and we may have to go to the elementary school and use their Auditorium for service. You never know. When that be great, we can come here for Wednesday night and go there for Sunday morning. You're not so cuz just think if we do start getting a lot of people, it wouldn't take long before we would run out of space. We got four rooms back here once the kitchen one of the nursery. So, you have to others. So what if you have middle schoolers and high schoolers coming in, where you going to do? Well, you're even going to have small groups in someone's home. Or you going to go, maybe to find a school somewhere and use their rooms on Sunday morning, and they're all recorded. So that, you know, that would be something to think about down the road. Well, we already talked about, you know, the connection card and we need a good post flow Vicky. I'm going to ask you if you'll put two up, if you don't mind. How long we been going? You might have to watch.
About how long? 741. So what brings people back? What we need to do? What I'd like to do is go through each of these. You won't have to spend much time on the first one. And think about and write down things. That need to be done, or that we might do. So, look at the first one friendliness. Well, We practice that now because we're having a fellowship time. Remember the acronym lineup, remember it. Look at it in your sheet. Again if you if you have it.
It'll be about three or four lb. It's on the
Phone recycle page at the bottom so I can page number 3.
Lineup, what's the first one? Look for someone, you don't know. What's next? Introduce yourself. never said, alone engaging conversation after the service, the meet-and-greet that would be later, practice, the 210 rule, That's how are greeters friendly, not overly friendly. You're not going to lay on someone, but you shake their hand. Look at him and tell him that, you're glad to hear. They need anyting. What do we do? I need to go to bathroom. What do we do? You show him walk on walk on to it don't say okay over there take a left then right, I think that's the men's. If it's not you'll know it. When you open the door. You're not you're not going to you're not going to say that with. Yeah we need to greet and we need to direct and if it gets really full people don't like coming in a full Church. You need sometimes you'll have to see them will have someone out front in the morning greeting, given out a bulletin and then, of course, given a gift the first time guess, but that's friendliness. That's the most important. And it's also the easiest to do. But for some reason, people churches. Don't do it, they're just not good at it. I don't know why, but that's the easiest to do. All right, cleanliness outside and inside. All right, Deacon Keith put some bark out front, looks really good. We going to put some more bark over here at the playground area.
I'm on theirs. There's a guy that I get to power wash my house. I'm going to ask him to come over here and look at the church if he gives us a good deal but she should be don't he won't get any more my business. It gives us a good deal. We'll get the church power-washed and it'll look a hundred times better. They're really good. I don't know if you ever gone outside your house and see the little black streaks on your gutters. Let me tell you once I get through with it you don't see any black streaks. None whatsoever.
oh yeah, splatters
no. That is hard to get mud off, especially block, or brick. You know, I used to power wash a lot and I would have to use acid on brick to get mud to have been on it. A long time, I have to use acid to get it off. But plainly this outside. Okay, morbark here, picking up, you know, the limbs and all laying around.
We talked about anything else on the outside.
Leveled out. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Okay? And I don't know if we need any more gravel. If you need to need to smooth out the gravel we got we you know we can we can look at that. Is the equipment out here on the playground? Is it safe, I know it is.
Inca. The w. Needs a rope. Okay. Somebody write this stuff down as we're talkin. So
they didn't, okay, but if I sit on it, That's right. So yeah. We'll we'll just need to get it fixed. If it needs, if it needs fix it.
The graveyard and all I know that's hard to mow. I know it's hard to weed eat their stumps, there's everything else out there. We can't go out there and then you grind stops and things like that. I know that this is the fence around the graveyard. Is that okay? Is that in good shape? It is in good shape. All right.
Is there anything else outside? Okay.
Haha. Right. Yeah.
After.
Right.
Inca.
That's good. That's a good idea. If you want it, safe, you certainly don't want anyone member or gas going out there and your speech shooting straight up there falling and getting hurt like that. You definitely don't want any up. All right, so those things just continue thinking on those things, the outside. What do we need to do before? Let's look at it like that. For the, we need to do before the big kick-off, middle September 1st of October. Yeah. What, what do we need to do before that I inside?
Anything inside of course the bathrooms need to smell good. They do.
Any is there anything else inside but needs to be done? I was in one room back here and might have been the nursery. It look like the molding up there. I don't know if it just needs to be washed or it's just had a lot of brown spots or something like that. I don't know if it needs to be painted, if it needs to be washed or what? There's a couple of places. When you stay up here, it's like kind of back there behind key somewhere like the floor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, right.
And didn't you say something about the ladies restroom off of one time? The floor under the toilet. Okay. Now whether we can do the Hat, probably not before you know, Yeah. Okay, yeah. So we might not be able to do that. That's just something. You know, that we need to look at. I also just stuff that we may I have laying around on tables back here or something. I don't know. We don't have much storage here. Do we?
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, right.
But that wouldn't take much to do that back there. Just go through the room and move something and just find a place for it. You know we just wear everything you know is neat and all
haha.
What are? Yeah that's that that's definitely something that we We talked a little bit about that before but that's something that people would definitely consider. And think about special, if they had children here, they want to know that their children are safe and secure. The we still locked the doors during service. Doors are locked and cut. But yeah, that that's something else. You know, that we can look at the security and I'll
Haha.
Right. Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Now, you don't do that. Yeah does that those need to be well some of them. This one here looks fine. That one there needs to be clean, stuff like that.
babe, looks like it may be so Yeah. And so will will think about that we've got, you know, we've got several months, you know, but we won't, you know what we say. Okay. This is what we need to do by middle of September. You know, we can do it. I have it done quality-of-service I put on there tweak it because that's what we've already done and will continue to do that. Is there certain ways to do things better? We can tweak it. We can you know make the service more smooth and flow and I'll like that here lately. Besides I've been doing pretty good had made big so they're not slowing down on us but we can tweak the service in the things we do it, maybe the order we do. You know, and do that.
That's all I'm going to say tonight, will come by and we'll talk for five and six next week and maybe we can. Think of some people or someone wants to volunteer that would do the the pudding in of the database to people fixing the gift bags and things like that, you know, if they will move on to the Outreach. Amen. All right. Let's pray. Father, we thank and praise you. Love you tonight, Lord, and we thank you that we can come here and work on the ministry. Lord, we know that you are a god of order and Laura, we want our church to be in order and we want to do things the right way, or we want to attract people to this church because we know that people need you and there's so many people live in their life without you. Lord just give us the wisdom. Give us your heart for the lost every single person in here. I pray that they will continue to pray each day Lord give us the wisdom, the bonus and the outgoing. This that we need to be able to talk to people and Lord, give us an open mind and help us to use our imagination in ways that we can reach groups of people at a time where there's businesses or schools, or whatever it is. People around just need to know that we are here and that we can give them the gospel and we can help in any way that we can in Christ's name, I pray. Amen.