Churches usually see their highest attendance numbers on Easter Sunday, and your church was probably no exception. You might have been blessed with 30% more visitors than usual. Or maybe this was yet another weekend service in an ever-expanding attendance pattern. The situation is the same in either scenario. Many of these folks are looking for a church home.
How will your church reach out to them? Do you have effective welcoming, follow-up, and assimilation strategies that help to ensure that folks don’t fall through the cracks? Are you helping new people become active participants in the life of your church?
Specifically, what will your team do with the information you collected from your guests on Easter Sunday? Remember, this is more than just raw data to enter into a database and forget about. Those names and ages and interests belong to real people whom God brought your way. How can you use this information in meaningful ways? Do you have a timely way to help your teachers, youth workers, hospitality team, nursery workers, and others to connect with new people?
To be effective in drawing recent guests deeper into the life of your church, the church needs to:
- Gather information and use it effectively
- Communicate with your guests and with your team
- Track your efforts
- Track their participation
What tools do you use to easily and efficiently do all of these things and more? Remember it’s really about helping these new men and women and teens and children become part of your church family.
Gather guest information
Does your church use guest cards? Easter is a great time to collect visitor information and invite guests to return for a future sermon series or upcoming event. Check out this article, How to Use Guest Cards Effectively, to brush up on best practices. Also, consider scheduling extra volunteers to be available to collect these at your entryways and high-traffic areas.
Communicate with your guests
With proper communication tools, you can create personalized emails, prepare letters instantly, and set reminders for phone calls to connect with your guests again. In Best Practices for Communicating with Church Newcomers, we provide some instructions for following up. If your church management software has workflows and interactions, you can automate followup emails or even assign specific leaders to reach out to guests.
- Thank them for coming
- Invite them to return for worship
- Connect them to events and activities targeted to their interests
- Provide access to small groups/classes/ministry teams
Communicate with your members
Pastors can’t personally provide in-depth follow-up to everyone who visits. Fusion helps you to keep your assimilation team in the loop. You can easily provide them with all the information they will need to effectively connect with recent guests in a timely way. Small-group leaders can get up-to-date details about potential group members. Youth workers can get the names and contact information on teens that have visited a class or attended an event.
Pro tip: Instead of investing in a separate messaging system to send communications to members, use a church management software that does it all. That way you’re not hopping software platforms and everything can be run from one central dashboard.
Next Steps
It’s never too late for your church to reach out to your Easter Sunday visitors. Following up with them and keeping track of all those details can be daunting, even overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be.
What difference would it make to your church’s assimilation process if you had a tool that pulled all the details together for you? That’s just what Elexio does. The Elexio team will provide the tools and the training you need to connect with the people God sends your way and help them find a home in your church.
Start a free trial today to see for yourself.
Psst! Check out our Easter Volunteer Guide and other essential resources in your FREE resource pack (click to download).
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.