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Recently, I was asked some questions about church assimilation programs by a student who is working on a research project for a thesis in Ministerial Leadership. I’m not much of a scholar, but I took a stab at answering anyway. Here are the answers below:

Can you briefly describe what you feel to be the best process for connecting (assimilating) newcomers into the life of a church?

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?

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.

As for the “best process?” The best process is the one you design and actually use in your church.

Do you think this process is more systematic or organic?

Both! Organic; in that anything that involves genuine relationship should be natural and not merely mechanical. But if you are going to assimilate people, I believe you need to take a systematic approach. I don’t think that the fact that you have a plan for assimilation makes it less organic. For example, is it less organic when a grandmother keeps a calendar with all her grandchildren’s birthdays and systematically sends them cards with a check inside each year?

I suggest church leaders 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.

You need to develop a process and train your members how to use it. If you just 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.” They need to be real believers and not people with personality issues. )

If you have a good assimilation ministry you will solve your back door problem of people leaving your church and will have a way to “draw” in the people sitting on the sidelines and not joining.

What churches you do know that do this really well?

Saddleback Community church has one of the most creative assimilation processes they developed by asking a few questions and building a ministry around the biblical answers.

1. What does God expect from members of his church?
2. What do we expect from our members right now?
3. What kind of people already make up our congregation?
4. How will that change in the next five to 10 years?
5. What do our members value?
6. What are new members’ greatest needs?
7. What are our long-term members’ greatest needs?
8. How can we make membership more meaningful?
9. How can we ensure that members feel loved and cared for?
10. What do we owe our members?
11. What resources or services could we offer our members?
12. How could we add value to what we already offer?

Pastor Rick Warren and his ministry leadership team 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.

Are there ways you would change or improve on what they are doing?

Nelson Searcy has several good resource for understanding the process of church assimilation. Whatever you do, your church needs a strategy for assimilating new people. It is great to have events and outreach to attract people, but you need a next step for the ones you attract. So your church should have several next step ministries designed for people you have attracted that they can participate in and become more deeply exposed to the rest of the gospel. Small groups are ideal for this.

Here’s how to get started right away:

• Look at your church’s guests list from previous months and make plans for someone to connect personally with all the people on it. This is a prospect list of people who need you to make contact with them and make sure they understand the gospel
• Look at your membership rolls and see how many people have become inactive in the church. These are people you may have let fall through the cracks. It’s time to build relationships with them again!
• Develop next step ministries you can involve the people who come to your church in that help them go deeper into the gospel.

What system/data base do you suggest for a church to utilize in keeping information?

Keeping a database is one of the best tools that you can use in ministry. With it, you can track ministry information that will help you when planning ministry outreach events.

If your church does not keep records of visitors, then start doing so immediately. Keeping good records is good stewardship. Recording the people who visit your church and documenting your church follow-up actions, provides you with an understanding of what your current strategy is and how effective it is at reaching the unchurched in your area.

A database is a collection of information that you can use to make decisions. How you create this database is up to you. It could simply be a list of names in a notebook, or just a card file in a box. Or, use one of a variety of computer database programs on the market (see a few links below). It doesn’t have to be a sophisticated program.

Whatever you choose, the trick is to use it. Keep accurate records and refer back to them when making key decisions. Keep track of visitors’ names, addresses, ages and children’s names and addresses. Log any correspondence sent to them, visits made, and even observations of contacts with the visitors. Then use this information.

Here are a few of the top church membership database systems to explore

• ASC Technologies
• FellowshipTech
• ConnectionPower
• RDS Advantage