Pt. 2 When Assimilation Goes Bad
A key part of helping people assimilate into the culture of the church is follow up. People will not naturally immerse themselves into the culture of the church. You have to invite them. The only way to do that is through follow up. Here are key elements to consider for follow up that should be in your assimilation plan.
1. Connect Cards: In order to follow up you need to have a method for collecting contact infomation. Connect Cards are essential. Keep them simple and limited only to the information you need. Consider a next step section that ties into the message. Leave space for prayer requests. Mention the connect cards throughout the service to provide multiple opportunities for them to be filled out.
2. Contact Management Software. One of the key features of your church database system is helping you follow up with people. Creating a follow up and assimilation path and automating as much of it as possible will be critical in retaining new people at your church. We have done a quick comparison of softwares in the downloadable document 2009-contact-management-systems-product-comparison. Part of your plan should be identifying who will enter the information you collect.
3. Process. Define how you will follow up at every stage. When someone comes the first time to your church, how will you follow up with them? When? Who will do it? What will be communicated and in what medium? Once this process is defined, ask how can someone fall through the cracks? Then seal the cracks.
4. Make it personal. Email and letters along is not good follow up. Remember the immersion principle. To be assimilated people need relationships, responsibility and spirituality (pt. 3). How does your follow up invite people into those three areas?
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Hi Doug! My name is Scott Moonen and I’m a developer for Gospel Software. We produce some web-based administrative tools for churches, including a guest follow-up manager (http://www.gospelsoftware.com/guestview), a member directory (http://www.gospelsoftware.com/directory) and a worship planner (http://www.gospelsoftware.com/songbook). Our software is in use by a number of churches, and is in continuous development.
We welcome churches to sign up for a free month trial to evaluate and explore how our services suit their needs.
Grace and peace to you,
— Scott