Ben Reed’s Latest Learning

In Switch, brothers Chip & Dan Heath (http://www.heathbrothers.com), write about the difficult process of change.  One principle they drive home is that in order to bring about change in others, you’ve got to script the step people need to take and shape the path you want them to travel.

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In a recent post, I pointed out the fact that we’re not living in “a day when the status quo is a good thing.  At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century…it is clearly time to develop a bias toward what’s next.”  To help all of us figure out what’s next, I’ve asked a number of the best-known grouplife practitioners to share their latest learnings.  Here’s what Ben Reed had to say:

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Since I lead small groups, I naturally began to look for ways to implement this into our assimilation process.  Because when we ask someone to join a group, we’re asking them to change.  Change their friends.  Change their schedule.  Change the focus they’ve placed on their spiritual life.  Those are all big changes.

We realized we needed to “script the step” and make it as easy as possible for a person to join a group by doing a few things, so we made these changes:

Intentional Changes to Remove Excuses

1. We printed a list of all new groups and stuffed them into the Sunday morning handout. Before this, the first time you found out any details about our new groups was when you showed up for our connection/assimilation event.  Having a list of the new groups stuffed into the bulletin as they entered the auditorium, before the event, allowed people to peruse the list at their leisure before they committed to anything.
2. We stuffed a sign-up card into the Sunday morning handout. Before this, if you were interested in joining a group, you had to stand in a line and fill out a form, while behind you more and more people waited.  Turns out that if there’s an excuse for people to not stick around and sign up for a group, they’ll not stick around.  Long lines gave people excuses to leave.
3. We shot a video explaining the entire process and showed it on sign-up day. Talk about “scripting the step.”  I literally filled out a form (on the video) and walked from the auditorium to the gymnasium, showed them where to drop their card off, and showed them how to quickly and easily sign up for a group.
4. We provided a list of babysitters at each sign-up table. The number one excuse for someone not signing up for a small group?  Childcare.  And through this list, we’re trying to chip away the wall of excuses.
5. We placed large, colorful, well-designed signs on tall stands on each table so that at a glance, people knew which table to gravitate towards. I know…sounds silly.  But if you’re an introvert, you don’t want to have to wade through a sea of people you don’t know, introduce yourself to people you’ll eventually have to tell, “No…I’m not a single, middle-aged woman…” just to find the “Carpentry like Jesus” group.

Through this process, we tripled the largest signup day we had ever had in the history of our church.  Tripled.

Is it magical?  No.  Intentional?  You bet.

Script the step and remove the excuses people have.

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Ben Reed is the Community Groups Pastor at Grace Community Church.  You can read his blog at www.benreed.net or follow him on Twitter.