Accelerate GroupLife in 2011: T – 3 Weeks
Getting ready for a year when grouplife really accelerates? Hopefully you’ve gotten a lot done in week 1, week 2 and week 3 of our 6 week boot camp. But even if you’re joining us in progress, you can still catch up easily. You just need to pick up the pace of the things you’re doing…or add time to the end of the schedule.
This Week’s Assignment
There are a couple things that need to happen this week as you prepare for the small group connection, the first major event in your 2011 strategy.
First, now is the time to prepare to market your event. I know not everyone likes that word…but that’s really what you’re doing. And there are at least three ways you should be thinking about marketing your small group connection.
- You’ll want to have a bulletin insert, a sign-up sheet, for at least the two weeks prior to the event. Three weeks is even better. What you need is pretty simple. You just need a form that can be filled out quickly that will capture their name(s), their address (street, city and zip), their best phone number, their best email, whether they need childcare, and the type of group they’re looking for. Obviously, it will also need the event title, the date of the event, and maybe a tagline (I usually like it to say, “Give us an hour. We’ll help you get connected.”
- If your church has an enewsletter or a newsletter that is mailed…you want to have the small group connection in the newsletter. Be sure and give your readers a way to respond (i.e., Call 555-1212 Ext. 123 or email us at _________ to sign up).
- It’s a great idea to get the event on the website. If you can, make sure it’s on the home page of your website. This is another discussion, but if it’s hard to find out how to get connected at your church, you really can’t expect to get very far in connecting your congregation.
- If your church uses slides either pre-service or during announcements, now is the time to alert whoever prepares the slides that you’ll be needing them soon.
- If you have a small group booth, it’s not a bad idea to have a poster or sign there promoting the upcoming small group connection.
The second thing that will payoff this week is to circle back to your senior pastor and remind them about the small group connection event and confirm their role in marketing it. In order to have the best attendance, you need your senior pastor to play along. And ideally, you need their help for three weeks in a row (remember, your average adult attendance is made up of people who don’t come every week. If you want everyone’s attention, your senior pastor needs to talk about it several weeks in a row.)
I provide quite a bit of detail on how to make the ask for a small group connection right here.
There’s plenty to do on this week’s assignment. But it’s doable. If you work at it now, you’ll have a great start for 2011!
Can I ask you a favor? Especially if you get my updates by email…why not forward it to someone else who’s working the small group ministry puzzle in another church? Share the love…so to speak! I appreciate your help in passing these ideas around!
Question: Feelin’ the assignment? Does it make sense? Use the comment section to put in your two cents. You can leave a comment by clicking here.
