Your Entry Point Matters

I love my garage. When we moved from Arizona to Orlando, I wanted to make sure we bought a house with extra room in the garage. I use my garage to store my car and work on it. We also have an extra freezer, paint, bikes and whole lot of other stuff.

The funniest thing is nine out of 10 times we use the garage to go into the house. Entering the house through the garage, isn’t usually a clear path inside.

But where do you point guests when they come to your house? I know the last place we would want a guest to go is through our garage to come inside. Family and close friends might occasionally walk through the garage, but first-time guests…not a chance!

Why? Honestly, it’s more comfortable for us and I also think it’s more comfortable for them.

Thinking from a similar point of view, let’s talk about the church. When it comes to a guests’ experience in the church, each church must pay attention to three important steps along the way: clarify, create and compete. Let me explain.

Most guests will make up their mind if they want to come back to your church before the sermon is ever preached. That is typically the case for people with no church background. Thus, ushering your guests into your church through the garage is bad idea and a poor strategy.

Clarify

The first step to improving guest experience is clarifying entry points and next steps for all guests. Here are a few questions that will help bring clarity to the process.

1. Where do we want guests to park?

Consider giving all guests special parking privileges. Set up signs that are readable from the front of a car that point new people where to go. It’s helpful to use language that makes sense and is comfortable for guests. Think “New Here? Park Here.” This is a non-threatening way for guests to find their place without saying “I am a guest!”

2. Where do you want guests to walk?

This is the point at which good signage is needed. Do you have signs? And if so, do they make sense to the average person? Do non-church people know what sanctuary means? Your goal is make it as simple as possible for new people to know where to go and to help them find their place quickly. Here are some other helpful things to consider for guests: Do they know what to do with their children? Does the children’s space feel safe? Are the bathrooms easy to find, etc.?

3. Do we regularly present a friendly atmosphere for people in the community to come and feel accepted just as they are?

Every week should be considered an outreach opportunity and should provide a doorway for every person of your community.

Create

This is where things get practical. Work to create a team that owns and even designs the entry way of the church to appeal to those in the community. Here are some more things to think about:

1. Is the physical environment appealing and relevant?

My garage is full of dirt, oils stains and weird smells seeping out of the garbage can. It would be embarrassing to take a first-time guest to my home through the garage. Thus, people from the community need an entry point to your church that is welcoming and appealing. That means it needs to be clutter free and prepared as if you were having guests over. The parking lot, hallways, bathrooms, lobby, children’s environment and auditorium need to be taken care of and created in such a way that they all are appealing to first-time guests from the community.

2. Do we create an engaging experience?

Not only does the environment need to be nice, the church experience needs to be engaging. And just as I mentioned above, engagement needs to start in the parking lot. Look for ways to make the experience fun and add a little “wow” moment for first-timers. Always leverage your most engaging people.

3. Are we answering the questions people are asking?

I can’t tell you how many times I have walked into a church or even a business and noticed they were paying attention to details that didn’t matter to me. All the content given on a Sunday needs to be practical, helpful and applicable to everyday life. Helpful content doesn’t mean it’s watered down, it means it is understandable and relevant. Can people apply what they don’t understand?

Compete

The last thing you have to pay attention to is competing opportunities. There are people and opportunities that have good intentions that will get in the way of connecting with first-time guests. Over time, complaints, or let’s call them “suggestions,” can crowd the entry point for new people. The doorway to connecting with God is narrow, and we need to compete for the space to help those who are far from God to come to meet, know and love Jesus.

One way to compete well and keep the mission alive is to constantly remind your teams that every week is someone’s first Sunday. That one piece of insight will help keep people on mission. Share stories of how people got invited to church and eventually gave their life to Jesus. Those stories fuel the mission.

Church Planter, Christmas isn't Everything

Christmas is here. Those words provide a level of excitement and dread for most pastors. The time is filled with holiday parties, staff get togethers, church programs, and it is busy. The Christmas season will create momentum in your church and community. People naturally come together to celebrate the holidays. Because of that, Christmas is a momentum builder in the church. As a church planter, you want to make sure you leverage the season and momentum well.

Do a Christmas series with a Christmas Eve Service as the finale. Make sure you invite your neighbors and community to come and enjoy the evening together. Sing Christmas carols, eat your fill of cookies and drink lots of hot chocolate. Find a way to bring some of the best family traditions into the church celebration. In our community, having a Christmas Eve service was always a local favorite.

My favorite Christmas Eve service was held in the movie theater while simultaneously movies were being shown all around. We got permission from the theater management to give out free Christmas cookies to people coming to church or going to a movie. It provided a great opportunity to connect with people in the community who would never think about coming to church. We witnessed people on our guest service team talk people out of attending their movie and joining us for a Christmas Eve service.

I love the Christmas season. However, in all honesty, I actually began to dread the time of year. After doing six Christmas Eve services, my family was beginning to dread me on Christmas. It is a challenging season in which we minister. Here are a few things I learned along the journey and my hope is they help you in yours:

• Make family a priority. What does that look like? First, make room in your schedule to attend school Christmas programs, to go shopping with your spouse and to bake and decorate cookies as a family. Refuse to bump those family times and memories. Communicate clearly and early with your family about the church schedule and don’t require them to be at every program and activity.
• Be prepared. During the fall work ahead on the Christmas series and Christmas Eve service. It comes around every year and having done much of the prep before it arrives will allow you to enjoy the season that much more.
• Cancel all unnecessary meetings in the month of December. They are always poorly attended. Everyone is overbooked with parties and family commitments. Love your family and your volunteers by giving them the month off of meetings.
• Preach the Christmas story. Don’t be anxious about having to be overly creative and having to put a new spin on Christmas. Christmas is God’s story. It is powerful and beautiful the way that it is. People will value you for telling and retelling the Christmas story. Some of our best moments during the Christmas season happened when I just took time to tell the story of Christmas with low lighting and music in the background.
• I know this one sounds crazy but consider canceling the Sunday service between Christmas and New Year’s Day. That Sunday is a probably the lowest attended Sunday of the year. Instead, create a devotional that families can download and do as a family at home. The demand on volunteers are so high in a church plant that your volunteers will love you for giving them a week off. And trust me, some people will tell you the world will end if you cancel a Sunday service. It won’t.

This Christmas season be careful that you don’t lose sight of the star of wonder. Sometimes ministry has an ability to drown out the power and majesty of what God actually did in the Christmas story. Take time this season to lay down the professional perspective of Christmas and connect personally with the love story of God. Christmas is about a Holy God stepping into time, space, and history so that you could be reconnected into a right relationship with Him through Jesus. Christmas is nothing short than incredible.

Have fun this Christmas season, and may your bells have extra jingle. Let these words of Isaiah be a place of comfort this season:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this” (Isaiah 9:6-7 ESV).

Preparing to Launch

The most important dynamic when starting a church is building the launch team.  It is most likely one of the hardest aspects of starting a new church.  And yet, it is mission critical.   In his book, Planting Fast-Growing Churches, author Stephen Grey identified 21 differences between fast growing churches and struggling ones. One of the things he reports was the importance of healthy launch teams. Grey found 88% of fast-growing churches had a launch team in place before launch compared with only 12% of struggling churches. Furthermore, C. Peter Wagner, writes that a minimum of 50 people is needed for a healthy launch of a new church.  From personal experience, I would say both of these positions are right on.

From personal experience, I understanding both the importance and difficulty of building a healthy launch team,  here are 5 things to consider during this phase of planting…with the hope it makes the process more fun and easier.

Determine and define what being on a launch team means

It is hard to know if someone is really on the launch team; if the requirements, or qualifications have never really been clearly defined.  Consider things like: Is there a launch team covenant or interview? Are there expectations when it comes to serving, giving, and attendance? Does someone have to be a Christian to be on the launch team? When are we no longer a launch team?

Know the culture

If you are moving into a new city and region (parachute planting), consider slowing down for a season.  Take time to work a regular job for a year or two.  This time period allows you to learn more about the community and its people.  The bonus of this method is it provides you adequate time to develop natural relationships.

Pray

Bring the need to God.  Pray that God will bring the right people at the right time to help establish this new church.  Remember…it is His church more than it will ever be “your” church.  He knows exactly the team needed to move it forward.

Be extremely intentional

This step requires some discipline.  Be intentional about where you go and who you talk to.   Shop at the same places and visit the same cashiers. Join the chamber of commerce team. Consider visiting all the local businesses in the direct vicinity, of your meeting place, and get to know the managers and owners.  Tell them what you are doing and ask if you can pray for any specific concerns for their business.  Make sure you write their names down along with their requests. The magic happens when you return a month later asking how things are going. 

Be a coach

Remember that you are in the process of building a launch team.  People that have committed to the process and joined the launch team are looking for ways to help and to be an asset.  As the coach, you have to move people from having a relational connection- to belonging- to contributing- to reproducing.  Coach people in this journey, and allow the launch team to help build the launch team.