Reaching visitors through monthly deserts
One of the most effective follow-up things we did in church plants was to have a monthly get to know us dessert. I have seen them called various things such as "meet the staff", "get to know the church" and "who we are desserts" among a few.
Personally we did these at the two most successful church
plants I worked with. At these desserts we would have the staff, home group
leaders and Sunday school teachers. We found that around 75 percent of the
people who attended these desserts stayed at the church.
Many of the people who came did not come to the first
dessert event after they started coming to the church. Two or three weeks at
the church was not enough time, they were still in the "I am checking you out
and I want to be somewhat anonymous" stage. If we kept them around long enough
for the second monthly dessert we found they were more receptive towards coming.
We gave out a general invite during services to all new people but gave personal
invitations and sent personal invitations to everyone that had been there over a
month.
You can understand why we made it an effort to get the
visitors to come to this dessert. They played a major role in both churches
growing from 35 to 150 in less than two years.
We have done this for years at our church with similar success. I think it is because the people who come get to see the pastor and staff in a relaxed atmosphere and see that they are real people just like them.
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