Do first-time visitors to your church feel like fish out of water? How would you know? What is normal to us may be completely foreign to them…
Entries Tagged as 'Assimilation'
Assimilation through the Bulletin
August 10th, 2009 No Comments
Brad Abare over at Church Marketing Sucks shared a great excerpt from a bulletin at a church outside of Los Angeles, CA: How we play nice at Christian Assembly…
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Visitor Follow-Up Letter
August 7th, 2009 No Comments
One of the things you need to be doing to follow up with guests that have visited your church is sending them a letter. Using a pre-fab letter isn’t a very good idea. The letter needs to come from you…
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The Best of Small Groups Diversified
July 17th, 2009 No Comments
Vince Antonucci is planting a new church on the Vegas strip, for people who live and work on the strip. Given his unique context, God has inspired him to use a unique approach to small groups…
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What Not to Put on a Connection Card
July 6th, 2009 1 Comment
I visited a church whose bulletin included the typical connection card. Following is how they wrote the ’status’ section…
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Evangelism on the Altar of Assimilation
February 15th, 2009 No Comments
In a recent post, I defined assimilation as the process of a person adopting the beliefs, values and practices of a culture. One word of caution: What happens to evangelism when we do assimilation well. If we effectively assimilate a person into a new culture, we in effect remove them from the culture they were [...]
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Developing an Assimilation Plan pt. 5: Follow Up
February 13th, 2009 1 Comment
Pt. 1 A Definition
Pt. 2 When Assimilation Goes Bad
Pt. 3 How To Assimilate
Pt. 4 Hospitality
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 [...]
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Developing an Assimilation Plan pt. 4: Hospitality
February 11th, 2009 1 Comment
Pt. 1 A Definition
Pt. 2 When Assimilation Goes Bad
Pt. 3 How To Assimilate
Hospitality is creating an environment for people to want to be assimilated. Ever been to a restaurant that had great food but crappy service? Did you go back? Here are key elements to creating a hospitable environment that should make it into your [...]
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Developing an Assimilation Plan pt. 3: How to Assimilate
February 9th, 2009 2 Comments
Pt. 1 A Definition
Pt. 2 When Assimilation Goes Bad
Let me start by giving props. The ideas from this post came from Nelson Searcy and John Donahue.
How do you help a person go from being an outsider to being a part of the church culture? You do it the same way you would with any culture: [...]
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Developing an Assimilation Plan pt. 2: When Assimilation Goes Bad
February 7th, 2009 3 Comments
In pt 1, I defined assimilation as a process of helping a person fit into the church culture. But what if the church culture is not healthy? What if your church is full of undiscipled, gossiping, feed me, needy, consumer oriented, spiritually shallow, leadership challenging Christians? In that instance the worst thing you can do [...]
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