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 send a form letter to) all of our first time guests, do I really need to write a handwritten note to each of them?

YES, YES, YES AND YES!

The handwritten note is MORE important and impactful than either the email or the calls.

The handwritten note shows that you took some actual time writing out a personalized note, rather than simply plugging their name into a database and pressing “send”. On top of that, the handwritten note is more likely to be opened than a form letter (see my ABC Mail video for more about this).

And don’t forget to include a free gift of some sort – a $5.00 gas card or similar is what I recommend in most areas.

A Word of Caution on Phone Calls

If you’re currently calling your church’s guests, I am not sure the calls should come from someone other than the pastor – you might want to find out what kind of response your current callers are getting.

What I hear over and over is that the volunteer caller ’so wants to please the pastor’ that they fail to tell you how awkward the calls feel or the weird, quick or snippy responses they get from the people they’re calling.

If you really want to test the value of your follow-up phone calls, I would personally take 10 – 12 people over the next month and call them – then decide if you want to continue or not.

Here’s why: In 90% of the areas of the country I work in, phone calls are more likely to ‘push people away’ rather than draw them back - the only exception we’ve found is senior adult communities in Florida, Arizona or California. Unchurched people find it particularly intruding.

That said, if you do call, the best hope is that you get the voice mail – that can work for you if the voice mail is well done, scripted and personal.

If you want to improve first time guest follow-up at your church this week, I suggest you send a brief, handwritten note to each of them with a $5 gas card included. It’s a proven “wow” that goes a long way with new people!

And let me know how it goes.

P.S. To learn everything I’ve learned over the years about assimilating new people into your church, consider investing in The Assimilation Intensive Workshop.

Will Fusion Work in Canada?

I love to hear all the success stories of how pastors and their churches are able to implement the principles of our various books, seminars and resources. Here’s an email I received recently about how this pastor (one of my current coaching participants) has been able to put the Fusion assimilation process to work in his church. Enjoy!

We’re located on the eastern seaboard of Canada… similar environment to the New England states. Conservative in many ways and not known for many growing churches. I was off work for 2 months due to kidney cancer surgery and came back with a renewed determination that God wanted something greater to happen in our church and community.

I had our Board read Fusion in June. They loved the book. Then I gathered a team of 7 people willing to read Fusion and work on doing a better job connecting with guests. There was some extensive debate over whether or not we were “bribing” people to come to church with the gifts. Some were very critical of the approach. They said IT WON’T WORK HERE!

This is exactly what you were saying yesterday about it working in Manhattan but NOT HERE.

Well, we are a church of less than 100 on the east coast of Canada and it’s working here. I proceeded to do an “experiment” and see what the response would be from our guests. Let me tell you, the critics were silenced and are now 100% supportive of the system. We have not even finished implementing everything yet and I have never had such positive feedback as I have received through the survey questions. Our guests LOVE GETTING THE HAND WRITTEN NOTE AND GIFT CARDS IN THE MAIL.

There have been many positive comments. Here’s one short quote from a guest…

“Pastor,

Between the emails and the gift card, I don’t think we’ve ever been to a church that’s gone to so such effort to welcome us. Makes me feel a little bad that we won’t be making it out this Sunday. We were originally going to be doing something on Sunday afternoon, but it got pushed to the mid-morning. Rest assured though, we will be back next week.”

Not only that, the first time I used the Connection Card resulted in 5 people indicating decisions for Christ that we’re following up on. We had all their contact info so we have been able to do a better follow up than we ever did in the past. We were also able to collect contact info from newer people that have attended for several months but just never filled out our regular guest card.

THIS REALLY WORKS!

I’m really encouraged and excited about what’s ahead!

Thanks for sharing the good report and keep up the great Kingdom work in Canada!

P.S. If you’d like to implement a follow-up system that will WOW newcomers to your church, check out The Assimilation Seminar!

How to Spark Immediate Growth in Your Church – Countdown to Ignite

The time is almost here!

I’ve been told that my new book, Ignite: How to Spark Immediate Growth in Your Church, is set to ship by September 26 (just four days from now) so pre-order now.

This book is a how-to manual for your church to reach more people.  I lay out a step-by-step, Biblically grounded, proven plan for creating immediate church growth by utilizing a “Big Day” to mobilize the church for evangelism.

I am excited about all of the encouraging comments you have been sending me already and can’t wait to hear what you think after reading it, so…

Click here to pre-order your copy of Ignite today!

Where Should Our Small Groups Meet?

We often get asked questions about where Small Groups should meet, what’s most effective and how important location is in planning for groups.

I’ve asked Adam Bishop, our Small Groups Pastor at The Journey, to share some thoughts on where groups meet:

Thanks Nelson — This is actually one of the most important topics that Kerrick and I address in the Small Groups Tele-Coaching Network that we lead. We have found through surveys of our Group Members that location is the first feature people look at when deciding what Group they will sign up for.

So at The Journey we make sure that each Group has a location listed in its description both on our website and in our catalog.

However, the location is for a general area, not a specific address.

In Manhattan we will list the location as Midtown, Upper West Side, or Upper East Side, but depending on your church’s setting it may be helpful to list by neighborhood or Elementary school zone.

We list general areas for safety reasons because we don’t want to publish our Group Leaders home addresses on our website or in the catalog.

We also do this so that our Group Leaders can supply the specific meeting place and detailed directions as a part of their follow-up after people sign up.

Now, as for where the Groups meet…  Some of our Groups meet in homes and some meet in public places like parks, restaurants, or public buildings.

We rent space for our services on Sunday so we don’t have a permanent church location for Groups to meet in, which even if we did, we would still have our Groups meet in the community in homes or public places.

Now, we do ask our leaders to choose a location and stick with it for the full 8-12 week semester as opposed to rotating week to week like some groups encourage. There are a lot of reasons for this, one of which is consistency for people who may not be able to attend every weekly meeting.

This one of the many topics that Kerrick and I go in much further detailing discussing in the upcoming Small Groups Pastor Tele-Coaching Network, which begins in November.

This new Tele-Coaching Network has proven to be helpful and encouraging, as you will interact with other Small Groups Pastors and Directors who are striving to maximize the spiritual growth in their church through small groups.

Click here for more information or to download your application now for Small Groups Pastor Tele-Coaching!

The Most Important Ingredient – A Saturday Quote

“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. president

Ignite – Available on Kindle

Just a quick post today –

Thanks to so many of you who have been asking about my next book lately, Ignite: How to Spark Immediate Growth in Your Church.

Many of you have already pre-ordered at Amazon.com and I wanted to let you know about one more development on that front:

Ignite is now available for the Kindle reader!

To pre-order your copy of Ignite for Kindle, CLICK HERE.

September Book Recommendations (Video)

Thanks for all the great comments and emails about these book recommendation videos I’ve done the last couple of months.  In case you missed them, you can click these links to watch the videos for July and August.

Here are my books for September – enjoy!

September Book Recommendations:

P.S.  Have you read a good leadership book recently? You can send me your suggestions using the “Ask Nelson” button on the right side of this blog.

Assimilation – Can I follow-up on first time guests too quickly?

In Fusion and in all of my other Assimilation resources, I share how vital prompt follow-up is to connecting new people to your church.  I teach a practical process to follow-up with first and second time guests multiple times in the days immediately following their visit to your church.

Because of how strongly I emphasize that this follow-up happen quickly, I sometimes receive questions about whether or not your follow-up can happen too fast.

The short answer?  YES, you can follow-up too quickly.

One simple reason is that most people don’t check emails on Sunday.  For that reason, I like to wait until Monday or even Tuesday morning to send follow-up emails.

As for follow-up cards/letters, we’ve found that they’re most effective if they’re delivered on Wednesday afternoon, so people will get them when they get home on Wednesday. It’s close enough to their visit to reinforce their positive experience and close enough to the next weekend to encourage them to return.

For delivery to happen on time, we drop follow-up letters in the mail on Monday afternoon.  Here in NYC it takes about 2 days for a letter to hit, but it may be faster in your town.  Just aim to have your mail arrive on Wednesday.

All that being said, I do most of the work of preparing these items on Sunday (or even the week before as much as possible) to insure that I can click “Send” and drop them in the outgoing mail at the above times.

How effectively is your church following up with new people?

P.S. For more advanced ideas to connect new people to your church, check out The Assimilation Intensive.

Better than Yourself – A Saturday Quote

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.”
– William Faulkner, Author

4 Questions – How to Handle New Believer Follow-up

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I am a stickler for follow-up.  Many of us in church leadership are heavy on good intentions and light on follow-up.

One follow-up question that just about every pastor I know has wrestled with is “how can we most effectively follow up with those who have indicated a commitment to follow Jesus?”

To this question, I’d say that a good follow-up process for new believers will answer the following 4 questions.

What do you want a new believer to do or experience during:

1. The first hour? At The Journey want them to mark their decision on their connection card and pray the prayer with us.
2. The first day? We send them an email confirming and affirming their decision.
3. The first week? We send them a new believers book I wrote that is a  seven day new believers study.
4. The first month? We want them to get baptized and be involved in a small group.

How you answer these questions will vary depending on your tradition, style and/or your preferred resources, but that you answer these questions is essential if your church is going to effectively make disciples of those who choose to follow Christ through your ministry.

P.S. To raise the evangelistic temperature of your church, check out The Evangelism Seminar.

The Ministry Ladder – How to Hold Volunteers Accountable

I have been excited to see how well my latest church system seminar – The Ministry Seminar - has been received and how many of you have jumped right into improving the way your churches mobilize volunteers.

One of the parts of this resource that is proving to be helpful is something known as “the ministry ladder,” or the path by which a first time volunteer becomes a regular, growing, Christ-like volunteer.

The idea of the ministry ladder is to think through and plan out the desired steps for volunteers to move forward and grow at your church and the requirements at each rung.

In implementing the ministry ladder at your church, ask yourself this question – at what point on the ladder does a person have to be:

1. A Christian to go to the next rung?
2. A church member to go to the next rung?
3. A tither to go to the next rung?

Rather than trying to compose a “one size fits all” ladder to be applied to the various ministries of your church, each ministry area is responsible to develop and maintain its own ladder.

In The Ministry Seminar I’m able to go further in depth on a couple of specific ministries at The Journey and what their ladders look like.

For each instance, don’t make it too tough to get on the ladder but make it harder to stay.  In other words, try to get as many people as possible serving but increase the required commitment level and accountability as they move up the ladder.

And finally, you don’t want to make it too hard to climb the ladder but you do need to make it clear and don’t compromise (for example, I will allow you to lead a group one semester without being a member but you MUST be a member in order to lead the second time).

P.S. For more on the ministry ladder and other proven principles to maximize your church’s volunteers, click here for The Ministry Seminar.

Q & A – Church Systems, Where to Start?

Here’s a recent question I answered from a church planter:

Q: Nelson, thanks so much for all you do. I came across some of your resources recently and have really learned a lot from them.

Our new church has just launched and I’m wanting to start implementing the systems, where do I start?

It’s a little overwhelming and any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

A: Thanks for your kind words and congratulations on launching a new church!

As far as systems go, the first thing I would recommend is for you to download my Free Church Systems 2.0 Report (PDF). Reading that should give you a good primer on church systems and a better “big picture” of how they all work together.

After that, I encourage you to start with your Assimilation System. In many ways it’s one of the easier systems to implement and it yields results quickly (in more people getting plugged in to your church). You’ll want to implement the full Assimilation process before moving on.

Next, move on to Evangelism (my next book Ignite can help with this). The Evangelism System is all about getting people from your community to attend your church for the first time. This flow of new people is essential to the health and growth of your church.

Following Evangelism, you can then move on to the Worship Planning System. This is about how your church plans, executes, evaluates and improves the weekly worship service.

So, basically, strengthen your guest experience, outreach and worship services first. Those three should be your priority for now.

Then, as you grow beyond about 110 average adults in attendance, you can implement Small Groups.

The most important thing for you right now is to get started. By breaking it down in this order you should be able to immediately move forward step by step without allowing yourself to be overwhelmed.

I hope that makes sense.

P.S. Ready to jump start your systems implementation?  Check out my Systems Seminar Package and save more than $325.00!

High Expectations – A Saturday Quote

“High expectations are the key to everything.”
– Sam Walton, Wal-Mart Founder

Last Chance to Join the Worship Pastor Tele-Coaching Network

If you have been waiting to sign-up your Worship Pastor for the final Worship Pastor Tele-Coaching Network of 2009, then now is the time. The new Worship Pastor Tele-Coaching network, lead by my Worship Pastor, Jason Hatley, begins next Friday, September 11.

Why have your Worship Pastor join this network?

Imagine for a moment, what if …

• Your worship team could double over the 10 months and so could your Worship Pastor’s level of effectiveness?
• Your Worship Pastor could develop personal leadership growth habits to help him/her lead the ministry and volunteer team at an optimum level?
• You could achieve greater clarity and a stronger working relationship with your Worship Pastor?
• Your Worship Pastor were able to work with you to plan your services months in advance, and create more impactful services than ever before, while reducing the stress of Sunday?
• Your Worship Pastor could reduce your stress by taking greater ownership and building a thriving worship ministry?

These are the results that over 75 pastors have seen in their worship pastors in the last three years as a direct result of Jason’s Tele-Coaching network. Listen to what Lead Pastor, Marty Martin has said…

“Our worship arts pastor participated in Jason’s coaching network and for the first time, we really ‘get’ each other. We work so well together because we both are on the same page. As a result we were able to plan out the entire year’s preaching calendar. Everything is much easier!”

Jason told me this morning that he only has a small handful of spots left in the network.

Download the application and return it today.

Bad Situation, Great Opportunity (Video)

When we talk about advertising/promoting your church in my coaching networks I often mention that, while advertising can get very expensive quickly, news releases can be an effective and inexpensive way to get the word out (especially when the topic is compelling).

And when God is involved, the impact of such a release can be multiplied exponentially.

Case in point:
I got an email a few weeks ago from one of my Advanced Coaching Alumni, Dan Plourde. He’s the Lead Pastor of Calvary Jupiter Church in Florida.

The church had a truck stolen (full of equipment) and they had the wisdom to handle the situation in a way that honored God and presented their church in a good light to the community.

In fact, the local news picked up the story and ran it as the lead on the evening news:

Way to go God!

And great job to Dan and his team for staying focused on the big picture in the midst of a bad situation!

P.S. Are you loading in/out of a truck or trailer each week?  Check out The Portable Church Challenge.