You’re likely to see fewer faces in the audience over the next few months. Since you can’t rely on your congregation hearing announcements from the stage, communicating with your congregation over the summer can be a bit more challenging. Here are some tips to stay connected even while people are traveling for the summer:
The Summer Slump. Every church leader knows exactly what those words mean. It means a drop in attendance, decreased participation, and reduced giving. This can be demoralizing as the ministry attempts to make progress toward the vision with less people and money. So, what is a church leader to do?
Our definition of stewardship has been skewed into the idea that an assembly line is the most effective way to produce something.
While most churches implement a number of systems to help them carry out their mission, assimilation can often get lost in the shuffle. But assimilation, the process through which we build relationships and connections, lays the foundation for a visitor’s meaningful immersion in the church, and subsequently, their intentional discipleship.
Just when you think you’ve got the latest social media platform figured out (Snapchat, anyone?), another one pops up. While the long-term favorites of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, something new is quickly becoming more popular.
We’re meant to share space and break bread with one another, and the community at large. When you implement these environmental upgrade strategies in your church, you’ll find that you spend less time plastering the community with posters and flyers, and more time where it’s most important: welcoming church and community members alike into your sacred, shared space.
Leaders are readers? This service helps pastors maximize their time investment in personal leadership development.
The reasons why people are not pledging to you capital campaign are complex. Here are some possibilities.
One of the biggest challenges every leader faces is how to continue developing and growing as a leader while still getting things done and moving things forward. With the ever-increasing demands on our time and energy, often the first thing that goes is investment in ourselves. We know that isn’t wise; it’s really very short-term thinking, but under the pressure of the moment we often make that choice. Here is one resource to help you continue growing as a leader.
Imagine with me for a minute. It’s the middle of your small groups semester. You have signed up new leaders and launched your first all-church campaign. Things seem to be going great—until you start hearing about groups that are no longer meeting, leaders who have left the church, and members who are frustrated with your church’s latest attempt at creating community… so what happened?
One thing we can count on each Easter is the Easter bump. Like Christmas, most of us experience a surge in our attendance on Easter morning. Many of us have to add a service, adjust times, or pull out extra chairs to accommodate the swelling crowds. And then a few weeks later, our attendance is usually back to normal. Unless we prepare to communicate and help those new people connect to the life of our church, most simply won’t come back.
When technology is leveraged to convert the variability of human experience into measurable and actionable metrics, a church can proactively equip itself with the numbers needed to make effective, thoughtful plans and decisions.
