While they might not attend every week, once a month churchgoers are still a somewhat active part of your church family. The reasons they don’t attend more regularly vary from too busy to too tired and everything in between.
Your church doesn’t have to just give up on reaching them more often, though. One thing COVID has taught churches is there are multiple ways to still reach your members.
Just because churchgoers aren’t in the pews every Sunday, it doesn’t mean you’re not still connecting with them. Better engagement through other methods could be the key to increasing their attendance and overall church growth.
Table of contents
- 1. Build A Church Website
- 2. Blog Weekly
- 3. Stay Active On Social Media
- 4. Create Facebook Groups
- 5. Live Stream Services
- 6. Upload Videos Of Sermons
- 7. Offer Online Bible Study
- 8. Host Social Gatherings During The Week
- 9. Offer More Volunteer Opportunities
- 10. Add Kid And Family Activities To Your Site
- 11. Poll Members To See What They Need
- 12. Create Free Ebooks
- 13. Encourage Daily Reading And Discussion
- 14. Make Services More Interactive
1. Build A Church Website
It’s a simple solution, but highly effective when done correctly. A church website is your church’s virtual front door. When people arrive on the home page, they’re starting a faith-based journey with your church. Of course, this means you have to fill your site with the resources to support visitors.
Provide information about your church, show what your volunteers are up to, answer common questions Christians have, provide study resources and much more. Message boards and forums can even help you create an active community on your site. You can also add videos of sermons and events for members and potential new visitors to access at any time.
For once a month churchgoers who can’t attend due to scheduling conflicts, your website gives them a place to still worship virtually and catch up on what’s going on at their church.
When creating a site, make sure it makes a great first impression. You’ll also want to include at least these six pages to provide visitors with the information they need. If you already have a church website, but haven’t updated it in a while, consider simple ways to give your site a more modern makeover to make it more engaging.
2. Blog Weekly
Blogging every week is not only a great way to engage all members of your church, but attract more visitors to your church’s website. If those visitors like what they see, they might visit in person, or if they live far off, participate in your online communities.
For your once a month attendees, a weekly blog post gives them something to think about and learn from. You could base the blogs on the previous week’s sermon, questions you get from members or people online, an interesting perspective from a Christian leader, a moving story from a member or anything else that comes to mind. There are numerous blog post ideas to keep readers highly engaged, even if they’re not sitting in your church every Sunday.
3. Stay Active On Social Media
As of 2021, Facebook had 1.9 billion daily active users. Odds are, at least some of your once a month churchgoers also use social media regularly. Engage them by meeting them where they like to hang out – on their favorite social media networks. It’s important to note that this might not always be Facebook. Members might prefer Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube or something else.
However, since Facebook is the most active network, it’s the reasonable place to start. Posting regularly with useful content, scripture and thought-provoking questions keeps your church family engaging with each online. For someone who only attends monthly, they still get to have faith-based conversations with their fellow church members and meet new friends through your Facebook community.
Plus, if you’re creating great posts, your less active church members are more likely to share your content, which can lead to more church members in the future. If your churchgoers aren’t on social media, try some of these strategies to still connect with them.
4. Create Facebook Groups
For an even more interactive experience, create Facebook groups. You can have just one main group or several small groups that cater to different parts of your church family. For instance, you might have a group for parents, one for kids and another for seniors.
Sometimes, once a month churchgoers have obligations that they can’t put aside. This causes them to miss weekly services. This doesn’t mean they don’t want to worship or socialize with fellow Christians. A Facebook group gives them a place to still have meaningful conversations.
The great thing is you’re free to limit who is part of the group. So, you can shut out trolls, spammers and people who only want to cause trouble. You’ll want to have some volunteers on hand to help moderate groups to keep them safe and friendly.
5. Live Stream Services
Some churches blame the pandemic for the increase in once a month churchgoers. Back 2019, twice a month churchgoers was a growing concern (though still considered active) and now the trend has dropped to once a month. Some believe limited services and the availability of online services is a large part of the problem. Since things are still struggling to get back fully to normal, it’s hard to say whether that’s truly the case or not.
For some churchgoers, online services are simply more convenient. For instance, members who have moved and have a long drive might attend less frequently, but love being able to worship during a live streamed service.
A mixture of traditional and live stream services is quickly becoming more normal for many. This allows them to worship wherever they might be. Plus, with a mixture of other engagement strategies, they still get the social element too.
There are any number of reasons a person may need to worship outside of the church itself. Illness, work, injury and weather are all common issues. Live streaming helps your church family continue worshiping together, no matter how infrequently they attend in person.
6. Upload Videos Of Sermons
Of course, if someone’s working, they can’t exactly live stream your services. This is why it’s a great idea to also upload videos of your sermons for members to watch whenever they want. This actually benefits your church in several ways.
First, sermons are accessible to those who can’t attend. Second, members are free to go back and listen to sermons for parts they might have missed or want to hear again. They can also share those sermons with others. Finally, people discovering your church online for the first time can check out sermons to see if your church might be a great fit for them.
The great part is you can easily live stream your services and convert the service into an on-demand video. You can host the videos from your church website or upload them to YouTube and embed the video on your site instead.
7. Offer Online Bible Study
Often, people want to dive more in-depth into the Bible. They have questions and want to discuss them. Offering online Bible study sessions allows your once a month churchgoers another way to worship and study alongside their fellow church members.
Consider doing this during an evening for a half hour or so. You choose a topic and everyone meets online. Of course, you can also host Bible studies at your church throughout the week too.
Facebook Live is a great free way to do this. Or, you can use other video meeting services like Zoom or Skype.
8. Host Social Gatherings During The Week
So far, most of the suggestions on this list involve online activities. However, online can’t fully replace being together in person. If scheduling is the only reason your members don’t attend frequently, consider hosting social gatherings during the week.
These can be open house style with simple refreshments. Everyone mingles for a bit and there’s a short mini-sermon or inspirational story to wrap things up. This can also be a good way to get infrequent churchgoers to be a little more active in the church overall.
9. Offer More Volunteer Opportunities
While it’s true some people simply aren’t interested in volunteering, many members of your church family would love to volunteer. They just can’t devote large amounts of time. Engage your once a month churchgoers by offering a wider variety of volunteer opportunities that don’t require a large time investment.
For instance, you might need someone to help out at a weekly social gathering. It’s a one-time thing that’s easy to fit in to a busy schedule. Or, you could ask your members about any special skills they have. Someone who attends once a month might be an incredible graphic designer who could help take website and social media graphics to the next level.
Simply getting your church family more involved in volunteering shows them the value of helping others. It also shows them your church serves a purpose in the community and even worldwide. When they get to be a part of that purpose, they feel good about themselves and want to be even more active in church events, including regular services.
10. Add Kid And Family Activities To Your Site
Families sometimes attend church less because their kids are so busy with school and school activities. Plus, younger kids often struggle trying to sit and pay attention to long sermons.
Engage this type of once a month churchgoer by adding kid and family-friendly activities to your church website. This could be fun games, kid-friendly study guides, suggested projects and more. The idea is to open the door for faith-based conversations in families. The more interested kids become in faith and worship, the easier it becomes for families to attend together more frequently.
11. Poll Members To See What They Need
As hard as it might be to hear, sometimes your members aren’t attending as often due to an issue within your church. It could be recent changes, a problem with another member or just not feeling as if their needs are being met. While you’ll never be able to please everyone, there may be some simple changes you could make that would improve your church overall.
Poll your members to see what they need. What problems would they fix if they could? What things do they absolutely love? Why don’t they attend more often?
Add the poll to your church website and encourage all your members to take it. You can also offer the poll at your church via a paper form for those who aren’t online.
12. Create Free Ebooks
Staying in touch is the key part of engaging your once a month churchgoers. Creating free ebooks for them to read gives them another opportunity to learn and worship even when they’re not attending weekly. Considering creating a short ebook once a month.
You can easily base ebooks off of sermons, questions you get from members or online followers, common issues Christians face or any other relevant topic. The great part is these free books also help you reach potential new church visitors. Announce new releases on social media. You could also ask people to sign up for your church newsletter while requesting the ebook. This helps you stay in contact as well.
13. Encourage Daily Reading And Discussion
Use your church’s blog and social media to encourage daily Bible reading and discussion. The idea is to get both your less active church members and active members reading more. In a Lifeway study, 59% of churchgoers say they read the Bible once or twice a week. That’s still a large percentage that doesn’t read the Bible on their own frequently or even at all.
Often, this is because people simply don’t know where to start. Suggest scripture to focus on. You can provide short insights on your blog or social media to help further explain what the scripture means. Having this extra guidance helps all your members and online followers. Plus, it gives you a chance to engage your less active churchgoers, encouraging them to attend more often when possible.
Encourage everyone to discuss what they’ve read in person, as a family and online with your church community. Along the way, your church family becomes more confident in the scripture and how to talk to non-churchgoers about it.
There are several great apps that can help with daily reading. There’s even an app designed specifically for kids.
14. Make Services More Interactive
Finally, make your services more interactive. While church services aren’t supposed to be about entertainment, some members simply become too bored to pay attention. They want to, but their mind can’t stay focused. As a result, they just attend less frequently. This is also why uploading videos helps since they can watch the sermon in shorter sections while still getting the message.
Adding more interactive elements makes your services more engaging. By having them posted online too, you’ll also attract more potential new members.
From growing your church with new members to increasing church attendance and engagement, a church website can help your church in numerous ways. Find out more about our web design services and how they help you better engage your once a month churchgoers.
More On Visitor Engagement
About The Author
