How to Engage Everyone: Notes and Resources

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I had the great privilege yesterday to give a talk for the Small Group Network on the subject of Engaging Everyone (in a church-wide campaign).  Very fun working through the 5 steps of engaging everyone and a really, really important topic.  If you missed it, I’ve included a link to the recording right here.

Here are some additional resources that will help you as you wrestle with this topic:

Step One: Define Everyone.  I believe that step one is to accurately define everyone.  While many churches think in terms of their average adult worship attendance, I really believe it is much more accurate to think in terms of your Easter adult attendance.  If you’re like most churches the Easter number demonstrates what happens on a weekend when everyone is there at the same time.

Step Two: Start Early.  Another big, big idea.  If you want to engage everyone you need to get started as early as you can.  If you’re doing a church-wide campaign in late September, it’s a good idea to be having worship planning meetings, calendar coordination meetings, and negotiating with any competing ministries to keep the promotion decks clear.

Step Three: Involve Everyone.  This is another super important aspect to engaging everyone.  Including the children’s ministry and the student ministry is an important part of the most successful church-wide campaigns.  A good percentage of the off-the-shelf campaigns available include kids and teens material (estimating 20%).  Even when they don’t, coordinating with your children’s and student ministries can add a very worthwhile element to the mix.  Engaging everyone in one conversation for six weeks is very unifying.

Step Four: Leverage Influence.  Getting your senior pastor involved is an important beginning, but it is just the beginning.  Staff, elders and deacons, key congregational leaders and other people of influence all play a part in engaging everyone.  Working hard to include key influencers in significant roles goes a long way in assuring a successful campaign.

Step Five: Don’t Stop.  The lesson of Jim Collins’ flywheel effect is that it takes a lot of energy to get the flywheel turning and it takes even more to keep it turning.  Once it’s turning, you need to do everything you can to keep it turning.  Engaging everyone is a relentless and tireless effort.  It pays off big-time.  Once you have momentum do not stop!

If you missed my talk on GroupTalk yesterday, you can listen in right here.  It’s actually part of a four part series and you’ll be able to listen to all four parts right here.

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