Our first church to get free marketing coaching this summer via the MMC blog is Journey Church in the Southern United States! Thanks for being the first!
I hope to give you a few ideas to get you started moving in the right direction with your ministry marketing. To keep the focus on the coaching (and perhaps to get a few more people to try it), I will keep the specifics you gave me about your church location to myself. People will still get an idea about the location you are serving, without having to know who you are specifically.
(Note to pastor: I went ahead and posted this since your email was bouncing.)
Here we go; you answered the questionnaire below as follows:
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What is your ministry denomination affiliation?
Journey Church: None now. Will become Southern Baptist Convention.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Does your church have a Vision or Mission Statement?
Journey Church: Leading people of [insert name of location] to become active members of God’s family.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: How would you describe the ministry?
Journey Church: Helping former church drop outs grow spiritually and reach out to the community. Right now we have 10-12 growing through worship and group Bible Study.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What are the key strengths of your ministry?
Journey Church: All members understand and are committed to the vision and strategy for growing our church. Each is using their talents and gifts to provide our worship service. We are persistent even though our growth is weak.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What are the weaknesses or challenges of your ministry?
Journey Church: Inability to attract our target. Few in number. Need more discipling. Connecting with our target. It is ages 30 to 40 years. Same age as our team. This age group is hard to connect with.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Where would you like to see the ministry in the next 6 months?
Journey Church: Attracting prospects to our worship service weekly and families joining monthly.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What obstacles might be getting in the way of achieving these results?
Journey Church: A way to connect with our target group. We have tried several popular approaches and creative ones.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What might be getting in the way of getting more prospects for the ministry?
Journey Church: Churches on every corner. Many prospects are church drop outs. One more church that says it is different doesn’t register. They won’t take a chance thinking it will be same kind of church they dropped out of. There are plenty of prospects.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What things are you most passionate about and how are these reflected in your ministry?
Journey Church: I want to get people into real worship that genuinely touches the soul. Teaching people what God has to say about the real life they have to deal with. I am a teaching preacher.
My messages are geared to deal with daily life. Worship is upbeat and the music is today’s popular Christian music. Small Groups are designed to teach discipleship.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What strategies are you using right now?
Journey Church: Right now we are emphasizing a personal approach to evangelism. Our people reach out to friends and family through ministry and prayer.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What is the most successful aspect of your church’s ministry?
Journey Church: The members we have are faithful to what we do in worship and group Bible Study. They have to set up and take down our worship equipment each Sunday. None have ever complained in the two years we have been doing this. Most faithfully attend small group.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What is the least successful aspect of your ministry?
Journey Church: Financial support is still weak. Outreach to our target group.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Do you have a specific strategy for following up with all prospects?
Journey Church: Yes. Prospects get a thank you phone call and a letter from the pastor with an invitation to small group. If they continue to attend we send one letter for the two weeks following encouraging them to attend functions.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Do you have a marketing calendar?
Journey Church: Yes
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What specific results do you want to obtain from working with me as a marketing coach?
Journey Church: Learn how to expose our target to who we are in a meaningful way. To get a flow of prospects attending our church.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Try to Define Your Target Audience Deeper Through Research
Journey Church is in a situation I have seen many times before. Often churches set out with a specific target audience in mind, but their target audience is more hypothetical than it is based on actual people. By hypothetical, I mean they are seeking to reach people based on a perception that they exist and that they will respond to outreach. Certainly church dropouts exist. But, unless existing churches give you list of their lapsed members, it will be difficult to pinpoint them via traditional marketing channels.
You could send them advertising that says “Are you a church drop out? We want to help you become an active member of God’s family”. But very few people may think of themselves as church dropouts and according to a lot of national research, fewer will think they are not already active members of God’s family. Research shows that more and more these days, people think of themselves as spiritual and not needing to be actively involved in a church.
Secondly, churches usually don’t have original research to show why specifically people have dropped out of church. It is assumed, usually, that the reason is because they didn’t like the preaching, or they found the music irrelevant. They may feel this way, but the church’s ministry leaders don’t have any proof that they feel this way. They are basing their outreach usually on something they read in a book from another ministry or heard in a seminar somwhere.
Actions to take to define your target
- Get a demographic study of the area of your city where you want to target from a good company.
- Since you are in the SBC contact the North American Mission Board they may have a free service to help you.
- Or contact the fine people at Percept about getting a ministry area profile
- You may be in an area that has too many churches competing for the attention of people in the community. That happens in the south a lot. Find out where (or when) churches are needed most near you.
- You could learn what is keeping people out of church if you conducted your own research. Consider a door-to-door survey, telephone survey, or intercept people in the community. Be sure to ask 100 or more people who fit your target audience description. That is, people who formerly attended church, but no longer are involved.
- Read “Snapshot Survey” by Lloyd Corder for ideas on how to design your survey
- Find out why they don’t attend church. Find out also what they feel about the ministry ideas you propose. Be careful to be as objective in your research as possible.
- Once you have compiled as much existing demographic and original research data you can, compile a profile or “persona” of the people you want to reach. Describe their lifestyle, needs and perceptions.
- Then use the profile in planning all your ministry actions with their point of view in mind
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Take a Second Look at How You Plan Ministry
How does the church know that the church dropouts haven’t dropped out because the music was too contemporary, or because the preaching they found in church wasn’t based enough on the Bible? Too many ministry leaders make assumptions about what the “unchurched” are looking for that are wrong.
For example, if contemporary music was a fit for everyone, we would have only one radio station. There would be no country radio, no classical, no jazz, no news talk radio, no NPR. All people are not a like and all unchurched people are not alike either.
Personally, I have had it up to here with Mercy Me. C’mon, you know it’s true! :)
The current presupposition is that people want a more contemporary expression of church, and they will be attracted to a service that has more contemporary elements its program. These presuppositions come more from ministry books and seminars than from actual ministry experience.
In research I have conducted, people who don’t go to church don’t say they are looking for a particular type of worship experience or program element. The reason they don’t go to church more often is they are working double shifts, weekend hours, and are too busy. They admit they would make time for church if they knew if they would find the love and acceptance they are looking for, but, the truth is they don’t have time or energy to put into looking for a church that is loving toward and understanding of them. If you want to reach them, you will have to go where they are—like a missionary.
Some will never be able to go to church because the typical church meets at a time that they can’t come. Many people work through the night and on the weekends and honestly can’t make it to a Sunday morning service, no matter who is leading it. I wonder why in the USA we have a significant portion of the population that works the night shift, and very few ministry leaders who do also.
Another observation I have made in my research is people assume the unchurched are the young. In my work in Oklahoma, I found that nearly 70% of the people who don’t go to church turned out to be “fifty-something empty nester blue collar Baby Boomers”. I don’t have time to get into this, but the next big lesson I think the church needs to learn, is to not to be such “ageists.”
One reason why you have trouble reaching people could be your ministry is misaligned with people you could reach if you would only adjust your presentation and approach. It could be you are meeting in the wrong time, the wrong place, trying to be too young, or are using the wrong style of music, etc. Be willing to make adjustments so you can begin to build a bridge of understanding with the people you want to reach.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Build in the Personal Touch into Your Ministry Follow-up
Thankfully your members are willing to work hard and are using personal evangelism. Try to put more personal touches into your ministry with people who visit your church. While computer printed letters and phone calls are great, you may need to do more to get personal. Considering your group is under twenty people, put more effort in spending personal face-to-face contact with the people you reach with your ministry. In a church setting that is as small as yours, the letters and phone calls may seem a little less personal than is expected. You may, without intending, be sending a message that you are not approachable.
The same goes for your members. You mentioned they are somewhat lacking in the area of discipleship. While your group is still small, take your membership through the steps of following Christ as a dedicated disciple personally as their pastor. If you train them to be your future leadership, when the time comes and you are reaching more people you will have an equipped work force of fellow laborers in Christ. Otherswise, if more people came now, you would be working alone.
The same idea of personalization applies to the marketing outreach you do. Prefabricated marketing materials and the “popular” approaches can’t take the place of the personal touch. You may not need mass mailings, you may need to make hand written notes and drop in on your members at home and work. Be a missionary and go where your people are during the rest of the week.
Try to connect with several people per week. Consider making personal contacts with at least three individuals from three categories of people each week: 1. Three people who are members 2. Three people who are lapsed from attendance. 3. Three people from your guest list. Don’t let anyone slip through the cracks.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: How to Get More Prospects for Your Church
You may be surprised to find that you already have more prospects than you know (or can handle). People I talk to are always looking for that “Person X” out there who they do not know to be the prospect they discover through some mass advertising campaign. But the best prospects for your church are people you already know and the people who know the people you know.
There are two ways for finding prospects in marketing. The first is the one people think of when they think of marketing, “blind prospecting”. That is prospects are people discovered through outreach advertising that are strangers to you. The second form of prospecting (also very much a part of marketing) is through referral. That is people you meet through people you know and or meet throughout your day. Every person you know knows someone who fits the description of your target audience that needs a personal touch from you.
I once read a marketing book that talked about the “Rule of 52”. The book said that 52 is the average number of people in the average wedding or funeral. That means that everyone knows at least 52 people that love and care about them. In your church, that means you have at least 520 prospects through your active membership. How many of those names can you get a hold of and make a personal contact with? Start working that list this week!
Steps to take to make your follow-up more personal
- Schedule more time to be with people face-to-face and worry less about outreach programming
- Make sure you follow-up with all people who visit your church for at least six months after their first visit. The average person needs 8-12 contacts before they join a church.
- Visit them and contact them using a variety of means, such as email, letters, postcards, phone calls. But make sure you also put the personal touch to each visit.
- Get to know the people who come to your church by name and learn something specific about each one that is important to them.
- When you see something (on the web, in the newspaper, a book, etc) that they would be interested in, send them a link, tear out the article, loan them the book, etc, and send it with a personal note from you.
- Find the best approach to disciple the members of your church. Study the Bible with them, but also bring them a long when you visit people. Show them how to minister to others.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Other suggestions
- Since you are Southern Baptist work with your state convention and association, they have a bunch of resources to help you develop your ministry more fully
- Visit the ChurchPlaningVillage.net website for more ministry planning resources and consider also taking the NAMB Basic Training for Church Planters
- Also see PlanterDude.com and learn from them. They have a bunch of tools and tips!
- If you want to read some marketing books that will help you, find books about networking with people Harvey Mackay is a master at this
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