First-time guests are the lifeblood for churches. Yet, the average number of first-time guests that become regular attendees in churches today is only 10 percent. While most church leaders want to make a good first impression, it takes more than good intentions to effectively engage them in a way that helps them move towards becoming a fully-engaged member.
Technology can play a key role in helping your church identify, improve, and activate an assimilation process that grows your church by effectively integrating first-time guests.
Here are five ways technology helps accelerate church growth:
1) Technology helps you define your church’s first-time guest process.
1) Technology helps you define your church’s first-time guest process.It only takes seven minutes for a guest to formulate a first impression of your church. Technology helps you define your church’s first-time guest process by helping you evaluate when they are being greeted and how they are being greeted.
2) Technology helps you train and coordinate your welcome team.
Volunteers who understand the importance of their role and are equipped to fulfill their responsibilities are essential for effectively welcoming first-time guests. Technology not only helps you train volunteers, it also helps you manage and communicate with volunteers more effectively.
3) Technology ensures you don’t lose track of your guests.
Because an important part of the experience is making follow-up contact with guests after their first visit, you’ll need to engage your guests in a way that prompts them to give some personal information. Whatever you do, gathering information about first-time guests is vital. Technology ensures your don’t lose track of your guests by eliminating data silos and unifying the information you gathered into one place.
4) Technology improves the way you follow up and follow through with guests.
You can record a first-time guest’s personal communication preferences and follow up in a way that’s most appealing to them. Technology also allows you to assign contacts for initial follow-up and track activity through the assimilation process so no one falls through the cracks.
5) Technology supports your goal to connect guests to your church community.
Technology improves engagement and retention by making it easier for guests to find and get involved with a group similar to them. Once they have established some relationships, technology helps guide them toward taking responsibility for their own spiritual development and for a portion of one of the ministries within the church.
Assimilation and church growth don’t just happen automatically. It takes time, planning, and persistence to make it work. By combining these five things with the others outlined in “Accelerate Church Growth: 7 Steps to Engage First-Time Visitors,” your church will have a detailed system for accelerating church growth and ensuring that every first-time guest becomes a fully-engaged member.
Good article. I have done all of the above in a very low tech way (stack of visitor cards on my desk) with very good success. However, good tech would obviously make it easier. The key is recognizing the truth of your opening paragraph–guests are the lifeblood and you must be intentional in reaching them.
Terry Reed
Small Church Tools