Getting people in the front door of your church is only part of the work of your ministry communications. If your church is going to be effective, you also need to have a well thought out plan for assimilating people into the life of your church. In ministry marketing outreach, getting people to respond is not the end, it is the beginning!
Does your church have a plan for assimilating people? Assimilation sounds like a sterile word, so don’t get lost in the term. The goal of assimilation is connecting people to other people in growing Christian relationships in the church. Your church may have an outreach ministry, a visitation ministry, maybe even a “in-reach” ministry designed to follow-up on lapsed members. But do you have a clear plan for involving people in the life of the church?
Our next church is a Baptist church here in my home state of Oklahoma that wants to bring people into a deeper relationship with Christ and promote fellowship between members but is having problems with some key leaders resisting change. On top of that, some of the members are leaving, while new attendees seem to have problems committing to church membership. Sound familiar?
Let’s look at their coaching questionnaire.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Does your church have a Vision or Mission Statement?
Leading people to personal faith and continual growth in the Lord Jesus Christ
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: How would you describe the ministry?
We are a growing church located in a city with a military base and Jr. College.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What are the key strengths of your ministry?
Very family oriented lots of young families with children. We’ve just added a full time youth pastor and are already seeing growth in the student ministry.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What are the weaknesses or challenges of your ministry?
Lack of trained leaders and workers. We need to increase our retention rate of our active members. Also we have a high percentage of attendees who will not join the church, but attend quite actively.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Where would you like to see the ministry in the next 6 months?
Helping people discover their spiritual gifts and getting involved in ministry to the body and community.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What obstacles might be getting in the way of achieving these results?
Resistance of some of the deacons, who are not excited about growth.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What things are you most passionate about and how are these reflected in your ministry?
The inconsistency of our music in worship.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What things are you most passionate about and how are these reflected in your ministry?
Discipleship, ministry, evangelism & missions
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What is the most successful aspect of your church’s ministry?
We are starting a new assimilation ministry called First Friends. This ministry will match members with newcomers for a one year period to disciple and help them become mainstreamed into the church. They will help them get involved in SS and plugged into a ministry.
Children’s ministry. We offer Awana on Wednesday nights, we’ve been doing this for 4 years and its grows more each year. However 2 additional churches in town are starting Awana, this may reduce some of our numbers.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What is the least successful aspect of your ministry?
Getting new members plugged into ministry and Sunday School or a small group
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Do you have a specific strategy for following up with all prospects?
We have visitation team that goes out on Tuesdays. It’s not a strong strategy, we seem to hit and miss with some of our prospects.
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: Do you have a marketing calendar?
No
MMC Coaching Questionnaire: What specific results do you want to obtain from working with me as a marketing coach?
We have as a staff worked thru your Ministry Marketing ideas and have implemented or improved some existing things as a result. We have a large untapped market (***** Air Force Base). As I look at our city, I don’t see any really relevant church that would attract lost people. We all seem to do the same thing and we seem to be competing for the same small pool of people, who are already believers. I want to be a church that makes a difference in the community and where they will see that we are really His disciples, because of our love for one another.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Develop an assimilation ministry
I have said it before, the number one problem churches don’t know they have is a follow-up problem . It seems churches turn up the creativity when it comes to attracting people, but when it comes to keeping them, they show less enthusiasm for developing creative ministry assimilation and rely more on canned tools. But if you customize a ministry to the needs of your church and community personality, you will save yourself a lot of grief and help your church grow.
Rick Warren has one of the most creative assimilation processes in his church he developed by asking a few questions and building a ministry around the biblical answers.
- What does God expect from members of his church?
- What do we expect from our members right now?
- What kind of people already make up our congregation?
- How will that change in the next five to 10 years?
- What do our members value?
- What are new members’ greatest needs?
- What are our long-term members’ greatest needs?
- How can we make membership more meaningful?
- How can we ensure that members feel loved and cared for?
- What do we owe our members?
- What resources or services could we offer our members?
- How could we add value to what we already offer?
He and his ministry leadership answered these questions and then assembled their plan for assimilation into the now famous CLASS system using the information. The system includes four segments called 101, 201, 301, 401 with a pastoral “coach” responsible for people in each level. Coaches could be staff or lay leaders. See this article for the rest of the story
I suggest you spend some more time developing an assimilation ministry. You can’t just, “encourage” people to join in and “be involved” in the church, you really need to spell out for people what to do next. I think you have a great start getting people connected to each other for a year. But, in my opinion, you need some kind of process and accountability in your assimilation ministry so that at the end of the year the people who have been involved in the program have been exposed to a least the same level of ministry as the others.
If you leave it to the members to design their own assimilation plans, they may not have the background in ministry to know what to do. (Be sure the people you recruit to lead your assimilation ministry that are “assimilated.”) If you have a good assimilation ministry you will solve your back door problem and will have a way to “draw” in the people sitting on the sidelines and not joining.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Take a missional approach to making your church more relevant
What makes a church relevant? Is it really a matter of tweaking the music? These things are a matter of taste. I fear too many churches are over-focused on developing the quality of their “worship experience” to really make the connection with people.
Your church may never be able to ramp up a high tech contemporary presentation like the ones you see in the larger cities. Do what these churches don’t do, work the field and get personal. They are too focused on attracting people to the church by being “unchurched seeker sensitive” in what they offer in the church services. I prefer being “sensitive seekers of unchurched.”
In this approach, the church takes the initiative to go where the people are and serve them regardless of whether they come to the church services. If you take the focus off of building up the church attendance and build up the church’s attention to the needs of the people you want to reach. I promise you will find unchurched people will become strangely attracted to your church.
- Understand as much as you can about the people you want to reach.
- Learn the needs and preferences of the people in your community.
- Link your ministry to needs through life application.
Read Breaking the Missional Code by Ed Stetzer and David Putman for more help in this area.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Include more people in the vision process to get resistant leadership more willing to accept change
There is an old saying, “People are down on what they are not up on”. This means when your church leaders are not a part of the process of getting the vision for next steps, it makes them feel “left behind.” Take your church leadership with you as you dream. Too many churches have been torn apart and thrown into disorder because the staff leadership went to a conference and returned to the church to try to implement the programs and new initiatives without understanding the importance of building leadership consensus.
Ministry Marketing Coaching Suggestion: Get active in the military community
Get you church involved in the Air Force base by offering your services to the families of the service men and women. Make a connection with the base Chaplain to find out how to plug in. Just call the base and ask to speak to the chaplain. (Also since I am in Oklahoma I happen to know the church planting group has a special connection to the military chaplains in the state, call and pick the brains of the leadership there!)
Food, parent’s date nights, gift baskets, cards from the children’s Sunday school classes, regularly pray for them. Also, participate in the community events sponsored by the base. Read the base website and newspaper. Get to know the military and learn what you can do to help them have a successful time of serviced while they are in your town.
3 Responses
February 10th, 2009 at 11:20 am
[...] Assimilation Plan? [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
At one time I was an Assimilation Pastor… My frustration was that Staff members and church leaders did not have a clear picture of what ASSIMILATION really means. At times it was as though they thought of it as THE BORG-just drawing everyone and anyone to their church just so that every program could be manned and every chair or pew could be warmed. This kind of assimilation is not healthy not biblical.
I beleive that Assimilation is a PROCESS which leads to connection and that connection should result in the “making of disciples.” Assimilation is the process by which people are connected first to Christ, then to Christs Body, then to a community of faith. In that connection relationships are developed that lead to a deeper more effective Christian Witness.
We place too much emphasis on ourneatly packaged programs and too little focus on the process by which disciplined disciple are formed. There is a lot of talk about spiritual formation and Discipleship programs, but at times these seem to be a real cop out for the hard work of “making disciples- commiting our lives to walking with someone through the daily grind and at times carrying there burden with them, showing them how to carry it so that they can in turn help someone else carry a burden.
Making disciples is not easy, not does it happe overnight or at a once a week men’s or women’s meeting. It is a process that should begin the minute a guest walks through the doors of a church. From there relationships are built and th person is connected to Christ and to a disciple maker that has time, that can walk with that person, and that can carry their burden with them until thy are able to carry it and show others how to.
A plan of Assimilation ought to be: From the Door to the Core of the church. Taking a person that comes into the door, building a relationship with them, working with them to connect them to Christ and /or the congregation and the community, then walking with them into a small group, Class, and men’s or women’s meetings. Eventually training them to be a leader and involved in some type of ministry (it does not have to be pulpit ministry or a ministry that is out front and seen, it should be in line with their spiritual giftings). The plan for Assimilation needs to be a full spectrum PROCESS that encompasses Connection to Christ, Connection to the Congregation, connection to the Community of Faith, and Connection to their Creators will for their life-God has created us all for a purpose.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Daniel,
To your excellent response I wouuld offer this feedback:
you said,
“Making disciples is not easy, not does it happe overnight or at a once a week men’s or women’s meeting. It is a process that should begin the minute a guest walks through the doors of a church”
…and my response is, we have to start even sooner. We have to start assimilating people before they ever get to the church. I’m trying to get my mind aroung the concept of wrapping an embrace of loving relationship around unchurched people in our communities and loving them gently, reverently but very intentionally into or near tne Kingdom of God.
I’m looking at four quarters of assimilation:
EMBRACE– first quarter
We wrap our arms of love around people and draw them to and encounter with Christ. Some people already have assurance of eternal life and others are still exploring. Our job is to find explorers, and embrace them into an encounter.
ENCOUNTER — second quarter
The new believer meets the Lord, receives Baptism, gets assimilated into the culture of church membership, and gets plugged in to groups and ministries that can encourage their growth.
ENCOURAGE — third quarter
The assimilated church member grows in faith, becoming strong in the Lord, fully aware of his need for grace at work in his daily life, and fully engaged in the disciplines of faithful discipleship so that he can be a reproducing disciple.
EQUIP — fourth quarter
100% of church members become reproducing disciples, each one reproducing at least one new believer, at least once a year by going back out in to the world, wrappping their arms around someone through loving relationships, and embracing that person into the kingdom of God.
Thanks again for your comments. I found them inspiring today.
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