One of the greatest mistakes a church can make is to take visitor care and bifurcate it from the rest of the ministries of a church. It is akin to flying over a foreign country, kicking a bundle of gospel tracts out the airplane door and considering that country reached for Christ. It will take a far more concerted team effort to reach a country than a few pieces of literature. It also takes a far greater team effort, beyond a few visitor callers, for a church to be truly effective at reaching visitors. This is one of the most important and overlooked aspects to sustained church growth.

ConnectionPower offers far more than church software. We bring the expertise of how to effectively connect people to the church that comes from over 20 years of working with thousands of churches to the table. Our copyrighted training materials and church growth software can help a church to quickly get a competent visitor care team in place. This is but the first essential component of church growth. Connection Team members, however, will need far greater team cooperation if their effectiveness is to be maximized. Connecting visitors is a full-church contact sport.

Consider the full scope of mobilization required for to effectively connect visitors and experience sustained church growth. The church must take the responsibility to on behalf of a visitor to help them make connections to the church.

1. It begins with a properly promoted and configured guest center so that as many as possible of your visitors’ stories are captured before they leave your campus. (See The Effective Guest Center)

2. This is followed by an initial welcoming phone call. The research shows that it is important to contact new visitors between 24 and 72 hours of their initial visit. Visitor retention starts to rapidly decline after that time period.

3. The church is now well engaged in the process of discovering their guest's stories along with their needs and desires. Where do we go from here? What if guests are in crisis or express a need? What if they express interest in a particular ministry? Who will care for them? This is where a church has to mobilize as many as possible of its ministry leaders and designated contact people for every ministry. These leaders and volunteers need to be motivated, challenged and trained to personally and directly contact visitors who need the next level of care. Here is where visitors, in the average church, simply drop off the radar screen. This is the worst possible time to meaningfully disengage from a visitor! Information has now empowered the church to make targeted connections.

PowerVisitor church growth software has bundled into it the assignment and communication mechanisms that empower a church to immediately mobilize the right people to the right visitor for maximal connection effect.

4. Connecting the dots between a visitor’s interests and needs is essential to connecting people. In most churches, people come in and out of the front door and are never connected to the very groups where they could make the friends they so desire, or get their need met by ministries that are specifically designed to meet their needs. Interested people need to get immediate information about the available ministry opportunities for them. Specific ministry participants and leaders must be proactively mobilized to respond to interested guests without waiting for the guest to call them. Nothing increases the connection power of a church more than making personal invitations for guests to “come sit with me.” Imagine the "connection power" at work when someone from a divorce care group calls a visitor who is struggling with the fresh pain of divorce. This is great customer service! If you multiply these effects throughout the year you begin to understand the long term impact this will have on church growth. People are always connected one at a time when we meet their needs. PowerVisitor has been specifically designed as church software that is a turnkey solution that mobilizes your church to reach visitors. No longer will valued guests be expected to navigate alone the intimidating gauntlet of trying to connect to a new church home.

 

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