Will you join me on Tuesday, April 5, from 2:00pm – 3:30pm Eastern time for The Fusion Webinar?

If you register before Tomorrow at 11:59pm Eastern, you’ll Save $10.00 with the Early Bird rate, PLUS you will receive over $160.00 in Free Bonuses.

This 90-minute webinar is on Assimilation – one of the eight systems where you can see results after even the smallest improvement, so it will add to the bottom line growth of your church. I’ll teach you the Assimilation principles that have helped over 3,000 churches keep more first time guests over the last few years.

The Fusion Webinar is all about helping you become the best possible steward of the guests that God sends your way!

Best of all, you (and your entire Assimilation team if possible) can join me for this training without ever leaving your office or home!  You just need a computer with internet access to participate. No phone call required!

To help you make it worth your while, I’m giving you over $160.00 in bonus resources just for signing up!

You’ll learn:

• Principles to help you create an inviting environment for first-time guests
• How to ”wow” first-time guests into wanting to come back
• The Journey Church’s ”Assimilation System,” used to follow up with the 30+ first-time guests who attend the service each week
• How to turn first-time guests into second-time guests
• How to turn second-time guests into regular attenders and then fully-engaged members
• How to drastically increase the number of guests who give you their contact information
• How to use a Connection Card (Including what to put on it – and what not to put on it)
• How to get people to turn in a Connection Card
• Plus much more!

P.S. To learn more and to Register Now for The Fusion Webinar and Save, CLICK HERE.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’m a believer in measuring things.

In fact, we like to keep track of all sorts of measurements at The Journey – from Connection Card completion rates to how many first-time guest books are given away each week.

So, it seems natural that one of the questions I’m frequently asked about Small Groups is:

How do you measure the weekly attendance of your small groups?

And it comes as a shock to many when my answer is… we don’t!

(take a deep breath – it’s OK – still with me?)

Let me qualify.

The best measure of the health of your Small Groups system is Leader Retention (how many leaders come back and lead again and again).

With that in mind, we don’t add one more task to the weekly routine of our group leaders by having them count, record and send in their group attendance every week.

We check in with group leaders throughout the semester to assist and encourage them and to find out how their groups are going.

And as the semester draws to a close, we ask each group leader this question:

On a good week, what was your average attendance?

And that, combined with the feedback we’ve been collecting throughout the semester, gives us a good gauge of the health of that group.

Hope that helps!

P.S. If you’re ready to develop your semester-based Small Groups System to its maximum potential – and involve 100% of your church in groups – check out The Small Groups Intensive!

With Easter fast approaching (about three weeks away now), hopefully you’ve got some well-designed, clear promotion pieces in the works.  This could be direct mail, door hangers, invite cards, newspaper ads… any number of different media are available to help you invite your community to your Easter service(s).

And with that attention – if you’ve thought through your promotion – comes hits on your church’s website.

So here’s my question…

How are you following up on people who find you on the web?

At The Journey, we have two types of “leads” from our website:

One is a Newsletter Sign-Up. Someone who signs up for our weekly email newsletter.  We add those people to our distribution list.  They get an email from me confirming their subscription and letting them know service times and information about podcasts on our website.

The other online lead is a Free Book Request. We offer a free book to anyone in our area who finds us on the web.  For them, we send the free book with an invite letter from me and add them to our database, so they’ll get our e-newsletter and mailers. They also get a similar email to the one referenced above, but stating that their free book is on the way.

So what’s your plan?  How do people let you know through your email that they’re interested?  A newsletter sign-up?  By sending you an email?  Requesting more information?

I encourage you to take a few minutes this week to plan out your follow up plan for these people.

Remember – God is most likely to send people to the church that is most prepared to be good stewards of them!

P.S. Will you join me Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 29) at 2:00pm Eastern Time for a FREE Webinar called “The Top 3 Assimilation Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)“?

It’s a 60-minute online training – all you need to participate is a computer with internet access – and you can Register Now for FREE here:

www.ChurchLeaderInsights.com/assimmistakes

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that just crushed it.
– Mark Twain

Today I’m wrapping up a series of posts about the importance of the first few minutes of a newcomer’s experience at your church (click here for Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).

We’ve been looking at the fact that a First-Time Guest knows whether or not they’ll return to your church in the first seven minutes of their initial experience at your church.

And today we’re going to look at the final element in the “Pre-Service” period – how guests are SEATED.

The first time my wife and I went to a Broadway show, we saw the value of a good usher in action.

From the moment we entered the theater, we were literally ushered to our seats.

If you’ve ever experienced Broadway, you know the drill: The usher who scans your ticket points you toward the correct entrance, where another usher points you toward the correct aisle, where yet another usher walks you to your row and motions to your seats.

We knew that as long as we had our ticket out for the ushers to see, they would do all the work. We were along for the ride.

On the other hand, we’ve been to sporting events and concert venues where we missed the first 15 minutes because we were still trying to find the correct wing, level, section and row for our seats. We were on our own, juggling concession purchases and upset that we were missing something we had paid to see. There was certainly no usher to make sure we had a smooth experience.

Here’s the difference in thinking: Broadway shows run every night. They want to ensure you’ve had an experience that will keep you coming back for more.

They want you to tell your friends. Event venue proprietors aren’t nearly as concerned with earning your repeat business. They know that their draw is only as strong as that night’s particular entertainment. You’ll be back when there’s an act you want to see, in spite of customer service conditions.

When it comes to providing service to our first-time guests, we need to be continually aware that our goal is to make them as comfortable and happy as possible.

We want them to come back every week. We want them to bring their friends. We’d do well to adopt the mindset of Broadway’s bright lights rather than that of self-service stadiums.

So… What can you do about the way people are SEATED at your church as you prepare for Easter in exactly one month?

Make sure your ushers know to find first-time guests (or people who look uncomfortable) good seats, close to the front

The thinking behind Greeted, Directed, Treated and Seated may be a paradigm shift for you.

Until this point, your plan for first-time guests may have been simply to get them through the door and make your impression with the service itself.

While that sounds good in theory, research has shown time and time again that you don’t have that luxury. Those newcomers will likely make a decision about their return visit before they make it to their seats, based on the subconscious and conscious tools of evaluation God has blessed them with.

You can acknowledge your guests as the gifts that they are by having a pre-service system in place that will far exceed their expectations and create that elusive positive first impression.

You’ll excite them to want to visit your church again and again so that they can ultimately learn about the excellence, graciousness, hospitality and generosity of the One after whom you are modeling the system of their assimilation.

P.S. Are you ready to learn a proven, step-by-step system for helping First-Time Guests become Fully-Committed Members of your church?

Join me for The Fusion Webinar on Tuesday, April 5th at 2pm Eastern!

Reserve your spot today and Save $20.00 at the Super Early Bird rate – PLUS, receive Over $160.00 in FREE Bonuses!

Click here to Register Now.

It’s Jason Hatley, Pastor of Worship Arts at The Journey.

We are in the middle of audition season here at The Journey and Nelson asked me to share with you a very simple, but powerful idea that we have used for years to involve new people serving on our worship team.

It will help you grow your team as well – this Sunday (seriously . . . take a look!).

Last Sunday I had the privilege to host a Worship Arts Overview Reception at our newest Journey campus in South Florida.

If you are familiar with the “How to Double Your Worship Team in a Day” resource, you know that the Worship Arts Reception is one of the KEY STRATEGIES that I use to involve new people in ministry on our Worship Arts Team.

It’s basically a short, 30-minute party that I host twice a year after the service and invite people who are interested in serving on the Worship Arts Team to attend.

Sounds easy, right . . . that’s because it is

But it’s also powerful!

In fact I’ve found that nearly 50% of the people who sign up for our big day of auditions do so at a Worship Arts Overview Reception.

Now – I’ve hosted these types of receptions many times before at our New York City campuses. But this one was special . . .

You see our new campus in Boca Raton, FL is only one month old, and this was the very first Worship Arts Reception that we’ve held.

Being so young, our Worship Arts Team here in Boca is only has about 20 people serving on the team right now (compared to the over 200 who serve on the teams that we’ve built in our New York City campuses).

But yesterday something powerful happened.

Fifteen people who are NOT currently serving on our Worship Arts Team attended this reception. Twelve of them signed up for an audition and will be auditioning to join our Worship Team in just a couple weeks.

Through one easy-to-lead event, our Worship Arts Team will involve a dozen new people in life-changing ministry and our team will grow by at least 50%.

And it all happened simply because I did something this week to help my team grow.

So – here’s my question for you . . . what are you doing this week to empower talented people in your church to get off the sidelines and get involved with your Worship Arts ministry?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Put a Worship Team interest checkbox on your connection card
• Host a Worship Arts Reception
• Actively try to meet people after the service (that’s right – this is one of the EASIEST ways to get new people involved).
• Put a flyer in the program or an announcement slide on the screen
• Decide to hold a BIG day of auditions next month
• Call that person that you heard was a Graphic Designer but haven’t followed up with yet
• Email your team and ask them who they know that should be serving on the team

Whatever you decide, DO SOMETHING THIS WEEK to involve people in life-changing ministry on your Worship Arts Team.

When you do, you help people not only use their gifts but also grow in their faith and live out part of their life-mission in your church.

Your partner in ministry,

Jason

PS: To have your worship leader receive leadership lessons like this every week, subscribe them to the FREE Worship Leader Insights newsletter at http://www.worshipleaderinsights.com/newsletter

PPS: If this one simple idea can help you experience immediate growth on your worship team, imagine what it would be like for your worship leader to receive hands-on, in-depth training from me in the Worship Leader Tele-Coaching Network.

Typically in my networks . . .

• The average worship team doubles.
• The worship leader develops a one-year personal growth plan and doubles his/her effectiveness.
• The worship leader builds a worship planning system that keeps your services weeks, months, even a year planned in advance
• The pastor emails me and says what a difference the network is making in their worship leader.
• And much more!

The Worship Leader Tele-Coaching Network is a way for you to invest in your worship leader’s growth through a 12-month training experience. Nearly 150 worship leaders have already experienced the benefits of these systems, and your worship leader can to.

I have a new network beginning in just a few weeks on Friday, April 8. The deadline for applying is fast approaching.

Apply online, learn more about the network (and the over $1419 in free resources your worship leader will receive if accepted) at http://www.worshipleaderinsights.com/coaching.

Our team is away at two conferences this week so no blogging until later in the week. In the meantime, here’s a fun post to make you smile

Our church in Boca Raton advertised in “The University Press” for Florida Atlantic University (we ‘own’ the back cover each week promoting our church which is directly across the street from FAU – its been pretty successful for us – maybe there’s a serious lesson here, but I digress).

In last weeks paper, the main ad was on the “Top 10 Mustaches of All Time” – thought you might enjoy it….

10. Yosemite Sam

9. Salvador Dali

8. Burt Reynolds

7. Groucho Marx

6. Gene Shalit

5. The Swedish Chef (from the Muppets)

4. Mike Ditka

3. Charlie Chaplin

2. Tom Selleck

1. Mario

Your fellow mustachioed (or is mine a goatee or maybe a VanDyke) friend,

Nelson

P.S. Who do you think is missing? Maybe Sam Elliott?

Post your responses below… Bonus points if you recommend a pastor!

A good businessman is hard to bruise and quick to heal.
- Richard Preston, Nucor Steel

Today I’m continuing a series of posts about the importance of the first few minutes of a newcomer’s experience at your church (click here for Part 1 and Part 2).

In fact, a First-Time Guest knows whether or not they’ll return to your church in the first seven minutes of their initial experience at your church.

That’s before they hear the music, before the message has begun – which means you should be very concerned about what happens to your guests “pre-service.”

During this “Pre-Service” time period, four helpful focus areas are how a person is Greeted, Directed, Treated and Seated, and today we’re going to look at how they’re TREATED.

First-time guests want to feel respected and welcomed.

They want to know that you’re serious about making sure they have a good experience. The way you, your team and your regular attenders treat guests and their families will tell them what they need to know.

If possible, providing food is one of the best ways to show your guests you care, and it’s a sure way to put them at ease.

The late food writer James Beard once said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” It also acts as a welcome, comforting treat in any situation.

When done well, food can really “wow” your guests, but when done poorly, it turns them off.

A few words of advice: Don’t skimp on food. This is not the area to try and save a nickel. Don’t cut things in half to make them stretch. Don’t glare at the person who takes three donuts.

Food is your chance to show unchurched people that you care enough to offer them something for free that will meet a need.

Quality, not extravagance, is the key.

So, what can you do this week to “treat” your First-Time Guests?

P.S. To maximize your church’s Assimilation System and drastically improve the number of First-Time Guests who return and ultimately become Fully-Committed Members of your church – check out The Assimilation Intensive.

Did you read your March Church Leader Insights Newsletter?

Each month I send out the latest and best thinking on Church Growth, Evangelism, Leadership, Church Planting, and more – the best church leadership content I can find - designed to help you lead your church to greater health and growth.

And the best part…. It’s absolutely FREE! (click here to sign-up now).

Just in case you missed this month’s edition, here’s a look at a powerful article from John Maxwell:

WHAT ARE YOUR FEARS KEEPING YOU FROM DOING?

“Admit your fears! One of our biggest misconceptions is that courage equals a lack of fear. In actuality, the opposite is true. Mark Twain explained, ‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.’ By admitting our fear, we can then challenge its accuracy.” - Read More

The Church Leader Insights Newsletter is designed to bring you the best available church leadership content each and every month – and all you have to do is check your email!

If you’re not already subscribed, you can click this link to sign up right now.