Category: Church Strategy

Elephant Pee and Five Things to Do After Easter

One Easter I was working for a church that did an “illustrated sermon” each year on Easter complete with sets, costumes and live animals on stage. This particular Easter the decision was made to include a small elephant in the pageant. I’m not sure how an elephant fits in the passion story, but it seemed like a good idea to someone. When the time came for the elephant to enter the auditorium it chose no. It chose instead to relieve itself on the carpet in front of the main door to the church, and it wasn’t going to move until it was done. So Easter came to stinky halt while we waited for an elephant to empty its bladder. In case you are wondering an elephant’s bladder can hold a lot of liquid.

I share that story to encourage pastors; no matter how rough your Easter services were at least cleaning up elephant pee isn’t on your To Do List.

Regardless how your Easter services went the key now is to turn your attention to what happens next for your church. Hopefully you have some new families to follow up and some stories of life change to share. So let’s roll up our sleeves and get back to work. Here are six things I think you should do to follow up on Easter:

1. Thank your staff and volunteers

Your team may not have had to clean up elephant pee, but I’m sure their past few weeks have been challenging. It is important to slow your roll and take some time to thank everyone for the hard work they put in during this season. Don’t just send a general email, name people by name. Better yet, write a personal note or go to each person and thank them for their contribution.

2. Celebrate the wins

Find anything that was a win over Easter and celebrate like crazy. I learned this while working for Rick Warren. After one Easter a campus pastor was disappointed because his campus missed their goal for attendance. Rick said, “Don’t worry about the people who didn’t come, celebrate the people who did! You set a big goal and stretched further than you would have without the goal. That’s a win!”

3. Tell the stories

Hopefully you had photographers and story gatherers at your Easter services, but even if you didn’t find a way to tell the stories. Share stories as a team and share stories with the congregation. Nothing helps people get the “why” behind the “what” like a good story.

4. Follow up with the new guests

As soon as possible follow up with new guests. The key to effective follow up is to move beyond just advertising what the church has to offer and asking them to come back. Find a way to discover the guest’s needs and feedback. Invest in ways you can truly serve the new people God has brought to your front step. Feed the 5000.

5. Take a breath

Everyone needs a rest, especially the leaders. Give staff an extra day off this week. Take some time to completely disconnect from the church for 24 hours. Have some fun, blow off some steam and recharge your batteries. You’re going to need all the energy you can build.

6. Sprint to Mother’s Day

You have six weeks until Mother’s Day. Two weeks after Mother’s Day is Memorial Day and then no one will think about church until the fall. As a church you’ve just had one of the biggest days of the years, now your in the back stretch. Sprint through the finish line giving every weekend everything you have. Now is the time to schedule a guest speaker for the two weekends after Mother’s Day so you can put all your energy into the series that starts next weekend. Encourage your team that the next six weeks are a sprint, but everyone will get some rest after Mother’s Day. And follow through on your promise.

And skip the elephant next Easter.

(Email me at geoff@ministrytogether.com if you’d like to chat about how we can help you with strategy and leadership)

Five Things Pastors Need To Do Before Easter

One spring a church staff member informed me he was taking Easter weekend off. (It felt like Tom Brady telling Bill Belichik he was skipping the Super Bowl to take Gisele skiing.) He said he didn’t think missing Easter Sunday was a big deal, at his last church Easter was just another Sunday. Why did we make such a big deal about Easter?

Obviously Easter is a big deal because it is the day we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the single biggest event in the history of the world. Easter is also a big deal because it is the one day of the year that a majority of Americans still consider going to church. Getting someone to attend one day a year isn’t the point, of course, but it is a great place for people to take a first or next step toward God.

I’ve seen pastors work hard on a creative message to share the Gospel, worship leaders pull out all the stops for a moving service and children’s directors put everything they have into making Easter a day kids will remember; only to miss incredible opportunities to help people to connect to God through their church on the one day they show up. With that in mind here is my list of things not to miss this Easter.

Five things to do before Easter:

  1. Anticipate the challenges of a first time attender

    Grab a small team and walk through a weekend experience at your church from the parking lot to the lobby to the children’s spaces to the worship center to the kids pickup back to the parking lot and out to the street. Be sure to think through every entrance to your parking lot and building. Where do you need to post hosts? Where do you need to add signs? How can you help ease the anxiety of the introvert who walks in for the very first time?

  2. Prepare to capture stories

    After Easter you will want to share the story of what happens with staff, volunteers and attenders, so you need to prepare in advance. Enlist volunteer photographers to capture everything that happens on the weekend. Reach out to your congregation and I guarantee you will find volunteers photographers. Provide a Dropbox or Google folder for them to upload their photos, give them a few common sense directions, and then ask them to fire away.

    Also designate one or two staff members or volunteers to be on the lookout for stories to capture. They can interview families before and after church to collect quotes and pictures to share later. Give them common sense instructions and see what they collect. Nothing encourages leaders and volunteers like stories of life change.

  3. Make a plan to gather contact information

    How will you invite people to share at least their email address so you con follow up? For many years Rick Warren has had everyone who attends Saddleback at Easter fill out a simple three question survey on their faith. It is a great way to get a look at the faith journey of the congregation and to collect contact information.

  4. Have strategy to invite people back to what is next

    If I visit your church on Easter why would I ever come back? I listened to the music and heard your sermon. My kids got their Easter eggs. We’ll see you Christmas Eve, or maybe next Easter.

    I attended a church a couple of weeks ago where the pastor did a great job of intriguing me to come back by giving a preview of the next week’s sermon. He didn’t just announce the topic and show a graphic, he actually set up the problem he’d be unpacking next Sunday. If the church wasn’t two hours from my house I’d show up just to hear the next sermon. How can you do more than simply announce your catchy series title to encourage guests to return?

  5. Build a team for follow up

    Make sure you have a team of staff and/or volunteers ready to follow up on everyone who identifies themselves as a first time guest, and be sure they are ready to respond within 24 hours. Make sure your follow-up isn’t just a mail-merged impersonal email. Follow up in a way that isn’t creepy, but seems like a real person read my information and really wants to make a connection.

Easter is a really big deal. Easter is a day when people who normally pay no attention to the Gospel come willingly to our churches to consider the invitation of God. Don’t miss it!

(Be sure to check back next week for Five Things Every Pastor Needs to Do After Easter)

Email me at geoff@ministrytogether.com if you are interested in more help with church strategy.

Five words your church should ban

I recently read an article in the Harvard Business Review titled Ban These 5 Words From Your Corporate Values Statement which reminded of a mistake I often see in a church’s list of core values; many of the items aren’t core values. It’s not that the items are evil or bad, the problem is their list of core values tells you almost nothing about who they are as a church. Take a look at your church’s list of core values and answer this question; Could your core values describe almost any evangelical church in America? If yes, then you don’t have core values, you have general principles. Core values drive your church toward your very unique mission in the word while general principles describe the basic beliefs and practices of almost all churches.

To help you in this exercise let’s look at five words churches should ban from their list of core values. WARNING: When you finish this list you may have to start over articulating your core values.

Five words your church should ban

  1. Authentic
    Quoting the HBR article: “You can’t claim to be authentic or that you want to be — you must simply be authentic. And your organization will be authentic if its leaders actually act and communicate in authentic ways.” When I see a church with Authentic as one of their core values my first thought is, “Hmm, I wonder what they are trying to hide?” Authenticity isn’t something to strive for, it’s something to be.
  2. Transparent
    Transparent is the cousin of Authentic. It shows up in lists of core values more often than James Harden at the free throw line (obscure NBA reference). The challenge isn’t that transparency isn’t a positive attribute, the challenge is that it doesn’t change who you’re striving to be as a church. No church has opacity as a core value. Like authenticity, transparency is something that will flow naturally out of who you identify, develop and deploy as leaders.
  3. Relevant
    Of course a church should hope to be relevant to their culture, but relevance isn’t the VALUE you are pursuing. Core values push to the front of the line when there is a conflict of interest, which means that a church based on eternal biblical truths will at times seem completely irrelevant to the current culture. What is the value BEHIND the desire to be as relevant as ethically possible in an ever-shifting culture? That is your core value.
  4. Fun
    A core value should be true of your church in every situation. That is why it is a “core” value; everything you do flows out of that value. I’m all about fun and humor. I love leaders that don’t take themselves too seriously and churches that know how to create fun experiences.
    There are, however, many times when fun is inappropriate. There is nothing fun about a child’s funeral, a failing marriage or a school shooting. In those moments no one is looking for a pastor who can tell a joke or a church that knows how to throw a party. It’s okay, even good, to be fun; it’s just not the core of who you want to be as a church.
  5. Gospel-centered
    Often this means, “Our theology is WAY better than the theology of the other churches in town. We are the heavyweights in the GFC (Gospel Fighting Championship).” Your particular theological bent may be a core value but focusing on the Gospel isn’t your unique or exclusive purview.

Your core values drive the mission of your church. Are you focused on people who’ve never heard the Gospel? Are you obsessed with justice for widows and orphans? Is your central purpose to see people become better disciples? Do you spend a huge amount of time and money investing in reaching unreached people groups in other countries? Are you passionate about building strong families? All of these are positive, but not every church is focused on the same areas. Every church has unique call and a unique bent; that’s what your core values should reflect. The authors of the HBR article say it like this:

“There isn’t one right set of values for every organization. Your core values should describe the collective attitudes and beliefs that you desire all employees to hold, translate those into specific actions and decisions that they should make, and then in turn show how those behaviors produce customer experiences that define and differentiate your brand. Your core values need to be unique.”

Take some time with other leaders in your church and ask these two questions:

  1. Are our core values unique to our church, or do they fit with any similar church in the country?
  2. Do our core values accurately reflect our unique call, passion and style of ministry?

While you’re looking at your core values you might want to pull out your mission statement and take a look at that as well. Here are some ideas to help write a more effective mission statement.

If you are redefining your vision, mission and values we’d love to help. We are certified in the Paterson Center’s StratOp process, which is an incredible system for discovering and executing your church’s God-given plan. You can contact us here for more information.

Does Your Mission Statement Suck?

Why do you do what you do?

Recently Sherry and I were in a pre-service meeting at a church where we were speaking that morning. The young lady leading the pre-service meeting of core volunteers asked, “Who knows the mission of our church?” There was some nervous laughter and feet shuffling, but no one had a clue. She turned to another staff member to see if he knew, but he was equally clueless. Finally she read a well-crafted phrase that had been pasted onto the church website and promptly forgotten. There was nothing wrong with the stated mission, it was simply irrelevant to the people charged with executing the mission. In the end none of us who assembled to conduct church that day had the faintest idea of why we were there.

Contrast that with another church I am connected to, Real Life Church based in Orlando. On a recent weekend a stage host sprang a pop quiz on the congregation at the largest campus, “Hey, who knows the mission of Real Life?” Immediately almost the entire congregation responded, “Changed lives!” There was no doubt the bottom line for everything that happens at Real Life, “Will what we are do lead directly to changed lives?” The mission is clear and easily understood.

One of the things I love about Community Christian in Naperville is the clarity and consistency of their mission. “Helping people find their way back to God” isn’t just a tagline on their website, it is the driving force behind everything they do. In the 13 years I’ve known Dave and Jon Ferguson their commitment to that one line has never wavered, and everything CCC does is organized around that simple concept. The mission at Willow Creek has never changed since the church was planted in 1975, “We exist to turn irreligious people into fully devoted followers of Christ.” My guess is that every staff member and most members could tell you some form of that sentence without hesitation. Community Christian and Willow Creek know what they do and why they do it.

Jesus was a strong believer in a simple mission. In Luke 19 church people were outraged that he would seem to endorse the lifestyle of a infamous “sinner” in the community by having lunch at Zaccheus’ house. To help them understand they why behind the what of his actions Jesus gave this simple and memorable mission statement, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” Simple, direct and memorable. I imagine each of Jesus’ disciples knew exactly why Jesus came and what it was he was about. He came to seek and save the lost.

What about your church? Do you have a mission that is compelling, memorable and actionable? If I met five regular attenders and asked them, “What is the mission of your church?”, how many could tell me? I’ve worked with some churches with no mission statement at all. They have no idea why they do what they do. I’ve worked with many churches with a long, detailed mission statement they had spent a lot of time crafting. The challenge was their mission was unknown and meaningless to most of the attenders. Every church (and organization) needs a simple, one sentence mission statement the sums up the reason for everything they do. If you do not have one how does anyone know why you do what you do?

What is your one sentence purpose for doing what you do? Once you have that let’s take a look at your list of Core Values, I think there may be some problems there as well.