What’s Your Urgency Level for Connecting People?
What’s your urgency level when it comes to connecting people? If you described your urgency level like Homeland Security’s advisory system, what would your urgency level be when it comes to connecting unconnected people? Maybe it comes down to what you think is an acceptable percentage connection level.
What do you think is an acceptable percentage connection level? Is it okay that only 50% of your weekend adult attendance is connected? What if only 35% of your weekend adult attendance is connected? What if 85% of your actual adult attendance is…unconnected?
To determine your urgency level you need to know how to gage it. Try this understanding on for size:
Percentage Connected: If you take the number of adults who are connected and divide it by your Easter adult attendance, what number do you get? (Example: 185 divided by 1000 equals .185 or 18.5%) This is your percentage connected. Note: Many churches use the number of adults who are connected divided by average adult worship attendance. This is an inaccurate number. You must realize that your average adult worship attendance includes a different group of people every weekend. If you want to know what percentage of your congregation is connected…you need to use the real number.
Percentage Unconnected: Now take your Easter adult attendance and subtract the number of adults who are connected. Divide that number by your Easter adult attendance. This is your percentage unconnected. (Example: 1000 – 185 = 815. 815 / 1000 = .815 or 81.5%) In the example, 81.5% are unconnected!
Unconnected people are one tough thing away from not being at your church [click to tweet]. Loss of a job. Divorce or separation. A devastating diagnosis. A child in trouble.
One tough thing.
We live in a world where one tough thing is always close by.
Unconnected people rarely call the church for help. It’s much more common for unconnected people to simply stop coming.
What’s your urgency level? Can you afford to put off connecting people?
What do you think? Want to argue? You can click here to jump into the conversation.
Ours is “SEVERE.” It comes on the heels of me as a leader not being in a good emotional place and dropped the “Group Ball.” But, I got it back now, its tough, but we’re gonna do this thing.
Thanks for yet another kick in the pants!
Keep working it, Artie! And keep us posted on how it goes.
mark
We just launched our church on January 6 and are trying to get a bunch of individuals connected to the church and to each other. We have about 33% trying out a group in February but are having difficulty geting more. Any ideas? Write a blog to help!
Hey Robert! Thanks for jumping in here. Email me the gist of what you’ve tried so far. Mark@MarkHowellLive.com
Hi Mark,
We have launched our church in August 2014 and are trying to get a bunch of individuals connected to the church and to each other. We have about 30 individuals so far but are having difficulty geting more.
Even the neighbourhoods are not interested to joining. Any ideas?
God bless you.
Shelina Doro
Juba South Sudan
+211955343689
Hi Shelina…in order to provide much help I’d need a little more information. First, who are the people you are “trying to get connected to the church and to each other”? Unconnected Christians? Unchurched neighbors? People from other world religions? This is a key question. Any suggestions I might have would be based on your clarity about your true customer (and you can’t really say, “All of the above.”).
Second, what are you asking the people in the neighborhoods to join? Your church? A small group? A community gathering? The people you hope to connect should determine the strategy you use to connect them.
mark