church grow: the big picture for stellar growth
overcoming the difficulties of Western evangelism
According to a 2020 survey , 29 percent of Americans never attend church or synagogue, compared to 24 percent of Americans who attend every week. Despite only about a fifth of Americans attending church or synagogue on a weekly basis, almost 40 percent consider themselves to be very religious.
What does this mean for you… it means that 100% of American churches are fighting to attain 24% of the churched population if they aren’t doing direct and intentional outreach to the unchurched.
Solution: A product we call "Pastor in Your Pocket"
Evangelize better with the EV4 automation. EV4 gives you the ultimate evangelical tool at the push of a button. Imagine someone being able to meet a perfect stranger on the street or in the checkout line at the grocery store, and within seconds have them enrolled in a course that will evangelize them, teach them sound theological doctrine and invite them to connect to your church. Now imagine every member of your church having this tool and being able to use it effortlessly within seconds. How much will a tool like this impact the growth and effectiveness of your church?
Better Visitor Follow-Up
What if there was a way to have every single person who walked into the door of your church instantly go through a new church orientation with you, the pastor! A way for all new members to be able to begin their new members class the very same day they actually joined the church, well there is! Businesses use funnel technology to grow their businesses and client bases all the time and churches can use this same technology to have a new member or church visitor sign up for a class and take the class online with no wait. Instant engagement the very same day. No lag time, no loss in enthusiasm, and no way to fall between the cracks.
Solution: Visitor Auto-Connect
The visitor signs up at the door and gets an automated tour of the church, including where the restrooms, nursery, classrooms, and visitor’s rooms are located. The next day they will receive a personalized message just for them. Each day for two weeks the visitor is sent podcasts, bible studies, prayers, and greetings from your church. Afterward, if they join the church, they are automatically enrolled into an automated new members class. This greatly increases their likelihood of joining the church and becoming productive engaged members.
church grow: the big picture for stellar growth
E-CHURCH OR THE ONLINE CHURCH MOVEMENT
Is your live stream simply displaying what's happening in your church or is your live stream treated as its own church with its own objectives and guidelines. Does your E-Church have its own goals, growth strategies, and attending ministers? If not then you may want to rethink how you view the online church. You may also want to use your media team differently or dedicate a separate “online church team” to navigate the waters of the emerging online church. Our live stream services can help you take a more serious look at your online church members and how to better serve them. In 2017, more than half of Bible readers used the internet (55%) or a smartphone (53%) to access biblical texts, a significant increase from 2011 (37%, 18% respectively). What does this mean for you? This means that if your church is not successfully utilizing social media and digital products and actively interacting with your congregation weekly than you are missing out on multiple opportunities to evangelize your current congregation and reach new unchurched individuals. You are missing over half of your current and potential congregants.
SOLUTION: SuperCast & ChristCast
Engage better with SuperCast. Get the right message to the right people at the right time. SuperCast allows you to sync what you put on Facebook and YouTube with what your congregation views on a weekly basis. No need to log into their Facebook accounts or search the church’s website for a link. SuperCast sends your members the right message at the right time each week directly to their mobile device or inbox to increase engagement and evangelism.
VOLUNTEER TRAINING
Can you train your staff once and have that training used each time a new staff member needs to be trained? If not, how can you be sure that each staffer and volunteer are being trained to church standards? You can train everyone yourself and in most cases, this is good for personal interaction and Q&A, but not always possible due to time constraints. Being able to put certain redundant tasks on autopilot may result in better, standardized training and a repeatable training method that can be used each year as a refresher.
SOLUTION: CONNECT PRO
Integrate new members better with Connect Pro. Connect Pro allows you to ask a simple question during service such as, “who would like to become an elder or minister or greeter “, and within seconds have an automated training course sent out to those interested parties. Those interested simply sign up from their mobile devices for that ministry and get automated training sent directly to their inbox. Connect Pro is also a great tool to refresh and revive the existing staffers and volunteers. Connect Pro is a series of ministry-specific trainings created over hundreds of hours of study with the sole purpose of taking those in leadership positions to the next level. All videos or training material within any training can be removed and replaced with your ministries training videos or material and placed back within a scheduled training series for a custom and personalized fit.
church grow: the big picture for stellar growth
ENGAGEMENT
If your church is like most churches, then you probably do not have an automatic mechanism for church engagement. With the emergence of the online church, online giving, online salvation, and online training, the church has an amazing opportunity to build push-button solutions to what were previously complex church issues. Do you need to keep your teens engaged during the week, no problem! There is a solution for that. Is mid-week service attendance dramatically lower than Sunday service? No Problem! There is a solution for that! One of the largest ways to retain new and existing members is engagement and one of the best ways to easily engage with your congregation is via the use of digital products and YES, we can help!
EVANGELISM
The oldest and most effective way to grow a church is outreach aka evangelism. Evangelism has withstood the tests of time and is still how many of us got saved initially. Similar to the issues with organic church growth, if there is not an automatic method in place to continually evangelize the hurting and unchurched then your church is missing out on one of its greatest opportunities. Imagine a couple goes online and is looking for marriage counseling, comes across your 10-day marriage training, and is able to take it instantly. That couple would have been helped greatly and is more likely to want to attend your church. This is true of anyone looking for anything. Once you can become the solution for someone else’s problem, then you become valuable to that person. Look to become valuable and your church will grow. Our partnership with the United Growth Academy allows us to offer online training class services to all of Church Grow partners at an affordable cost.
DECLINING CHURCH ATTENDANCE
According to the pewforum, both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults
What does this mean for you… it means that without an aggressive platform for intentional outreach, most American churches will continue to decline. This is not the case in other parts of the world where revival is spreading and the church is growing.
Solution: Pastor in Your Pocket
Evangelize better with the EV4 automation. EV4 gives you the ultimate evangelical tool at the push of a button. Imagine someone being able to meet a perfect stranger on the street or in the checkout line at the grocery store, and within seconds have them enrolled in a course that will evangelize them, teach them sound theological doctrine and invite them to connect to your church. Now imagine every member of your church having this tool and being able to use it effortlessly within seconds. How much will a tool like this impact the growth and effectiveness of your church?
ORGANIC GROWTH
One of the primary problems with organic growth is that it relies on church members to invite others to your church.
Here are the big 3 reasons solely organic growth can be ineffective.
1. Most church members simply do not invite enough people to church to be effective.
2. Those that do regularly invite coworkers, friends, and family to church may not be very persuasive thus, not be compelling enough to get them to actually come.
3. Organic church growth, in general, may not counter natural church attrition. This creates a church that gains and loses members at a rate that ultimately causes the church to shrink or simply hover around the same size month after month.
With the EV4 tool, organic growth becomes much more obtainable! Empower your members to boldly talk to friends, family, and strangers without the nervousness of having to guess what needs to be said.