Video: From First Visit to Faithful Member: Strategies for Success | Duration: 3404s | Summary: From First Visit to Faithful Member: Strategies for Success

Transcript for "From First Visit to Faithful Member: Strategies for Success": Hello, everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Hello. We are so glad you're here. People are streaming in. Great to see you. Great to be with you. Yeah. As you're coming in, if you would, please say hello in the chat. Let us know where you're tuning in from and your favorite Thanksgiving side. What's yours, Philip? Yeah. Should you even ask? It is the sweet potato casserole. It's like I It is the dessert before the dessert. It is. It's so good. Mine's tough. I have not. I I overdo it. I think that's the point of Thanksgiving. That's why you have to wear stretchy pants. Always. Year round for me, but that's a different story. That's fair. That's totally fair. Awesome. Hey, everybody. Wonderful seeing you. Stream in. Yes. Mom's stuffing. Go team stuffing. If you're just joining us, Kristen with the mac and cheese girl. If you're just joining us, let us know your favorite Thanksgiving side and where you're tuning in from. We're gonna start here in just a minute. Kevin with the green bean casserole. Interesting choice. Mhmm. Maureen too. I love green bean casserole, but it's not my number one. If it's sweet, it can be amazing. It could change your life. A sweet green bean casserole? On the sweeter side. You know, don't overdo it, but, just think about it. Mhmm. Monkey bread. Praise the Lord. Takes me back to my childhood. I love it so much. Alright. We are gonna go ahead and get started. Again, thank you so much for being with us today. We are gonna hear from Philip. He is an expert in this, in, in growing your congregation, your membership because, of his work here at Ministry Brands, but also because he's heavily involved with his church. And so, we are, in for a treat. We're gonna go ahead and kick off. Let me get over here to my presentation. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded today. And in case you didn't notice, I'm actually gonna go back one slide. In case you didn't notice, we do have a chat. If you've not joined us in this event platform before, obviously, we're not in Zoom or Teams. We are in something called Goldcast. It's wonderful. There's lots of fun features. But you'll notice to the far right of the chat tab, there's also a q and a tab. So if you would, please submit your questions there. That would help us out. We've got 2 friends in the background. We've got Leanne and Kristen. They're here to answer your questions. And so, make sure you drop those there. And then additionally, I I mentioned it quickly, but again, this session is being recorded. So we will send it to you tomorrow along with some other resources. But if you have to drop off early for whatever reason, that is okay. You will receive the full recording tomorrow. It will also live on our Healthy Church hub as a resource there as well, so you'll be able to access it at any point in time. Okay. So getting started, we're gonna talk through, obviously, your visitors as they're coming in over the holiday season. We know that church you see a large spike in, guest attendance over the holidays, for those Christmas Eve services or Christmas services. And so, even Thanksgiving, I don't know if your church is due Thanksgiving service, but, definitely see more, folks attending if they're in town or if they're just maybe once or twice a year attendees. So we're gonna talk through fostering those people through and discipling them through that visit, that first visit all the way through, potential membership at your church. So, I'm gonna introduce myself super fast. I'm Jessica Moore. I've done a couple of these webinars over the last couple of years, and I'm so happy to be with you today. And joining me is Philip. I'm gonna let him introduce himself. That's so good to be with you again. My name is Philip Townsend. I'm a relationship manager here at Ministry Brands. Just honored to spend some time with you today. I come from, 15 years vocational church experience as a as a worship pastor, 3 years here at Ministry Brands. And I was just thinking about how how God has really given me a new perspective on the local church coming out of an individual church and now serving 100 and across our company, you know, tens of thousands of churches. And just being able to see what God is doing on a on a bigger scale has been so good for me personally. And, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that God is on the move. I'm I'm not preaching to you today, but I'm just gonna say our God is on the move. And I know you see that, because that's probably why you're here. It's because you're seeing a lot of guests and new people coming through your doors, and you're thinking about and talking to your staff about how can we best steward this incredible gift that God is giving us. And so that's part of what the discussion is about today is, you know, what are some ideas? What are some best practices? What are some ways that we can use technology to help us steward with excellence the guest that God is bringing through our doors? Because the reality is, you know, scripture says that God has put eternity in the heart of every man, woman, and child, And that eternity is what's driving them through the doors. There's this there's this longing. You know, this longing they have to know their creator and to have a relationship with them even if they can't put that into words. And so what a gift to be able to to come alongside in the local church. So with that said, let me pray for us, and then Jessica's gonna unpack a little bit of our agenda for today. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we just we wanna say we commit this time to you, that you are our god and our king, our creator, our lord. We surrender our lives to you, and, we we thank you for the power that we see at work in our churches that we know comes from your holy spirit and working people. And that we are not we are not drumming up life change, but it's something that you're doing invisibly, solely by your power. And so we we say thank you. Thank you for the power of the gospel. It's the salvation for everyone who believes. Whoever calls upon the name of the lord will be saved. We believe that. And, and we operate in that confidence, trusting you, following you. So, Lord, help us today to just learn some things, just to be iron sharpening iron. Help us to grow in in wisdom, and help us to just have this ever increasing joy and, and holy burden for the the people that you put in our path. We know that every one of them is made in your image and loved eternally by you. So we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Philip. Okay. So, what we're gonna cover today is just the different stages that your visitors will go through when they come to your church or your ministry. So, we're gonna talk about kind of first impression before they even, you know, set foot in the door, that exploration phase, then the day of experience, then how you can follow-up with them and then track and measure and foster their growth and their, engagement opportunities. And then why tracking to some of those things matter so much and the next steps. So before we kick it off, Philip's got a poll for us. This is gonna be just to have an idea on on how best to serve you guys today. Yes. If you'll check out over in the chat area, you'll see that a poll tab has just opened up. So if you click on that, you'll see a a little question there and four responses to it. We'd love to hear your experience. So you can go ahead and be casting those votes now even as I'm walking through it and talking through what the options are. Question is, which of these areas do you find most difficult when it comes to your visitors? Is it the first one, identifying them. Like, we're not even sure. Out of all the people that show up on a weekend, we're not sure who's who. Is it the second one, communicating with them? Maybe we don't have the tools in place to efficiently and effectively communicate with the guests that we do see. Or maybe it's the third. It's creating a streamline process for them. Maybe you and your staff have have never really sat down and and thought about what the pathway looks like for a new guest to become more engaged. Ultimately, we're talking about the discipleship process. Right? Growing disciples who make disciples for the glory of God to the ends of the earth. Maybe you've never had those conversations and it's been more hands off. Or maybe it's the last one. Increasing their level of engagement. We want to help move them from point a to point b to point c, again, in that discipleship journey. Cast your vote there, and we'd love to hear your feedback. Jessica, what's it looking like? It's interesting. We're at 22 vote. The number one thing is creating a streamline process. So folks, you are in the right place. If that is your biggest struggle, because that's exactly what we're gonna work through today. We're gonna talk about kinda all 4 of these. But definitely creating that process is is what we're digging into. So, that's great. The votes have slowed down, so we can go ahead and close that. But, yeah, creating a streamline process was 25 votes with the next thing close behind well, not that close was, increasing the level of in engagement, excuse me, with 15 votes. So, thank you so much for that. That's super helpful and encouraging because we know that we're we're going in the right direction for y'all. So I'm going to move to the next slide. Okay. So let's go first and talk about new guest exploration. And if you have been on a recent webinar, we have talked a little bit about websites in the last several webinars that we have done because, your website is your virtual front door, right? And so it's very important what it looks like. And, in fact, 80% of church visitors will research a church online first. And so they will go to your website and they will trying to try to find out kinda what is your church about. And if I wanna visit, you know, I I wanna listen to a sermon first. That's another another big thing that folks do. And then 2, they wanna find out kinda what to anticipate. So, Philip is gonna talk to us about kind of what you can do what tools can help you, make that a really great experience for your potential visitors Yeah, you know, I just think about my own experience, my wife and I and our our 2 little girls we moved to Huntsville, Alabama about, 3 years ago. People tell me I have an accent. I don't hear it. I don't believe them. But, we lived in Huntsville, 3 years ago. And so, yeah, the very first thing we did was Google search churches in our area. Right? And we're not just looking for the the sharpest looking website, although that may be a factor. But what we were just looking for were, our alignment with the church, based on, you know, several factors that won't be any surprise to you, which, like Jessica said, what are the church's beliefs and their teachings? Let's let's check out a message. Do we align there? Stylistically? Is it more traditional, more contemporary, somewhere in between? What's the kids area like? That's huge for us. Are our kids gonna hear the gospel, or is it, you know, glorified babysitting? Is it gonna be safe and secure? What's that kid's experience gonna be like? Are there serving opportunities? Are there missions opportunities? Is that the heartbeat of this church? Because that's our heartbeat, and we wanna make sure we're in alignment. So these are things that we can be, broadcasting to people through our front door, the website. And right or wrong, the truth is people make assumptions about your ministries based on the quality of your website. They make assumptions about the quality of your ministry based on the quality of your website. And, I don't know if that's right or that's wrong, but, I think we all kind of instinctively do that. So, you know, if you've got, like, Microsoft clip art from, you know, the nineties, you know, it's it's time to update your website. Right? So here here's an example from our catalog as as Jessica mentioned. It's just one of many that are doing this well. You can see as it scrolls down that they're telling you what to expect when you visit in many of these categories that I've mentioned. It even mentions a kid's preregistration, which we'll talk more about in a bit. But, basically, that's just cutting their time in half when they get to the church so that there's no hustle and bustle to get all that information for the kids ministry before they can securely check-in. And you'll also notice that they have embedded, glory to God, their forms into their website, which I can't even tell you all the reasons why that's important. But if you've got a form that lives out there in perpetuity, it needs to be embedded in your website, because that allows your website, your mobile app, your forms, everything to be in one unified ecosystem. So there's there's a great example there. Yeah. So you'll notice too there's there's some obvious stuff that you would know. Right? Directions, there's a map. They can easily click that if they're looking at a mobile that should drop them right into Google Maps or whatever their preferred map, app is. And so that will get them quickly where they need to be on the day of. But, yeah, to Philip's point, what you wanna do here is just paint a picture of what you're about and what they can expect. This church even has a sermon right here in this dark green section. They've got a sermon knowing that someone wants to watch that. So as much as you can include information that they're looking for all in one spot, this is specifically on their website. It says new here at the top. It's kinda small, but you can see it there. If you if you were to click on that menu or click on that new here menu item at the very top, it's the first thing. This is the page that it brings them to. So, yes, this is a a fantastic example that kinda ties everything in. But speaking specifically to planning their visit, let's let's look at some things that are beneficial, not only as they're looking at your website and anticipating, but then kinda once they are getting ready to to go and attend. Yeah. Let me cast a little vision here. And maybe you're doing this and if you are good on yet, but here is a a vision for you to consider. Imagine a a guest goes to your website or they Google you through their mobile phone or whatever, they're looking at your website, they come across this be our guest form, they fill this out. It answers a lot of those questions we just talked about, the directions, what to expect, kids' environment, all those things. It provides the kids' pre check option if they need it so that they're saving time. If you could even upload your profile picture into the form, which is pretty cool, because if you're like my church, you've gotta give your your profile picture so that they can match your face with the person who picks up child. It's one less thing for people to have to think about on Sunday. But imagine all those things are built into the form, and imagine then that form, when they hit submit, it notifies someone instantly on your guest team. If you have a guest team, hope you do. If you don't, let's get one. It notifies someone on your guest team who can then reach out to this person so that on Sunday morning or whenever this date is that they're coming to service, when it arrives, they can meet them out in the parking lot. They can welcome them. They can walk them inside. They can, you know, show them around a little bit. They can introduce them to pastors on staff. They can make sure that their check-in experience is super smooth. They can walk them over to, the main worship center. And then maybe even after service, they could touch base for a few seconds to say, hey. Did you have any questions? Hope you had a great experience. Hope we'll see you next time. If they're ready to take some next steps, they'll be there for them to do that. That would be a revolutionary guest experience. And so we're gonna be talking about the the pieces and components of that as we go through this time. But just think about that form right there and how the more you can give your guests on the front end reduces uncertainty and reduces their their stress. Yeah. I'm actually curious to know drop in the chat drop a thumbs up if you have a form to collect information, about your guests before they arrive. And I'm curious to know if other churches do this because when Philip and I were kinda planning through this, there were things that he brought to my attention that I've never really considered. We're gonna talk about some of those. But, yeah, I was surprised to see that this church example had exactly what he mentioned, and so I wasn't I wasn't sure. Seeing a lot of no's. Okay. Yeah. I I we have a couple yeses too. And it's not to say that people are guaranteed to fill it out before they attend your church. Obviously, it's if they come on that form, but it sure would streamline some of your processes to have that information. So yeah. Great thought. Thank you so much for your feedback y'all. Okay. So now we're gonna transition to the day of experience. They've looked at your website. They're excited. They're loving what they see. They've completed that form for you. So what can we anticipate when they decide to come visit? And, one of the first things that they're gonna do is park their car. And so, again, this was an idea that Philip mentioned when we were working through content for this. And I was like, gosh, my church, we do have parking lot attendants and we've got the golf carts and there's people holding signs. What we don't have, and some of it's because it's a shared property, we don't have visitor parking spots. But I think that that is such a great idea. And so something to consider. And why why does that matter? Really all of it matters is because we just want your guests to have, a, a really fluid, easy, efficient experience getting into the church, feeling like they matter, feeling like they are seen. And so this is one of those things that right off the bat, oh, man, there's a spot right here for me. If I'm a visitor, great. And then there's maybe a friendly face right there ready to point them in the right direction, some signage if if you don't have enough staff to go out there. But these are things that we were kinda thinking through. Anything you wanna add on this slide, Philip? I kinda stole all the I got excited about this one. But we're gonna move to the next slide and you can talk through functionality unless you've got something to add here. No. That's spot on. Just emphasis on friendly faces. You know? We don't just need warm bodies as our as our greeters. We need we need people who are are passionate about guests and seeing them take next steps. Okay. So I'm curious about this one too. Drop a car in the chat if you've got visitor parking spots. We're gonna keep you guys focused today. We're gonna keep you engaged. If you've got visitor parking spots, drop a little car emoji in there, because that's one fun. Okay. Or say yes. That works too. Okay. We're gonna move on to the next slide while you guys are are continuing to do that. Okay. So, Philip, how do we get the people there? How do we get the right volunteers there? Yeah. Yeah. We're so we're we're talking about parking, which is something that most people hardly think about, but it's so important. But in order to handle parking excellently, you've got to have a great parking team. Right? But you've also gotta have a lot of other teams on any given weekend service. When I think through the whole process, you know, roughly 10 jump out at me. So you've got people who are helping to park folks, then you've got greeters who are welcoming people in. Maybe they're standing at the doors or maybe they're, like, at my church where they they stand outside and sometimes they have kids holding welcome signs. They're kinda flipping them around and they're having a good time. They're high fiving other little kids as everybody's coming in. There's music playing, stuff like that. But so you've got that parking team. You've got your guest team. As soon as people walk in the doors, we're already thinking about our security team. Right? When they go into the kids area, we're thinking about who are our kid leaders and kid teachers, who are our student leaders and student teachers. We've got operational staff. I mean, depending on the size of your staff, you got people who focus more administratively or operationally, and then you've got pastoral staff. You've got your media team. You've got your music team. You've got chair movers, chair stuffers, ushers. I've named at least 10 teams here. And the question is, do you have a unified centralized way to manage all of those teams? Most of the churches I talk to, it is a free for all. It depends on what ministry you're talking about as to what tool they use. Imagine if you could just schedule everybody from one centralized place. You have, at least with Ministry Brands, you have unlimited amounts of teams that you can create. You can send those requests out. You can see if they're confirmed, pending, or declined. You can schedule the reminders to go out to those team members and the intervals at which they go out. You could decide if you want it to go out via email, via text, or both. You can customize what the message is gonna say. It all happens with 1 centralized ecosystem. I think that's what we're all really looking for. Yeah. This is great. Deborah, we see you that you are a small church and you don't have these type of numbers to have all the teams. That's okay too. We hope that you find some value in this today. I know that you will. But, yeah, this is this is these types of tools definitely help the larger your team is. For what it's worth, the the people software that we're talking about, is is going to be priced based on the number of of folks that you have at your church. And so just kinda keep in mind that there is flexibility with these tools. They're not necessarily only made for large churches. We serve churches of all sizes. So if nothing else, Deborah, yeah, definitely take away these best practices. But as we kinda look through these tools, just keep in mind that they are applicable for all different sized churches. And so okay. We're gonna move on to guest services, and I love this. These bullet points were all filled up, and it's so true. Most of us have forgotten what it's like to be a guest at church. If you're here, then you're probably working at a church or volunteering at a church, which means you've been around there for a minute. And then Philip and I as well. But it is so true that people wanna kinda fly under the radar. They don't want you, you know, them walking in the door and screaming, oh my gosh. You're new. You're welcome. And so that's very intimidating. And so we wanna make it so that they feel like they can go with the flow without, drawing too much attention to themselves. So let's look at some ways that the our tools can help, work folks through guest services and and kind of feel like they know what they're doing. Yeah. Let me, just share a a quick couple of items there. You know, I was thinking about those teams earlier, and it's absolutely true that, you know, if you don't have a large staff, the reality is we need to be empowering, our members and our regulars to take those next steps in their own discipleship journey, to be the door holders, to be the ones that serve in parking, to take, as one of my pastors says, the the best way, to deepen your faith is to help somebody else discover theirs. So begin empowering your regulars and your members to serve in these ways. So if they're greeting, you know, we want greeters who are passionate, and they they they realize this this grand story that they're caught up in. And so they're they're smiling. They've been trained. So if someone asked them a question, they they know how to answer it, about where check-in is or where the, if there's a a guest table when, people walk in. What's the atmosphere like? Is there music? I mentioned the church Sabbath part. They got music playing. There's energy and anticipation. I mean, when you think about the people of God gathering to celebrate the glory of God, I think there should be some energy and anticipation no matter what style of church you may be. If there's coffee or no coffee, no problem, but we want there to be fellowship. If you've got, you know, TVs and hallways, you know, have important slides going and and, forms that people could be filling out or or texting to your 10 digit number to to get more involved. And then having that guest services desk, like I mentioned, right as you walk through the doors, if that's just a a high top table or somebody with an iPad or or whatever it is, just just helping escort people in. But can I just real quick just got it, and I didn't mention that I was gonna share this, but I wanna tell you about the worst guest experience I ever had? Is that okay? Well, you can't stop me now. Here I go. Yes. So I visited a church called no. I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna tell you the name of the church. That that would be, that would be wrong. But I visited the church one time, and I would say, you may maybe a 1000 people go to this church. I drive into the parking lot. It is a free for all. You know, every man, woman, and child for themselves just find a parking spot. You Yeah. I ended up parking a little ways away, walk in. No problem. I was young, unmarried, nimble at the time. So I get inside. I I don't know where I'm going, but, you know, I find the worship room. No problem. I sit down. We're everything's gotten started. It's going well. And then all of a sudden, the pastor says, at this time, we wanna recognize all of our guests. I'm thinking, well, great. Appreciate it. And, and he says, will all of our guests please stand to your feet? And I thought, oh, no. That is not what I wanna do it. That's not what I wanna do at all, but I think, well, maybe there's probably a dozen or more other people who are guests here today. They're gonna stand up with me, so I'm gonna play along. So I stand to my feet. And to my horror, as I stand up, I realize I'm the only guest in this room of a 1000 people. That's And I would just slowly sit back down. Right. And it was so I mean, it's dead quiet. Right? And and I don't think anybody knew what to do. And so in the awkwardness, they decided just start clapping. Right? They start clapping. And so I have never felt both shame as I was receiving an ovation from people in my life. And so just very awkward moment. Now I'm not saying that's totally the wrong way to do it. But for me, I would go back to what you said in that previous slide, which is we wanna fly under the radar. So as much as we can allow guests to do that while giving them the direction they need, but Yeah. That's so good. We we want them to feel seen, but not just only seen as the only person. Single now. Not too much seeing. Yeah. Okay. So express check-in. This is a great option for folks as they're coming in the first time. Tell us about this, Philip. Yeah. So there's that, that hinge pin moment. You know, if if people who are guests are coming in and they've got kids, this is a critical part of the process where if they haven't gone through your website, they haven't seen your VR guest form, they're just showing up. Well, we want that check-in process to be smooth for them because it it really does affect their overall experience. And so, rather than just having, you know, a a few different stations that all do the same thing, consider an idea like this to have an express check-in lane or lanes that are for your regulars. And by regulars, I just mean people who are they're already in your system. You know who they are. They know who they are. They know the process. They're just gonna look themselves up, you know, hit enter, print out their labels, and they're ready to go 30 to 60 seconds from start to finish. And, hopefully, if you're using our fully integrated app, then they could have done mobile check-in on the way to church. So they've already signed in. It's generated a QR code. So all they have to do when they get inside is walk up to that express check-in station, scan the QR code, it completes the check-in, spits out their labels, and they are, they're on their way in, you know, 15 seconds or less. But you can imagine if you've got new guests, you know, a family of 4, who come in and they've got to check-in for the very first time, And it's gonna take them, you know, maybe 3 to 5 minutes to enter in all their information. And meanwhile, you've got the regulars backing up behind them, and it's an embarrassment for the guest, and it's a frustration for the regulars and for the staff. So why not have an express check-in lane complemented by this next slide, which is an assisted check-in lane? Hang on. So Okay. Not a problem. And with an assisted check-in lane, maybe you've got an iPad at a high top table and and someone's sitting there so that when a guest does arrive, you know, they're trained. They know what to do. They're able to welcome this person, get all of that information, and create this this personal memorable touch. And I think that is so critical as people think through what the experience was like and do I wanna go back to that church again and be a part of that group of people? This check-in process can be a a really memorable moment. And so training is critical, and great personalities are critical, but take advantage of an assisted check-in station and express check-in stations for that very reason. Awesome. Let me I'm gonna pause real quick and, we are gonna need to start moving just a little bit quicker, but I do wanna acknowledge Joseph's question because we should have probably addressed this at the very beginning. His question was, what's the best way to recognize guests in church? And the reality is this, that if you have a church with a very large congregation, it is unrealistic as much as you possibly wish you could as a church leader, especially senior pastor probably, to be able to recognize people that are there for the first time, versus people who have been, you know, maybe a second or third or they've been members for years. I think the the best way to to to do that is just if you can, just be out and be out in the lobby, meet your people. I don't know, Philip, you've got more insight on this, but we're you know, as far as as talking through tools, if people fill out that form in advance, obviously, that's a great way to get your guest team ready to go beforehand so that they, you know, know if you can communicate with those folks and say, if you're new, if you're attending the first time, the first thing you're gonna do after you park is go to this counter and we'll have someone there to walk you through everything. That's a great way to identify people. You're kind of shepherding them, fostering them, moving them into a position where you can engage with them somewhere where you'll be able to recognize who they are. But otherwise, yeah, I think I think there's not a I mean, I'm I don't know, Philip, if you have any other ideas besides that. But I think looking looking for people that maybe you don't recognize, introduce yourself, and then you can even say, like, is this your first time here? Any additional ideas, Philip? Yes. Absolutely. In fact, in about 2 slides, I wanna address that. So, hold that thought, and we definitely wanna get to it. Okay. Very cool. So we're gonna transition now from they're here. They made it. They hopefully had a wonderful experience. So they've attended service, and they're headed on their way out. So how do we follow-up with them after the fact? And obviously, why does this matter? This one should go without saying, but essentially, we want them to come back. Right? We want them to, be engaged. We want them to continue to hear about Christ. We wanna disciple them through next steps, into a relationship with Christ if they don't already have one. And so, we wanna make sure that they feel noticed and that they feel confident about coming back, knowing what they'll do next time. And so we're gonna look at some tools that can help, make that possible as well. Yes. Absolutely. And and so I wanna address the question that came up a moment ago as as we talk about the tools because, what I find so, game changing about our system here at Ministry of Grants for People Managing is the way that you can fully integrate at least 6 different ways to engage the guests that are coming into your gathering. You can see here on the diagram, we start at the top and kinda work our way clockwise. We've got the the, connection with guests through check-in. That's gonna apply to a lot of people, but certainly not everybody. We're gonna have forms that people can fill out through a variety of venues. We're gonna have QR codes. A lot of churches like to put a QR code on screen, maybe preservice and post service. Says new here, guest with us, whatever you your wording wants to you want it to be. They can scan that QR code. It takes them, lo and behold, to your guest form, that they can fill out. So that QR code sometimes they even reference it in service. Maybe the QR code on screen. It could be through the website, but it could also be through text. This is a big one that is becoming much, much more popular, which is, hey. Text guest to our 10 digit number and fill out the form. And we talk about it in service. We put it on screens before and after service. Just that simple act of texting guest, and it takes them into this workflow. Or maybe they go so far as to download your mobile app. All of these pathways lead to the same place, which is your guest workflow. Now we're using guest workflow as an example, but I want you to think of this as the foundation for each step in your disciple making process. So whether someone is a guest, that's just the entryway. Right? They're a guest. We're at the entryway door. But then maybe it's becoming a member or it's getting baptized or maybe going back. They surrender their life to Jesus, get baptized. They wanna serve. They wanna go on a mission trip, etcetera, etcetera. You can use the principles we're about to talk about in these tools to do all of the above in a way that's efficient, accurate, and gives accountability. So imagine when someone fills out that guest card through whatever means they do, it it provides something like this. A automated email goes to this person named Emily who's visiting with us that tells her more about the church, and she gets an automated text that very day that says, hey, Emily. We're so thankful that you joined us today. Tell us about your experience. And she replies. She says, hey. I loved it. Can you tell me more about small groups? That would be nice if she said that. And then a human replies to say, we'd love to. Here's a link to our small group finder, which, by the way, another feature that we're not really, focused on today. Takes takes them right to your small group finder, where she can look at pins on the map, find a small group that's close to her, and when she hits join, your automated workflow can notify the small group leader, can notify the, a small group's pastor or some sort of pastoral figure for oversight, can send an automated email to Emily saying, hey. Here's more information about the group and directions. Can assign a follow-up to someone on staff or a lay leader just to check-in and make sure it happened over the next week. There are so many ways to use these automations. You can see emails, texts, assign interactions, which is like a trackable follow-up item, add a person to a group automatically for communication purposes or for reporting purposes, which we're gonna get into in a minute. But, again, this is for we're talking about new guests, but you can apply it to every step in the disciple making process. Yeah. I'm gonna call out one thing really quick. So the first text message that you see on this, Philip said it quickly. I'm gonna hang there for just a minute. That first text was a result of that person completing a new person form. Right? And like Philip said, that text message was automated. So that's gonna go automatically. So that's not to say that it's robotic. That's to say that it's efficient. Right? And then her response merited a human response. So somebody so for the first response is literally just to say, hey. We see you. We saw that you came. Thank you for being here. And then however they engage with that text will allow, you know, that obviously takes a a more personal touch, and you can assign that interaction if you wanted to. There's different things that you can do that can help make sure that nothing slips through the cracks. But I do wanna point out that just because something is automated does not mean that it has to be impersonal. You can plug in the name there. And so, just keep that in mind as you're working through, especially over the holidays. If you do get, you know, a large group of new visitors, this is a really good way to make sure that they feel seen. And then that allows you to kind of nurture them a little further in their response. So, I wanted to point that out real quick. So we're gonna move now into the growth and engagement. So what happens next? Like we saw in the last text, Emily here said that she wanted to hear about small groups. So let's look at growth. Like, what Philip talked about a few next steps that folks take, generally speaking, when they're working through either their spiritual journey or their membership journey. And so how can we, help foster that growth and make that growth efficient on the back end? And then how can we continue to engage people, using some of our tools? I did Philip already kinda listed these out, but I do have these on the slide here as well. These are not necessarily all in this order. Not every single church has to, you know, attribute or or record all of these. But these are generally the next steps we see folks take through their either spiritual journey and or through their journey in membership. And so, obviously, membership class, salvation, baptism, small groups, giving, and volunteer. Those are all what we would say are kinda milestones in their spiritual growth. So we're going to move to the next slide and talk about how you can utilize some of these tools to help make sure people are getting through and getting nurtured and discipled, in an easy way utilizing some of these tools. Yeah. And we're and we're kind of beginning to wrap up our time here. You know, we talked about the tools and the principles and how they apply throughout the disciple making process. And so, there there are about 4 questions here that I wanna leave you with, on these next few slides. And the first is this, how are you and your staff and lay leaders intentionally moving people into deeper levels of discipleship. Have you had those conversations to talk about what that pathway looks like? And just like Jessica said a second ago, it's not always linear. Right? We we can't we can't force a certain pathway. You're gonna have people who are who attend your church for years, who never officially join, but yet they're attending. They're in small group. They're giving. They're going on mission trips. So it's not necessarily this linear rigid path. And that's what I love about these these automated workflows is that it doesn't require them to be. They can pick up wherever someone wants to pick up. So have you established those clear pathways in next steps? And if you have, is your staff or your lay leaders, are they trained, and are they on the same page? I I mean, I talked to a, an administrator just this week, and she said, listen. Our church, our staff, we don't even realize most of the things that this platform can do, and we wanna use it for all that it's worth. So we're gonna start to tap into these workflows, and we're gonna start to get out of all these other platforms that we're trying to to use in disparate systems, and we're gonna consolidate here. And that's really the goal. So check out here. You've got on your website, the next steps form. They can choose any of those options, whether they're on the website, the mobile app, that's our custom mobile app you're looking at right there. They can say, hey. I'm scrolling up the options. I wanna follow Jesus. I wanna join a group. I wanna serve. I wanna do all of the above. And they can check the appropriate boxes, and it enters them into the appropriate workflows. Yeah. Oh, man. That's so good. This this gets me excited too because it's it kinda takes some of the guesswork out of it. Right? And it allows them to kinda work at their own pace if they only want to learn more about the church or if they are not even ready to surrender their life to Jesus, but they want to join a small group. That's a great way to to learn more and be with people who are like minded. So, this is a really fun option. Okay. So let's really quickly talk about tracking growth because this part always feels kinda strange because we know that numbers don't matter, but they do kind of matter in some capacity. I think, you know, I said this in our last webinar, because we talked about tracking milestone metrics and, my girl Kristen, who's answering your questions, was on that webinar with me. But, you know, I watched, a breakout session and it talked about metrics that matter. And it was saying that, you know, God did in the Bible, we, you know, it is recorded that Jesus fed the 5,000. And, you know, there's multiple places in the Bible where there were numbers attributed to really powerful and important things. And so in some capacity, numbers do matter, not as, a point of success for your church or anything like that, but it give you information. And so, let's talk about how we can track those metrics and why they matter. Yeah. I I love what Rick Warren said years ago. He said, I disagree with people who say that we're not about the numbers here. He said because every number represents a person, and every person matters to god. So, a 100% agree with you, Jessica. If we're wearing it as a badge of accomplishment on our jacket, then we've missed the point. But if we're if we're using it to celebrate the goodness of God and what he's doing among us, then it's awesome. And so how effectively are you tracking and measuring life change? Do you have those tracking and accountability systems? Do you have a way to close the gaps or are people just constantly following through? I mean, just look. These are examples from our system. So we're managing our guest workflow, our serving workflow, our membership workflow, you name it, whatever it is, all those examples we gave earlier. You can see how many people are in each step of the process. You could click into that group to see what all those individuals are, their profiles. At any point, you can send mass communication to them. And again, the system is automatically moving them from step to step based on action points that you determine. And there's a couple more questions on the next slide that I wanna ask you, and then, I'm I'm done. I'm gonna be quiet because I know we're we're hitting our time here, and Jessica's getting nervous. No. We're good. She's like, I'm never gonna invite him on again, for good reason. But how do you define a faithful member? I was talking because that's that's what today was about. Right? How how to get someone from, initial guest to faithful member? It is really hard to track something you can't define. Mhmm. It is really hard to track something you cannot define. I asked a a very large and fast growing church the other day. It it wasn't a gotcha moment. I was literally asking because I wanted to know how do you define a faithful member in your church? And they kinda looked at each other and they weren't sure. Because the reality is, sometimes we really we really don't know what those metrics are. It could be a bit subjective, and it may be different in every local context. But it's gonna be, you know, is it just about attendance? Is it about small group involvement, baptism, serving, giving, going on mission trips, membership, some combination of those? More than likely, it's a combination of all of the above maybe. But, in that discipleship process, how are you celebrating life change? Because this is not something we have a button for in our system in in terms of the celebration part. This is something we just need to be doing from the platform, in our small groups, in our staff meetings. We need to be talking about the wins. We need to be talking about the movement of God that's happening all across our country. So look at just that example right there from our dashboards screen in our people management. You could just create some widgets on your dashboard that show year over year how you're engaging guests Year over year, how you're engaging people to serve. And you can see here that the numbers are staggeringly higher this year as opposed to last year. We need to be celebrating that. Pull that report. Grab a screenshot. Whatever. Export this report to your senior leadership and let them take it to the platform, talk about it in your next staff meeting, but we need to be celebrating the goodness and the power and the movement of God in our gatherings. And our technology can help us do that. Yeah. And I was looking through this slide yesterday with Philip and I, you know, it brought to my attention that, this is also a really good indicator of, you know, how your church is serving people. Right? So, if if those numbers are are significantly down or impacted, right, there's good indicators and then there's or excuse me, there's indicators of growth, but then there's also indicators of, maybe a discipleship opportunity. So this slide is really is a holistic. This is how we're doing as a church as a whole. But you can also zoom in and track these metrics for each individual person. So there are things that you can identify that, will allow you some some pastoral, shepherding moments. For example, if attendance has dropped off for a family that has otherwise been a faithful member for years, that's usually an indicator that something is going on, something has changed. So could be as simple as picking up the phone and saying, hey, Cindy. We've noticed you haven't been attending for the last few weeks. Is everyone doing alright? Are you guys feeling okay? Can we serve you in any way? Is somebody ill? Did you guys move? Are you planning on moving? Whatever these things are, that's generally an opportunity to pastor someone a little bit. Same thing with giving, that's always usually a good indicator. If giving has dropped off, has someone lost a job recently? Have they decided to move to a different church? That's also helpful information for you if they're willing to share. So these metrics are are a good indicator at, like, a high level to say, hey. This year is looking really good. Good job, team. We're we're bringing people. We're shepherding them well through this process, or zooming in on one individual. What does that look like for them, and and what does that tell you? So, just thought that was noteworthy. Okay. We're gonna wrap up here, but we wanted to show you some next steps. And then I think we actually actually, before we do that, we do have time for a quick question, and I I see this. It's actually in the chat. Philip, I don't know if you can see Ashley's, question there. And she was talking about having an online form for new visitors and how there's some pluses and minuses to that. And this is actually a really interesting thought. She essentially said that having that form made it so that the system was almost too efficient where she was not able to engage with people on the day of. And so some ideas for that, I still think it's beneficial to your, guest to have it as an option. So I wouldn't completely remove that option. But I like I said before, kinda your first instruction can be, hey, please stop by the front desk. So our church has a coffee shop in it. And new members new folks, we give them the opportunity. Hey. Come see us at the new member desk. We'd love to give you a a card that will get you a free coffee and a free pastry from the coffee shop. So, you're right. Sometimes young families, like, I'll tell you, when my kids were babies and we're getting to church, I couldn't wait to get them in their classroom. Like, let's just get them there. It took all of God's power to get us dressed in here on time. I'm ready to drop my kiddos off. But if you maybe present that opportunity after service, that could be a great way to connect with them. But, yeah, that's a that's a great point. You're right. Is the system so efficient that then you're losing touch with them? You know, definitely food for thought. So maybe maybe just, you know, elevating your process a little bit to say, hey. We still wanna capture that information, but we also still would love to meet you. Can you incentivize them to come stop by and meet a new person? If they're super introverted and they won't like that, then that's okay. That might be the thing that keeps them coming back to your church is saying, nobody talked to me. I got left alone. I don't know. So, just those are my thoughts. Philip, you got any thoughts on that kind of quickly? Yeah. This will be super quick. I I think it's just like with our giving platform. We offer, I don't know, a zillion ways to give because everybody kinda has a preference. You know, some people who are gonna do the old school, they wanna write a check or they're gonna bring cash or whatever. But we give them as many options as possible. I think the same thing can really apply when it comes to moving people through a process and engaging guests is giving them many different options because your your your outgoing personalities are gonna wanna stop by the guest services desk, and they wanna meet everybody and talk to everybody. But then you're gonna have the introverts who just wanna, again, fly into the radar. They don't want anybody to notice them. They are more likely to engage with you because you gave them an under the radar type of option like the text or like the QR code, and they will engage in time as long as you just remain faithful to reach out. Yeah. Hopefully, that helps. I know that was kind of a a loaded answer, but hopefully, that helps you. I do. Yeah. I agree. Let's give them options, to kinda serve everybody as they're coming in. So what you can anticipate from here, you will receive the recording of this webinar like we talked about. So please share it if you've got other church leaders, webinar like we talked about. So please share it if you've got other church leaders, or ministry leaders that weren't able to attend today, but you feel like this could be helpful information for them. You will receive the email tomorrow with this recording. Additionally, we're gonna include 3 other resources for you. We've got a podcast and I actually listened to this one. I hadn't listened to this episode, before this week, but I just wanted to kinda get some extra insight before, meeting with you all today. And this podcast was so helpful. It's really great. So definitely listen to that. Drew Young has a heart of gold. So he he's a wonderful human being and he speaks to this very similarly to what we did today, but with even more insight. Then there is a blog post, on a church that we serve, that has grown exponentially and they have been able to use software. So if nothing else, read that blog post. If you can find them on socials, celebrate with them. This is huge, and we are one big capital c church. And so, this is a really encouraging blog post to listen to, and you can engage with them if you can find them on social media. And then, like I said, the recording for today and then also this ebook. So we've got a large ebook called the Guide to Healthy Church Operations. All of it's wonderful. But we pulled out the chapters that are kinda more relevant to this. And so it's staff and volunteer effectiveness. So this does dive into some efficiencies, as well as thought leadership for kind of the back end of this. So we talked a lot about how your visitors will feel, but this book kinda talks to how you can just continue to improve your processes on the back end. So with that, we've got a quick survey for you. And these surveys are very valuable to us, me specifically, because I get to plan these webinars. And so if you would, I think Kristen's gonna launch that for us. She or it is launched currently. Yes. Good. Okay. And so as you're working through that, if you would please, the one biggest question that I care about the most is what do you wanna hear about next? We're planning our webinar schedule for 2025. Are we in we're going to 25. Yes. Okay. I've heard that so much already. Okay. So going into 2025, what do you wanna hear about? We do these webinars monthly, and so I've got 12 to fill up. So if you would please help me out, that'd be so great. We just wanna bring valuable content to you. So we're gonna leave that up for just a little bit because I know that y'all have to type. But otherwise, that is all. So if you guys have a couple I mean, we could probably take one more question, while that survey is being filled out, if anyone's got one. Michelle, I do see your question. I unfortunately don't have any information about dashboard widgets right now, but, I'm sure someone will point you in the right direction, for assistance with that. And then, Jeff, training videos on setting up automations. This is actually a good call out. We do have a very robust help center. So, there should be, if nothing else, step by step instructions. I'm looking at my ladies in the backstage. Do we have videos about automations? Very many. Maybe some of you. Okay. Yes. Kristen's looking. Okay. So there may be videos there on the back end specific to Amplify. Additionally, Philip is on a team of folks that, serve churches in what we have called paid services. So you do have different options for these paid services depending on what your needs are. But this is so valuable to be able to sit down with someone who's an expert in all of this. And you can spend an hour or so with them and they will help you set all this up. So if that is something that you're interested in, I don't know if Lianne or Kristen or even Philip, if we wanna grab the link to paid services and drop that somewhere. But you can take a look at that and see what your options are to have someone just set it all up with you and for you to meet your specific needs. So I think that is it. We will go ahead and wrap up. We can close out that survey. Kristen, I don't know if you have the option to even do that. Okay. It's closed out. Alright. Well, thank you all again so much for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you. I love your the church and people. You're wonderful. Thanks for being with me. Alright. My honor. Great to be with everybody. Thanks for your great questions and for, tuning in, sticking with us through the whole thing. Yeah. Alright, folks. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. Bye bye.