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The number one thing churches can do to get visitors to come back
 The number one thing churches can do to get visitors to come back 640 426 The Provisum Group

A few months ago, I was talking with a pastor friend of mine who was lamenting that his church was having trouble getting more visitors to come back to his church. By all accounts, it sounded like he was doing everything right. He had his most enthusiastic members on his welcome team. It appeared he checked all of the boxes.

One service offered by the Provisum Group is to have our staff secret shop a church. We call it a “Visitor Audit”. We sent a member of our communications team to visit my friend’s church to see where the disconnect might be.

My friend’s welcome team was on point. They saw a new face enter the church and quickly welcomed him. He said he and his family was moving to the area and he was church shopping before the move. They offered him a tour of the facility and showed him the fabulous children’s ministry. They introduced him to the nicest people you could imagine in the nursery.

They gave him a number of pamphlets about all of the great activities the church had to offer and walked him to the sanctuary.

After service, they sought him out and asked him how he liked the service and told him about the neighborhood and where the best restaurants and parks were.

Finally, he said to them, “Everyone here is so nice. How do I connect with this church?” There was a noticeable pause. It was clear no one was prepared to answer that question.

Right there was the critical flaw in my friend’s welcome plan. He had all of the right people in all of the right spots doing all of the right things but his team never considered asking for a way to connect with the people who visited their church. They just assumed that everyone wanted to be a part of their church and never thought, “How do we keep the conversation going after that first visit?”  “How do we stay in touch with this person after they leave Sunday service?”

When our team does a Visitor Audit, one of the “must do’s” is they have to leave contact info with someone or die trying.  You might be surprised how often our team has to proactively and diligently work to leave contact information with a church and how rarely churches actually follow up. We also ask the pastor before we come, what he/she thinks our visitor experience will entail. I can tell you we rarely experience what the pastor thinks we should.

Now my friend’s church has improved their welcome process and asks for contact information at every service. They have a well-designed email autoresponder campaign that feeds new email addresses into their newsletter but none of this would matter without someone first asking, “How can we connect with you?”

Capturing contact information and responding to it is the first step in disciple making.

Don’t Just Work In It. Work On It.
 Don’t Just Work In It. Work On It. 1024 640 The Provisum Group

In order to become a great leader you must learn to make things better in your organization. The first way to start to make things better is to ask great questions. Great questions lead to better answers and more clarity about the true and current status of your organization. Once you have true and clear picture, you will have a better chance of plotting a course of action that will improve and grow your church, non-profit, or business.

As a church consultant, I have audited many church financial balance sheets. The audit process can often feel painful to staff members, but it is necessary to insure organizational health.

In the same way, leaders must audit their ministries, systems, and models. Why? Ministry auditing makes things better.

Andy Stanley, of North Point Community Church offers six questions that every leader should ask on a regular basis. These are great questions.

  1. “Do I have the right people at the table? Do I have the right people who are informed to make the right decisions?”

I like this question because without the right people, you really have nothing. The wrong people in the wrong positions always lead to the wrong decisions and the wrong results. If you manage others in your organization, you must ask if you have the right people in the right positions.

  1. “Where are we manufacturing energy? Where are we pretending? Where are we trying to convince people to go to that we don’t want to go to ourselves?”

There is a difference between buzz and hype. Buzz means that there is a groundswell of interest. Hype means that somebody is trying to sell others on being interested. In your organization, you want buzz. You want people to want to do the ministry activities. You must regularly guard against yourself and your other staff from trying to make things happen that just don’t have genuine interest.

  1. “Where do I make the greatest contribution to the organization?”

This question leads you to self-evaluation. Let’s face it: you’re not really good at everything. Don’t believe me? Just ask your spouse. You must stay in your lane. Every good leader knows their strengths and their weaknesses. Stay in your lane and make the biggest contribution you can.

  1. “Who’s not keeping up?”

Every organization has people who are ahead and behind. Nobody likes to be behind. However, when we fail to evaluate who is not keeping up we are discrediting the work of those who do. I’m not saying you have to automatically fire people who don’t keep up with you, but you do need to be aware and take appropriate action.

  1. “What have we fallen in love with that is no longer…? What have we become emotionally attached to that no longer belongs? What is our way but is no longer the best way to…?”

Just because the rotary phone used to be a good idea, doesn’t mean you have to keep using it today. Every system and ministry in your church was at one time a good idea. However, your church is not a history museum or an art museum. It is a living and breathing group of people. Just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean it works for today. Organizational leaders need to be rigorous in their evaluation of their systems, ministries, and models regardless of how in love they are or used to be.

  1. “What would a great leader do?”

I like this question because it allows leaders to step outside of themselves and to imagine and dream what somebody else might do. This process often frees mental roadblocks and allows a leader to think clearly and creatively about how to move forward.

For more from Andy Stanley, check out: www.insidenorthpoint.org.

You Can Train a Dog to Climb a Tree…But Why?
 You Can Train a Dog to Climb a Tree…But Why? 300 188 The Provisum Group

Church leaders are notoriously famous for hiring the wrong people. Pastors often hire people who are passionate or competent or full of integrity—but lack all three. Unqualified hires lead to poor work, poor relationships, and lack of motivation. Without using good principles when you hire people, you will be hiring tree-climbing dogs.

In Kingdom work, willingness is admirable but not enough. Integrity is essential, but good character may not insure excellent job performance. Competency is fundamental, but if an employee is dishonest, there will be problems.

Here are four attributes to look for in your next hire:

Desire

A prospective hire should want to do the work. A great hire wakes up in the morning with an “internal start button” and is autonomously motivated to make things happen.

What to look for: During your interview process with candidates, you need to be able to find somebody who wants to do the specifics of a job instead of hiring those people who “can do” or are “willing to do” a job. Motivating the unmotivated is a terrible way to lead a church. But desire isn’t enough…

Competency

A prospective hire must have job-specific levels of competency. This doesn’t necessarily mean a candidate must be perfectly aligned based on their past work experience. That kind of idealism will also lead you nowhere.

What to look for: During your interview process, you need to be able to see a correlation between the type of work they have done and the type of work you will be asking them to do. This safeguard protects you from hiring somebody who is passionate about the work but has no idea how to actually do it successfully.

Integrity

A prospective hire already has integrity BEFORE an official offer is made. Passion and integrity cannot be forced. Either the person you want to hire has it, or… they don’t. Do not put yourself in a situation in which you have a passionate and qualified candidate who is dishonest, impatient, or unstable.

What to look for: During your interview process, ask the prospective hire questions about difficult work situations in the past and how they were handled. Also, make good use of getting to know people before you hire them so you can get a good sense of their character before a job interview skews your clarity.

Chemistry

This is an idea from Andy Stanley. A prospective hire must eventually develop chemistry with you and your team. While it is hard to determine chemistry during an interview process, you need to do your best to determine if there is enough evidence to move forward.

What to look for: During your personal reflection time before you make an offer, ask yourself chemistry questions like… “Do I like this person?” “Could I see myself enjoying working with this person?” “Based on what I know about this candidate, do I think our team’s chemistry grow or shrink as a result of this hire?” As a hiring manager, you are entitled to like the people you work with.

To borrow language from Jim Collins, a pastor must find ways to get the right people in the right seat on the right bus. The right people are essential if you want to lead your organization to move toward all that God has for you and your church.

If you need more resources in this area, I recommend:

Minding His Business
Don Corder

Next Generation Leader
Andy Stanley

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Daniel Pink

Conflict Isn’t Always Bad
 Conflict Isn’t Always Bad 1024 640 The Provisum Group

Conflict isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s often a catalyst for growth.

 

High-capacity leaders have a tendency to create friction with one another. Yet if a leader stewards this type of tension, it has the potential to lead to new growth in the organization.

But let’s be real here and say that human beings are emotional creatures. Somebody will always be getting mad about something. There are many leaders who avoid conflict entirely because they have never observed a healthy way to enter into healthy conflict.

If you plan to lead in a church, you must embrace the reality that there will be real emotions connected to the conflict. This doesn’t mean you should go looking for conflict, nor does it give conflict prone individuals the right to pick fights with each other. It simply means that as we live and work in peace with one another, we must be ready for anger and hurt feelings.

The question is this: how do we process our anger? Do we have a process for keeping “short accounts” with one another to keep the leadership team healthy? You need a plan for how you and your team will work through conflict. Conflict is coming. It’s inevitable. Do you have a plan?

To dive deeper in this topic, I suggest three resources.

My book of course, Minding His Business, is a great example of how I handle conflict.

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when the Stakes Are High

Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Patrick Lencioni

All three provide a great framework to do conflict well, and avoid the potholes of anger and bitterness.

May God give you courage to embrace and step into the difficult conversations in your life and your ministry.

– Don