Does it ever feel like your church is constantly working towards a goal, but never quite winning? It’s discouraging and one of the reasons churches fail at their goals.
Breaking up goals into smaller tasks or portions allows you to take advantage of quick wins for your church. Getting those small victories gives you the confidence to keep going.
Quick wins are everywhere. They’ll help you grow your church, increase engagement, build your online presence and much more.
Challenge Volunteers
Volunteers get bored. Only a handful of members ever volunteer. You have far more to accomplish than you have engaged volunteers. Sound familiar?
One of the easiest quick wins for your church is to challenge volunteers. Give them a new goal. Instead of just being a part of a group, give everyone a responsibility. Make them feel far more engaged.
Set up challenges to serve. Offer more opportunities that fit your members. You can even challenge members and volunteers to start their own project as long as it fits your church’s mission.
This shows your members that you want your volunteers to be active and happy. If your existing volunteers are enjoying what they do, more of your members are likely to volunteer as well.
Ask Members For Advice
Church leaders don’t have to do everything on their own. Your members are a critical part of your church. Want to know why they’re not engaged? Ask them. The best way to improve your church quickly is by listening. Some great questions to start off with include:
- Do you enjoy regular services? If not, why?
- What three things would you like to see changed?
- Do you feel engaged? If not, why?
- Would you recommend this church to others?
- If you’re a new member, did the new visitor onboarding process work well or not?
- What areas would you like to see the church get more involved in?
- Do you feel you’ve grown in your faith since attending?
- Why don’t you attend regularly? Or what makes you attend regularly?
The idea is to get feedback from your members to help you improve your church’s flaws and make it more engaging for everyone. Something as simple as a bad sound system could be ruining the experience for members who sit in the wrong spot.
You may want to make the feedback anonymous so you’ll get more honest answers. Offering the questionnaire on your church website is a great way to do this. You could also have a few booths set up where members can fill out short forms.
Set Up A Welcome Booth
New visitors arrive and leave. They don’t come back. Why? Sometimes, it’s just the church wasn’t a great fit or the person was just passing through. However, it could be they didn’t feel welcome.
As Evangelism Coach points out, a bad experience and poor hospitality are often to blame. For instance, if visitors walk into an empty entryway and there are no directional signs, they’ll feel lost and may immediately walk out. If they visit, but everyone ignores them, they’ll feel like they don’t belong and no one wants them there.
Church Leaders also provides three more reasons why new visitors don’t come back, including making your church feel like a members-only club. Even if you don’t mean to, it can happen. Ignoring church details, like service start times, can also be off-putting.
Another thing to note is new visitors want to know there’s a place for them. If there isn’t any room for new visitors to sit or any groups or opportunities for them, why stay?
All of this is easy enough to fix and get a few quick wins for your church. Start by setting up a welcome booth. Assign a volunteer to man the booth and answer any questions. Have pamphlets listing all your groups, services and ministry options. Also, add in volunteer opportunities too.
Encourage all members to say hello when they see someone new. Even a short conversation with a few members makes a major difference.
All of this takes a few weeks to implement, but you could immediately start seeing results as new visitors come back the next week.
Create Clear Ministry Programs
Does your church have a group for everything? While it may seem like a great way to engage members, it might actually be taking away from the ministry aspect. After all, a scrapbooking club might not do anything to help others explore their faith.
Make sure you have clear ministry programs in place that exist to educate, bring people together and inspire others to share the word. Themed groups are ideal to group like-minded people together.
You can still have fun groups too, but encourage several main ministry groups to make members feel more engaged. Having this clear focus gets your members more involved and shows new visitors you’re serious about creating a welcoming faith-based family.
Invest In Facebook
Want faster growth? Facebook is one of the ultimate quick wins for your church. With only a minimal financial and time investment, you reach numerous people in your local area and worldwide, if you want.
Ads go out to just the target audience you choose. Use your ads to spread the gospel, encourage people, invite people to events or services and build your church community.
Ads jumpstart growth. As your Facebook community grows, so will overall engagement. This also leads to more new visitors and hopefully, more new members.
Offer Quick-Fire Volunteer Opportunities
Many members don’t have hours every week to volunteer. If you want more volunteers, offer quick-fire volunteer opportunities. These can be things that only take 10-15 minutes a week.
For instance, someone who can’t volunteer during the week may work great for directing cars on Sundays or assisting new visitors with finding their way.
Make a list of micro-tasks volunteers could do. These are more convenient, but no less helpful to your church. You might just find that these smaller tasks show members how rewarding volunteering can be. This leads them to volunteer more often and for bigger projects.
Hold Fundraisers People Actually Want
Are you always hosting hog dog dinners, but no one is showing up? What about always having the same one or two groups performing? If you’re not getting any results, it’s time to change things up.
Host a poll on your church website with fundraising options. Also, have a write in option. If you want to increase event engagement and donations, find out what your members might actually enjoy. Remember, what they want isn’t always going to be what worked 10 years ago.
Plus, if your members are eager for something, those in your community may be too. Perhaps you live in a big BBQ area. Instead of a hot dog or pancake supper, host a BBQ contest. It’s a day-long event that people can come check out, meet new people and of course, have incredible BBQ.
The idea is to win faster by focusing on things members enjoy.
Host A Community Show
Getting your members engaged isn’t easy. Engaging your local community is even harder. This is why you need events that encourage everyone to come together.
For those who aren’t sure what they believe or they’ve had a bad experience in the past, a community event that’s more general versus church-based gets them to come out. Once they’re there, it’s much easier to engage with them, though you shouldn’t try to pressure them. But, friendly conversations are a great start.
A perfect idea is a community show. Ideas include:
- Talent show – always works well
- Cooking competition
- Contest – such as trivia or physical activities
- Craft fair
- Carnival – costs more, but brings the community together
While everything should be Christian and family-friendly, the object is to bring your members and local community together as one. Show others that your church is fun, welcoming and happy to answer any questions.
Host events like this once or twice a year. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.
Get Your Blog Active
Do you have a church blog, but rarely post? Maybe you post often but it’s just upcoming events.
You need an active blog to start driving traffic to your church website. Quick wins for your church might not seem possible this way, but every blog post gives your church more opportunities to show up in search results.
Of course, you’ll need more than just “please come to our next event” posts. These are useful, but they’re not that engaging. Instead, create high-quality, engaging posts that keep visitors on your site. Use search terms that people are looking for, such as common questions they have about God and faith.
Google doesn’t just rank your church’s site higher for having a ton of blog content, but for content that people want to interact with. Keeping them on your site, getting them to comment and inspiring them to share posts are what helps.
Master this and you’ll have several quick wins for your church in terms of more website traffic, higher search results, more online engagement and more visitors to your church.
Make Your Website Engaging
You probably already know that a website is beneficial to your church. You might already have one, but is there any reason for people to come back?
If all you have are some basic details, visitors come once to get what they need and never return. Plus, if your church website is boring and doesn’t look like much effort has been put in, it may signal that your church is the same way.
Quickly change the perception of your church by making your website much more engaging. This helps build your online presence and may even encourage church visitors to become members. A few great ways to do this include:
- Blogging regularly
- Adding an online prayer feature
- Uploading sermons or live streaming sermons
- Uploading a weekly podcast to discuss current issues or address visitor questions
- Have a Bible studies and/or daily devotionals section
- Create a discussion forum
When your website offers more than just when to attend, where you’re located and what events are coming up, you’ll get more traffic, more sharing and more overall engagement.
Connect Between Services
Tired of members who only attend once a month or maybe only once every few months? Many times, this happens simply because the member doesn’t feel like they’re getting the connection they want and need.
By reaching out and providing a way to connect between services, you give them that connection they crave. While you may have ministry groups and volunteer opportunities, if they don’t feel engaged otherwise, they might not be willing to join either.
Reach out via Facebook groups. Live stream Bible studies on Facebook or your website. Respond to blog and social media post comments. Create a thriving online community where members and others can come together to worship, talk and stay more connected to their faith 24/7.
Start creating this community and it will grow and continue to give your church wins, such as making members more eager to come to church regularly and invite their friends and family.
Provide Actionable Guidance
More often than not, church services seem to be more about gaining knowledge than taking action. However, this isn’t the best way to keep your members engaged.
You need to provide actionable guidance instead. Mixing teaching with actionable advice is the perfect combination. It gives members some action to take to go along with what they’ve learned. Such as going out and doing one small act of kindness or talking with just one person about God.
This is one of those quick wins for your church that creates a domino effect. Members feel more engaged, so they attend more regularly. New visitors see that you’re empowering your members to do good and be a better Christian, so they’re more likely to return.
Of course, you don’t have to just do this during services. Put this practice into place on your blog posts, social media posts and ministry groups.
One of the quickest wins for your church is a church website. Contact us today to learn how we can help.
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