A “Guest Poster” (would be lovely to know who, specifically) over at Swerve.LifeChurch.tv wrote an interesting article today asking how to “maximize” our time in people’s lives as they leave our “brick and mortars” and head into their own personal lives during the week.
Whether or not the numbers are exactly correct is besides the point because even if they are off by a little the point is staggering:
The vast majority of time a church gets (LifeChurch in this example) in the lives of typical church-goers per year is close to nothing:
50 out of 5,840. (They assume 8 hours of sleep a night…)
And so they ask:
Assuming we have their attention during that 50 hours, what strategies can we use to leverage all that other time outside of church? How can our programming start a conversation that continues into the week?
One possible answer is a blog.
A big “duh” moment for some, but there are enough ministries out there that are still on the edge of whether or not to do it.
I think a blog can help engage the congregation throughout the week unlike anything we’ve seen before. Super simple to setup and extremely low cost (if not completely 100% free) it’s one great answer to two great questions.
Thanks Swerve for asking. You’ve got my answer.
[Picture from Kunel]
Thanks for the constant encouragement on this one! I'm still trying to get my church to have a blog. We'll get there… we're just being slowly "strategic" about it. haha…
This isn't blog oriented. But when I lived in Chicago I went to a very small church (around 50 on a good Sunday). My pastor didn't visit people in homes very often because urban people are often not all that inviting of people in their homes (and because it was a dense area – around 30,000 per sq mile – so you just cannot just stop by someone's house without making arrangements).
What he did do was try to come to everyone's office at least once a year and take them out for lunch or coffee. Became know by people's officemates and was able to help people with office support projects. Just as I was leaving Chicago, we set aside a couple thousand dollars of our local evangelism/missions budget to start doing office parties. If we knew that a teacher had a work day, we would bring breakfast for all the teachers in the building. If an office was doing a fundraiser for a charity that the whole office was working on, we would be try to figure out how to be helpful. These were small projects that didn't cost a lot (around $50-75 per project), didn't take a lot of time, but were very visable in helping our people see their work (or community group, or charity or whatever they were really involved in) as a ministry that they church would support and commission them to work on.
Unfortunately there was a lot of transition as I was leaving and I don't think it made it past a pilot phase. But I think if we are going to move the church into people's lives, we need to really move the church into people's lives. People don't live at church. They live in their homes, they spend about half their waking hours at work, their friends outside church are the ones that need to meet Jesus.
Adam,
what a brand spanking sweet idea… bring the church into people's lives… i wonder why we don't do it enough.
this, on a personal sidenote, is something that my wife and i are heavily invested in… we are praying right now about where we're going to “root” ourselves for a longhaul… and invest in the neighborhood and do stuff like this.
as much as i like the internet, i love the real deal.
thanks for this.
I had a similar conversation about blogging today and how it represents a resource that engages the community
Testing. Please ignore.
Thanks,
Michael
IntenseDebate
oh man, fully!!!!
the problem is to get people there and to return consistently (alas for the fact that so many Christian Blogs suck)
Stephen,
thanks for pointing this out. going to church is a typical thing and apparently you can just go without “being”… sadness abounds.
what are some strategies you've seen personally to make that “connection” in your ministry?
Lets get real. I am a pastor and I love to teach and minister the Word to people but the reality is that people may visit a church because the preaching and teaching is relevant and hip or the worship is awe inspiring but that won't keep them coming back. Willow Creek has seen this happen in their ministry which stands as one of the largest church movements in American history. Without equiping and exhorting your leaders, volunteers and congregation to seek out others and to build authentic supportive relationships within your congregation, people will leave because your church has failed to make a personal connection with them. Our motto at our church is "Don't just go to church, BE the CHURCH!" and as a pastor my goal is to always reinforce this within our congregation.
Unrelated piece of information: Our church, in order to save money, has started using this free widget called "The shopping Genie", It has saved our church a lot of money. You can download it free, no strings at http://www.myshoppinggenie.com/dc (beware it will not work on Macintosh which stinks!)
Well one of the major things that I do as a leader is de-emphasize Sunday as the most important day. We encourage our congregation to be on the constant look out for what we call "Their One Person". This is a person, usually encouraged to be "Far from God", that the congregant works to build a personal authentic relationship with NO STRINGS ATTACHED. After they have been building that relationship for a while, our church facilitates "Community Events". These can be centered around a sporting event, hobby or topic. These are one time events that DO NOT happen at church but somewhere in the community, maybe a sports arena or bar. It is only after someone has build an authentic relationship and brought "Their One" to a community event that we encourage them to bring "Their One" to a Sunday Service. Because they are already connected by an authentic relationship and have already been introduced to our community, via a real world non church event, that they become much more open to a relationship with Christ which is what our Sunday Service focus on as well as Next Steps of growth as a Christian.
The focus once again is put on the individuals in the congregation that play the most important role. Good services can get them there once but it is authentic relationship and community that keep them coming back!