When someone visits your church, you want them to feel welcomed. You also want them to know what you’re about. Each church has a unique way of reaching people. Whether it be through reaching lower-income sections of your community or sending out missionaries, you want people to understand your mission and how you’re letting God use you. To do this effectively, you need an amazing church culture.
Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves and think that an amazing church culture is comprised of having different cultures in your congregation. Whereas that can be part of it, that’s not exactly what it means to have an amazing church culture. So what does it mean? Let’s dive in.
Culture
The set of shared attitudes, values, and goals that characterizes an organization.
If this is how culture is defined, that means your church needs to be comprised of a group of people who make your church’s mission a top priority. How you do this needs to be strategic, however. It takes planning and an added commitment from each person on your leadership team.
How do you start cultivating this type of church culture? Here are five ways that can help you create an amazing church culture.
1. Examine Your Current Church Culture
Before you start preaching from the pulpit that everyone at your church needs to have the same attitude and values, take a step back and start researching. Hop on your church’s Google listing, Facebook, or other places people can review their experience with your church. What are the reviews? Do people say things that are positive or negative? Is there a common subject people focus on in their reviews (i.e. “They reach out into the community well!” or “No one said anything to me when I visited.”)? This can be a great start by finding out what people think about your church.
You can also send out a short questionnaire to your current congregation. Form an email with two or three questions asking your church members for their feedback. This will help you understand whether or not your church is on the same page or have the same attitude and values.
2. Make a Plan
After you have a greater understanding of your current church culture, gather your leadership team and make a plan on how to improve it. Don’t make a plan to house your church culture around something that doesn’t exist yet. Start by building off what currently exists. If you have primarily received negative feedback, perhaps your church culture can center around transparency and openness. Make a plan to apologize for anything wrong thing that may have occurred in the past. We live in a world where transparency holds great meaning, so creating an environment or culture that thrives off this openness may resonate well with your church members.
In the same way, if your church is already known for feeding the homeless, make that part of your amazing church culture. Promote helping others. Encourage your congregation to find new ways of helping people get back on their feet. Cultivating a culture from what you already have will help make planning an amazing church culture an easy one.
3. Form a Mission and Vision Statement
Whether you have mission and vision statements for your church or not, take the feedback you received when you examined your current culture and form statements that speak to the direction your church is already going. Forming these types of statements will not only help your leadership team get on the same page, but it will also help any newcomer visiting your church to understand what you’re about.
Think about it. If you have your mission and vision statements posted around your church, not only will someone read these words, they will also experience meeting people with the same attitude in your congregation. It’s another way for people to understand who you are and what you’re about. If you need help forming a good mission statement, check out this article. For vision statements, hop on over to this helpful article too!
4. Establish Common Language
With your leadership team, come up with words or phrases you feel like are good representations of your church. These words should be used regularly by each of your staff members so people constantly hear and learn these values.
According to How People Learn, when someone hears these types of values, they only have a 20% chance of retention. If they also see these values combined in a demonstration (i.e. see people in your church actively using these values) that percentage moves up to 30%. Once people start to use the same language and become involved in demonstrating these values themselves, that percentage skyrockets to 75%. If they use these values and begin to teach others about them, then the likelihood of these values being learned and engrained in a person’s life lands at a whopping 90%.
The moral of the story is if you have a set group of phrases or words that are combined with a demonstration, you’ll encourage and inspire others to use the same language and jump on board.
5. Be Intentional
Don’t let all the things you have to do in order to have an amazing church culture overwhelm you. Be who you are and be intentional with those around you. The more intentional you are, the more love people will feel. The more love they feel, the more active they’ll be. The more active they are, the more the Gospel will spread.
Next Steps
If you want to learn more about how to enhance your church’s unity and stay organized, check out Elexio church management software. They have all you need to make sure your church is heading in the right direction.