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Easter Service Recap

April 16, 2009 in Evangelism with 0 Comments

We had a great Easter weekend service this past week at Carrollwood Church! On Saturday, April 11th, we kicked off a brand new series called “He Still Moves Stones,” which was well received. I got the graphic and idea for the series from Outreach.com.

To advertise the weekend we did a few things:
1. We put it on our website
2. We ordered a decent sized banner (with our custom info) that we placed outside our church
3. We ordered and passed out almost 2,000 door-knob hangers in our community
4. We ordered 750 business card size series invite cards that we placed in the hands of our church members to invite their friends and neighbors.
5. And finally, we did a special mail-out with a postcard invitation to anyone that had visited the church in the past year.
And while we didn’t break the attendance record I was hoping for (170), we still had our best attended service since New Years at 121. We also had a number of people that we hadn’t seen in a long time (several years in some cases).
We followed up the Saturday service by having an early morning Easter Sunrise Service from 6:30-7:30 sunday morning followed by a breakfast. We sang some songs, prayed together outside at the moment of sunrise, had a brief Scripture meditation on the resurrection, and then we had an anointing service. I was quite surprised by the turnout of those that came for the service (about 50). And I was even more surprised that almost all of them came forward to be anointed.
It was a huge blessing for our church as we fellowshipped together and with the Lord.
Here are a few lessons that are pretty common sense about Easter weekend.
1. Always begin a new series on Easter
2. If you’re going to go big, do it on Easter. As we all know there are two main dates that if an unchurched person is thinking about going to church they will go if invited: Christmas and Easter. So go all out in encouraging your congregation to invite their friends and family for Easter. I’ve heard some say that you should put up to 50% of your marketing budget to making Easter a big success.
3. Begin preparations as early as possible. I didn’t begin preparing for it as early as I should have, and because of that there were a few elements that we weren’t able to do. Next year I’m going to start preparing as soon as the new year comes!
I was told that this was the first time that our church had an Easter sunrise service, which I was surprised by. Now that we’ve done this one, I can’t imagine having a year without one.
What about you? Do you have an Easter service? Why or why not? How did things go and what are some lessons you learned?

Free Easter Resource

March 3, 2009 in Evangelism with 0 Comments

In the previous post, I made mention of an upcoming tele-seminar that will help you prepare your church for an easter outreach. For those of you that won’t be able to attend, here’s a free copy of the How to Maximize Easter report. It won’t cover all the information that will be covered in the seminar, but it should give some good fundamental principles for what you can do.

Go Big on Easter

March 2, 2009 in Evangelism with 1 Comment

Thom Rainer, in his book Surprising Insights From the Unchurched says that one out of four unchurched people will actually attend church if invited. Furthermore, we know many people are CEO churchgoers, that is “Christmas and Easter Only.”

We are now about five weeks away from easter. So what are you waiting for? This coming easter, there will be people all over your community that, if invited to church, will actually attend with you. So what are you doing to make sure that this happens? What tools are you placing in the hands of your members so that they can invite their friends.
I’d like to invite you (no, I don’t get a kickback for you signing up) to attend a tele-seminar dedicated to making sure that your easter outreach is a success. It costs $39.95 and I believe it will be worth every penny. It’s a webinar type event that you can do from the comfort of your own home. I’ll probably be in my pj’s as I go through it!
For more info and to see what resources you’ll get for attending, click here. To see the different presentation times, click here. 
Do you have any special plans for easter? Will you do a special program?

Why Do People Leave Church?

February 26, 2009 in blogging,Evangelism with 25 Comments

I’ll admit it. People have left my church. Attendance has been down a little lately. That’s why I was interested in a talk that Nelson Searcy gave recently at a coaching event describing why some people leave church.

He mentioned that one of the major reasons why people leave the church is because of sin in their life. Most people don’t mention this when they leave, of course. If asked, they will usually speak about superficial things like music or the children’s ministry. But they leave because he says, “it’s impossible for people to live too long without congruence between belief and behavior.”

For example, there may be someone that is struggling with a sin that they have overcome, but later on fall back into. For many, this lack of congruence between their belief and behavior causes them to split.

So what suggestions does he offer?

We need to teach that we’re churches of grace. We need to be “welcome back” churches. When we haven’t seen someone for awhile, instead of making them feel bad for not having been there, we need to welcome them back like the father of the prodigal son.

So how good are you at noticing people that have left and welcoming them back when they arrive?

I have to admit that with two churches, I often can’t even tell if someone hasn’t been there! Sometimes I may go a month or two before noticing and remembering that I haven’t seen someone in a while. So I do my best to try to remember, and give those that I haven’t seen a call or a note.
There was a family that I hadn’t seen in a year and a half. They attended for about 6 months, and then fell off the side of the earth. I never saw them again. I would call, and leave messages. I wanted to see them, but, it seems, they did not want to be seen. Finally one day I caught them on the phone and I told them I wanted to see them because I missed them. When I stepped into their home and, after speaking to them for a little while, I could tell that they had fallen back into some sins that they were not proud of. To make matters worse, their house had gone into foreclosure, and they were now living somewhere else. Emotionally, they felt defeated, and in the words of the wife, “would not be of any good to anyone at church.” It really pained me to hear her say that because it means that I had not made it clear enough that the church is a hospital for people that are sick and messed up. So I took a moment to pour out my soul and give them the true picture of what a church really is–a bunch of messed up people that are on a journey together, following Christ.
Hopefully when they do show back up, we can surround them, celebrate with a hug, and welcome them back as if they’ve never been gone.

What about you? What have you noticed about why people are leaving churches? What are you doing to follow up with those that have left? How are you welcoming them back?

The Difference Your Form of Advertising Makes

January 28, 2009 in Evangelism,leadership with 0 Comments


A few days ago a church member handed me a folded up piece of newspaper.

“Look, there are most of the churches in our community, but ours is not advertised in there,” she said in a stern voice , implying that it was my responsibility to make sure it was.
As I examined the newspaper, I realized that it was an edition that went out to an area completely populated by retirement communities. In fact, this area (which I will allow to remain nameless) is billed as “America’s premier retirement community.”
“Well, I think we could probably advertise online,” I responded, hoping that she’d give up her crusade. But that’s when she made a very telling statement-”But none of us are online!”
If you advertise in mediums that retirement age people use frequently, guess what kind of people you’ll get? If you advertise in mediums that younger people use…well, you guessed it.
So here’s the principle: how you advertise determines the kind of people you reach.

I know this sounds very obvious, but in that moment, this principle took on new life to me. If I were to advertise in that newspaper, it would be very clear the kind of demographic I would be reaching. We all need the gospel, but churches need to focus on who they can best reach in their own area.
If someone is looking for a church to attend, and happens to be in a younger demographic, Google is generally the first place that will be checked. Ten years ago, the first place someone would check would be the yellow pages or the newspaper. I think the last time I actually opened one of those bulky yellow pages was at least two years ago. So instead of advertising in that newspaper, I decided to jump on the Google Adwords bandwagon and give it a whirl. Here’s a great podcast that describes in detail how to advertise using Google Adwords. The podcast is called “God Bless Google.”
We’ve been using it for two weeks now, so allow me to share with you some of our preliminary findings:
Look: This is what the advertisement ends up looking like. When someone does a search for churches in tampa, they will see our ad on the right side of the page. **If you do a search for our church please don’t click on the ad. Every time you click on the ad it takes money out of our account. I want to reserve those ads for people that are truly making original searches. Thanks!
Cost: How much it costs depends on you. We currently put in $25 a month into the system. The more money you put in, the higher your ad will be on the page, and the more it will be shown throughout the day when someone makes a search.
Result: After two weeks of being on there, it’s been shown 1,912 times. Of those, 27 people actually clicked on our site, costing us a total $9.88. This puts us at .37 cents per click. 
We’ve found Google Adwords to be very relevant, inexpensive, and interactive. What more could you ask for?
Have you tried Google Adwords? What results have you seen? How else are you advertising?

Do Christmas Programs Still Work?

December 29, 2008 in Evangelism,missional,news item with 2 Comments

The answer seems to be yes.

In the latest Time magazine article, the author explores the popularity of such programs saying, “Christmas Eve services — with their pageantry and familiar traditions — became just one part of the celebration, after the family dinner and before the opening of presents.
That schedule of Christmas events is now the default tradition for most Americans.”

Most church leaders have known for sometime that most people who call themselves “Christians” are CEO (Christmas and Easter Only) Christians. These are people who are not normal church-goers, but will attend on one or both of those dates. That’s why most church put most of their financial resources towards big programs on these two dates.

But what I thought was most interesting about this article, was the suggestion that what most people seem to expect in a Christmas service is that they will be able to sing some of the traditional Christmas songs, light some candles, and greet each other with “Merry Christmas.”

I think there’s a refreshing simplicity in that.

What kind of Christmas program does your church use? What do you expect and enjoy most in a Christmas program?

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