People Spots
Online
Produced by James W.
Moss, Sr., and Church Consultants
Provided as a service by New Life Ministries
Trading Inactives?
by James W. Moss, Sr.
Most of my People Spots articles have been written based on the facts of life in church work as I understand them. The following is a project strictly based on theory. It has not yet been field-tested, so there is no proven track record. It has not been field tested because I could not find two churches willing to trade their precious inactives. I’m not sure what is so valuable about an inactive list. One pastor was willing, but the second was resistant because he was afraid that the other church might get more people than his church. Whenever I can’t find people who are willing to field test a theory, I generally ditch it as a bad idea. I have been reluctant to do so with this one.
Motivation:
Jesus loves people. Because he loves people, we should too. We need to care what happens to them and believe they should be in a church, even if it isn’t our church. The ultimate goal is to activate inactives. Who is an inactive? They are people who haven’t been to your church in one year or more. Some churches have hundreds of such people.
Theory:
I am frequently asked, “How do we get people to come back who have been gone for more than one year?” There is no effective method to activate absentees to a local church that have been gone for more than a year.
Absentees generally have negative baggage towards the church they left. Normally, they feel that the church they left failed to meet some of their basic needs. Providing ministry to long-term absentees is very difficult and seldom fruitful. It is much easier to attract new people to a church than long-term absentees.
The basis of this theory is that the absentees of one congregation become prospects for another. A person is a prospect who is a person a local church is attempting to win to Christ and activate in the life of their church. Prospects are generally flattered that a church would want them to come, even if they have no intention to attend.
Many think that the people who leave a church automatically go to another one. Some do. Though I have no hard data, I believe the majority of the persons who became inactive in one church did not find their way into another one. It is not easy for new people to get into old churches.
Process:
Every contact needs to be made in a very tasteful manner. The receiving church promises to make twelve contacts (one per month) in the coming year.
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The first month a letter is sent inviting them to attend, outlining the services rendered. |
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The second month, a prospect newsletter is sent. A prospect newsletter is one page written front and back designed to attract new people. Every aspect of that letter is calculated to make the church attractive to a new person. |
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The third month, a friendly telephone call is made inviting them to attend your church. |
Then the three-month cycle is repeated throughout the year. If a church finds the phone calls too threatening to make then just rotate the two pieces of mail so that each person on the list gets 12 invitations.
If someone calls and asks to be removed, please apologize and remove their name. Should you use the phone invitations, each time you call through the list, some will ask for their names to be removed. That is fine.
Responses:
The following is what I think will happen, though I have no idea of the percentage response of any since this has never been tried.
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There will be a few who will react negatively to the contacts. Again, just apologize and ask for forgiveness for bothering them. |
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Some will continue to be unchurched even after 12 contacts. . |
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Some will go to the new church. |
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Some will return to their original church though prompted by the contacting church. I can remember as a pastor cultivating some inactives from other churches. They attended the church for 6-8 Sundays and then said, “Thanks so much for working with us and helping us to get back in church. But we are returning to our home church.” |
Since this project has not been worked before there is no predictable pattern. Are there two churches willing to try this project? If so, please let me know!
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May 6, 2005. Volume 8, Issue
8.
People Spots Online
is prepared by James W. Moss, Sr., and Church Consultants. It is provided as a service by New Life
Ministries, www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org.
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