With autumn harvest activities right around the corner, it is a good time for a reminder of keys to great follow-up. Often church leaders are notorious for working so hard to make an event succeed that they are exhausted at the end of the event and have no energy left to follow up on the fruit that can be gleaned from the event. Remember, the whole purpose of the event is to reach people in our communities and draw them into our churches and into the kingdom of God. Here are some keys to making follow-up much easier.
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Double-07 secret greeters: Find individuals who don’t have children at the event and give them the job of “working the crowd.” Their job? Greet every adult. These 007 secret greeters try to greet all the adults and welcome them to your church. Remember, to many this is their first exposure to your church. They are trying to find out if your church is a friendly place. The visiting adults will be standing in lines waiting for their kids to participate in various activities, thus it is easy to talk with them. The greeters should be equipped with anything to help bless the families. Perhaps they are walking around with free coffee. Perhaps they have plastic bags to help families with their stuff. Perhaps they have extra tickets to the various activities. These workers should start up a conversation with the families, asking them if they go to church anywhere. If they don’t, then they are the families the greeters really want to spend time with. Perhaps they point them out to the senior pastor so he or she can come up to the family and greet them.
The pastors and pastors’ wives of the church make fantastic greeters. The youth pastor should also greet. Often families come to your church for a children’s activity, but they also have a young youth with them who was too young to leave at home but too old for the youth activity. The youth pastor can greet these visiting youth and have something for them. Perhaps give them a youth t-shirt or show them the youth room, etc.
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Capture names of those who have no church: Make sure you have a registration card that captures the contact information of the families, including address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, kids’ birthdays, and if they have a church home. If those who are visiting write down the actual name of their church, then you know that they most likely have a church. Bt if they leave it blank or just name a denomination, chances are they don’t have a church home or they would name it. This is very, very important. These are the names that you concentrate on when it comes to follow-up.
If you have already printed your cards but didn’t ask about their church home, ask your registrars to ask that question as the people come in and turn in their registration cards. They can say, “Well, thank you. Where do you folks go to church?” If they hesitate and the kids look at the parents as if to say, “Yeah, Mom, where do we go to church?” that’s your clue. Put an X on the registration card to indicate, “This family has no church home.”
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After the event, two letters should be sent out—one to those who had a church home and one to those who didn’t. The one to those with a church home should say, “Thank you so much for visiting our church event… Our records say that you already have a church home, so we want to encourage you to be faithful. It is very important that you continue to go to church so that your children can continue to grow in Jesus. We at First Assembly want to see every child know Jesus and then begin to grow in a relationship with Him.
This letter doesn’t ask them to leave their own church, but it does make a subtle statement of what you are striving to do to reach kids at your church.
The second letter is to those without a church home. That letter should describe your ministry and invite the family to come back and visit.
Note: Often registrars don’t have a lot of work to do once the big rush is over. Put this team of people on the job of inputting the information into the computer. If done correctly, they can input the information, print it out on labels, and put the labels on envelopes that already have the generic letters inside of them. That way, the day after the event, the letters can be mailed.
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Prizes in the weeks to come: At your event, have prize coupons that give children special prizes if they come to children’s church or Sunday School during the months to come. Have coupons that say: Come back in November with this coupon for our giant chocolate prize! Come back in December for a special “Under the Tree” gift!
These coupons should be given out in such a way that children win them. Your church kids will win them too, so you will be giving out prizes to your own kids. However, the visiting families should have coupons, for it will cause the kids to beg to come to the church on a Sunday to collect their prize!
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What is special? Every church has something special about it that no one else in the community has. If that is Royal Rangers and Missionettes on Wednesday nights, then advertise that. If you have a cool kids church room, advertise that. Whatever your coolest thing to offer families is, find a way to show that off at the event. Take families on tours of the church. If your event is an autumn harvest and everyone gets a bag of candy, put the candy in the cool children’s church room so families have to go there to pick it up. Give the visiting family a reason why your church is the place to go.
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Phone bank: After the event is over and the letters have been received by the families, Plan on having a group of people call all the visiting families who don’t have a church home. Thank them for coming and invite them to come to church. Those families who seem to have the most potential to come and visit, mark their card for a home visit.
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Home visits: Those families that seem most promising, who don’t have a church home, who have received a phone call that was very positive, are the ones you want to visit. Visiting them and inviting them to come is a wonderful idea. Hand the family some of the coupons that you had for special prizes for the kids on certain days. (Note: make these coupons special. They are giant prize coupons. When a child comes with these coupons, you know that child is a promising visitor, since the only way to get the coupons are through the home visits. Have a giant candy bar or some other giant prize awaiting these special visitors.
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Mailing list: Put all the names on a mailing list. Those with their own church homes should be contacted very sparingly—no more than three times during the next year. The names of the kids without a church home can be used a bit more. Let them know when it is time to go to camp, or a camp out, or a big activity, etc. Some of these families will come back and join in an activity because they received the mailing. I have seen unsaved dads and their sons come on our campouts because mom wanted dad to spend some quality time with his son. During these events, both father and son accepted Christ and the whole family was brought into the church. A year later they were workers in our children’s ministry.
Imagine a farmer spending so much time planting and fertilizing his crops that when it came time to pick the fruit, he was too exhausted. That is what often happens with follow-up at big events. We are so busy doing the big events that we lose the opportunity for gathering in the fruit. Done correctly, follow-up can make a big difference in the growth of your church.
