Most churches believe they have open doors that just scream “welcome!” and may actually see some success in getting 1st time visitors.

But then, over time, not many people actually return for another visit.  Where did they go?

Ministry leaders are often left wondering why people don’t come back to their worship services another time.   Rationalization often leads to assumptions that since a church gets visitors, they must have succeeded in creating a friendly, inviting environment for new comers.  And this sometimes leads to lack of ownership of this important detail of converting first time visitors into repeat visitors.

Of course, it is easy to think those first timers just got busy the next weekend.  Or they assume most visitors aren’t serious about faith, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t check out a church two weeks in a row.  Or a host of other excuses ministries can come up with on behalf of the absent returnee.

Truth be told, 1st time visitors don’t come back for a real tangible reason — their decision is now based on the reality they just experienced in person.

The hard part isn’t getting someone to come your church when they don’t know much about it.  It is only after they’ve experienced your church community in person — when all your ministry efforts are really felt — for them to consider retuning a second time.

Rick Ezell, pastor of a church in SC, believes there are actually 5 critical reasons why 2nd time visitors are a myth in many churches.  He says:

• Visitors make up their minds regarding your church in the first 10 minutes.
• Most church members are not friendly.
• Church guests are highly consumer-oriented.
• The church is in the hospitality business but don’t realize it.
• You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

So then, what can churches do in order to get more 1st time visitors to turn into 2nd time visitors?

Here are 12 practical tips for getting the ball rolling with your ministry to start thinking about this in a serious way: (more…)

Today, we hear from guest blogger Pastor Ryan of Central Baptist Church in Ohio. He chimes in on how we all have a choice in building assets or liabilities for the Church.

Recently, the big news was about the church in Florida who was going to burn a Quran on 9/11 in protest of Islam.  This absurd situation is drawing negative attention even from military leaders and our Secretary of State.

I look at these situations involving two local churches and I can’t help but wonder what their real motivation is in acting this way.  Because they certainly aren’t acting like the church as Jesus intended. (more…)

“M&M’s Make Friends.”

Everyone pretty much knows it, right?  They’ve been around forever.

The thing is that all this while, we’ve become accustomed to thinking about them in the same way, even as the options have flourished to 25 different colors.

I bet if you closed you eyes and someone asks you to think of M&M chocolate candies, you’ll envision the good ol’ brown bags that is a staple of Halloween treats block after block after block. . .

Asked how much you’d expect to spend on an M&M’s purchase and you’ll also probably think about picking one up at the register of the grocery or convenience store — something between 50 cents to a buck or two at the register, right?  How much can the large bag of M&M’s really cost?  $2 bucks at the most for sure.

But guess what, the average purchase is NO WHERE NEAR THAT at this grocery store I was in recently.  But WHY? you ask?  Here’s why. . . (more…)

Today I spent some time at a local airport that mainly serves small private planes.

There’s a flight school that gives instruction in a hanger right there off the runway. New pilots are commissioned after going through training that teaches the basics and live in-the-air lessons.

As I head out to a weekend retreat this week, I share some of the reflections about the spiritual highs that we may experience after an amazing Christian conference, church retreat or even after hearing a famous preacher’s sermonic mastery in the pulpit.

But there’s one crticial lesson of flying high that pilots are taught in flight school which God’s people may benefit from regarding their own personal faith journey. Check out this short video where I share my thoughts. . . (more…)

For many churches, the calendar is driven by the academic year because the ministry has many families with kids involved.  And if that’s the case, we’re right at the point where you’ll be rewind the clock and “start over” with your ministry programming this fall.

Aside from the Sunday School and youth ministries, the other parts of the church might also be preparing for a new small group season or new lay leadership team installations, or new . . .

It might all be “new” but at the same time, it can quickly become “old” and repetitive…just the same old thing over and over again year in and year out!

I don’t know about you, but when this happens it can quickly lead to paralysis and lifeless leadership on my own part.

But what can you do about it? Well, just sitting there and playing along isn’t going to solve anything!

Here’s some tips — eye-opening ways of approaching your “job” as a pastor or ministry leader to help “unstick” what’s “stuck” for you right now: (more…)

Is there anyone out there that doesn’t take a jab at the Church with a capital “C” regarding technology of the day?

We are living in a 2.0 world and the Church always seems to be struggling just to stay awake and alive in a 1.0 world mode, right?

Well, this is not just a recent phenomena apparently.

That’s right, back in the day, and I mean back in the olden times, the early church had trouble with adopting new technologies too!

Thankfully, the help desk was around back then too though.

Take a look yourself at the video below documenting the upgrade experience from Biblical scrolls to bound books:

QUESTION: WHAT *ONE* AREA OF TECHNOLOGY DO YOU EXPERIENCE THE MOST FRUSTRATION WITHIN CHURCH / MINISTRY LIFE RIGHT NOW?

Sometimes, pastors are pressured to pump out sermons that detail the Scriptures and it ends up becoming a sit and soak extravaganza that only the pastor is paying attention to.

Although the average sermon length is now at about 15 minutes these days, sometimes, even that is too much.

Once in awhile you come across a way of doing things that is just refreshing, inspiring and attention-grabbing. And you don’t need more than 90 seconds to do it apparently!

This is what Tamara Lowe, an international motivational speaker, who happens to be a Christ follower displayed when sharing her version of the Gospel.

Check out how she tells the story and I’m sure you’ll crack a smile along they way.  It has been dubbed the “one minute sermon” . . . (more…)

Last summer, an almost unnoticeable essay was published on the web. It was a simple and straight-forward essay trying to reframe an issue that has been complexified (is that a word?) beyond comprehension to some. Over the last year, that essay by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet has taken on a life of its own — and in its latest iteration has been released today in book form: Jesus Manifesto.  I was excited to get an advance copy to read and more so when I had a chance to interview both Frank and Len about the Manifesto and what they claim in the book regarding the state of the Church.  Enjoy!

Q) The essay you both wrote last year – A Jesus Manifesto for the 21st Century, which was the precursor to your new book Jesus Manifesto (Thomas Nelson) – seems to be a holistic critique against how Christianity is “being done” today, at least in North America. Can you share a little about how this project should be received with respect to this and is your book about the same thing?

A) Frank: I think it was more of a clarion call pointing out that Jesus Christ has been dethroned and devalued in many quarters of the Christian faith, being replaced by so many other things. Jesus has often been boiled down to a footnote or a stamp of approval to some other issue or topic. Our book expands what was in the original essay and seeks to re-present Christ in a fresh and powerful way, showing why He is worthy of having the preeminence in all things. Its aim is to wipe everything else off the table and glorify Jesus beyond the stratosphere. One of the endorsers of the book wrote the following, which I think answers your question pretty well:

“Gandhi once said, ‘Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.’ Maybe if we actually knew Christ, we would reflect Him more. Sweet and Viola’s Jesus Manifesto is the quintessential re-introduction.”

Len: One of the most important developmental tasks of every human being is to find their voice, and to speak out of their unique voice. One of the worst things that can happen to each of us is to lose our voice, or to speak out of other voices than our own. Frank and I are saying that the true voice of the church is Christ, and when other voices take over, the church is rendered voiceless.

I am a big fan of Wendell Berry’s writings. I think this farmer/poet/essayist is USAmerica’s greatest living poet. What makes Wendell Berry so special is that his writings are simply the land given voice. The Bible is the Spirit given voice, but the Spirit’s voice is a unique, one-of-a-kind, once-for-all-time voice. It’s not a propositional voice, but a story-telling, poetic voice that carries a unique register and timber and tone: it is the voice of Jesus the Christ. It’s time the church spoke again in its original, true voice.

Q) The subtitle of your book is “Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ” – pointing to an assumption that Christ’s sovereignty has been “lost” or “misplaced.” For me, there seems to be a bit of a difference between seeing the problem as Christ’s Supremacy and Sovereignty being “lost” and one where the is not being acknowledged. Is there difference between the two positions from your point of view?

Over 300 years ago a German pastor wrote a hymn that built around the Name above all names. I love to sing this song, although it’s seldom sung anymore, because the lyrics are posed in question and answer format. It’s an antiphonal song that comes across as a confession of faith:

Ask ye what great thing I know, that delights and stirs me so? What the high reward I win? Whose the name I glory in?

Jesus Christ, the crucified.

This is that great thing I know; this delights and stirs me so: faith in him who died to save, Him who triumphed o’er the grave:

Jesus Christ, the crucified.

*Gabriel Josipovici, The Book of God, 74

Frank: I think this is merely semantics. We are saying that the supremacy and headship of Christ has been “lost sight of” hence it must be “restored” or “brought back into view,” and more accurately, “restored as a living experience.”
There is a principle in God that He never gives anything, but that He first allows it to be lost. The Lord Jesus said that until you lose something, you can’t really have it. This appears to be a divine principle. God gives something first, then allows it to be taken away, that it may be given again. It’s the principle of death and resurrection, and it’s a recurring truth throughout the Scriptures. Ever notice all of those re- terms in the Bible: Restoration (Acts 1:6; 15:17), regeneration, restitution, recreation, rebirth, renewal, resurrection, revive, etc.

Our Lord is a God of restoration.

For this reason, church historians have used the “restoration” motif for a long time. It’s been said that God used the Reformers to restore justification by faith when it was lost sight of. God used the Holiness movement to restore personal holiness when it was lost sight of. God used the Moravians to restore missionary outreach when it was lost sight of. He used the Pentecostals to restore the power of the Spirit when it was lost sight of. Right or wrong, we feel that we are living in a day when the supremacy and headship of Jesus Christ needs to be restored in the life of the church.

Q) A central part of the argument for how we are to re-center our faith is found in the statements, “Knowing Christ is Eternal Life. And knowing him profoundly, deeply, and in reality, as well as experiencing his unsearchable riches, is the chief pursuit of our lives, as it was for the first Christians. God is not so much about fixing things that have gone wrong in our lives as finding us in our brokenness and giving us Christ.” I agree that the Christian religion has dangerously become more about things that really should be subordinate to Christ or on the periphery as a result of knowing Christ. But I wonder if defining the “chief pursuit of our lives” in the way that is being presented and/or seeing God’s purpose as restoring our fallenness still keeps us – humanity – erroneously at the center of the story, and not God. North American Christianity has surely become consumeristic, but your article individually-focused emphasis on Christ seems vulnerable to similar outcomes. Would you be willing to put these claims in the proper context according to the lens you are seeing the issues at hand?

A) Frank: My books Reimagining Church and From Eternity to Here take dead aim at the individualism, independence, and consumerism that seem to be in the drinking water of Christianity today. This is not just a Western problem; it’s quite universal as Western Christianity has spread just about everywhere.

I don’t know what version of the manifesto essay you’ve read, but there’s an entire section on how that the pursuit of Jesus Christ is not an individualistic pursuit. But rather, it’s a corporate journey (see below). We dedicate an entire chapter to this point in our book, Jesus Manifesto. Here is point 9 of the essay:

“Jesus Christ cannot be separated from his church. While Jesus is distinct from his Bride, he is not separate from her. She is in fact his very own Body in the earth. God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. And God in Christ is only known fully in and through his church. (As Paul said, “The manifold wisdom of God – which is Christ – is known through the ekklesia.”) The Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It’s a corporate journey. Knowing Christ and making him known is not an individual prospect. Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth, with a crash. Thus Christ and his church are intimately joined and connected. What God has joined together, let no person put asunder.”

Len: The relationship of the WE and the ME is one of the most important subjects we can talk about. Like Frank, I have addressed this in a couple of books before: The Three Hardest Words to Get Right, 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Live Without, and Jesus Drives Me Crazy. Part of that unique “voice” of Jesus I referenced earlier is that Jesus always is heard in surround sound (I used to say “stereo”). If you only hear one thing, it’s likely not to be Jesus (Alpha/Omega, Lamb/Lion, Prince of Peace/Sword of Truth, etc.). It’s like the body of Christ has two lungs, and two brains (left/right), and . . . The Gutenberg world majored in the ME, the I, the left-brain, partly because the book is the most anti-social technology ever invented by the human imagination. The Google word is WE or right-brain dominant. We need both brains. God gave us two brains for a reason.

Q) Separate from the actual content of your essay, it is curious that both of you as authors who embrace technology and the Internet, chose to pursue a printed book which is a commercially sold medium opposed to releasing a free, viral-friendly electronic document such as an Seth Godin idea virus. If this Manifesto is a prophetic wake up call for the Christian community at large, doesn’t this go against the movement’s objectives or potential toward mass exposure and adoption to require the purchase of a book?

A) Len: Media is not a zero sum game. How’s your “paperless office” doing? Almost every website seems to be selling books, a bookstore (even churches are bookstores through their websites, thanks partly to Amazon.com’s franchise program as well). Books will flourish even in this iPad, Kindle future, but our experiences of books and the books we keep will change. When my original publisher refused to break up the text with inserted quotes and use background images on some pages, I pulled one of my first books, Quantum Spirituality, and set up my own publishing company (Whaleprints). I also do a weekly podcast called Napkin Scribbles, am one of the “Twitter Elite,” have a top-ranked Facebook site, post a sermon a week on sermons.com—there’s always a Sunday coming for me—and am writing more books than ever before. By the way, Frank and I “posted” the Jesus Manifesto first on the web—partly inspired by the German word that is used to describe what Luther did with his 95 Theses: not “nailed” or “mailed” but “posted” on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle Church in 1517.

Frank: Many years ago I started self-publishing my books. For the first two years, I gave them away free of charge. When the time came that I could no longer afford to pay for them (it costs a pretty penny to print a book), we started to sell them to cover our expenses. Believe it or not, once we began to sell the books, a lot more people were interested in reading them.

Right now on my website, most of my writings are available free of charge. This includes two free eBooks at the moment. One would think that an electronic book that’s free of charge would disseminate more widely than a book sold by a publisher. The truth is, it doesn’t. Not even close. For whatever reasons, published books are read by far more people than free eBooks or give away copies. (That’s been my experience anyway, and we’ve been tracking it for years.) I don’t understand why, but it just is. I wrote about this recently on my blog in fact. And that’s why I’ve agreed to have my books published.

Thomas Nelson is the largest Christian publisher in the world right now. And they are getting behind the book in a huge way. So right or wrong, we felt it was best to go with them to get the full message of the Jesus Manifesto to as many people as possible. They have allowed us to make available free sample chapters and I suspect the same will be true for the audio version.

Q) Finally, what is the best case scenario if this call is heard properly by the Christian community? What does the hope that the both of you have after writing this book actually look like?

A) Frank: Calvin Miller (author of The Singer and many other works) wrote this just after he read the book:
Jesus Manifesto is the most powerful work on Christ I have read in recent years. The Christ of the Empty Tomb is back among us. Sweet and Viola have beckoned us to return back to Olivet and renew our souls. I was hushed by its welcome authority. I found a lump in my throat as I read through page after page of Biblical witness to the one and only, incomparable Christ in whom alone is our Salvation. You must read this book. All of us must, and then we must believe in this book, rise and advance on our culture with the truth we have lately backed away from in our faulty attempt to play fair at the cost of our God-given mission.

My hope is that this same sort of response will become so widespread that we will all drop the religious “stuff” we are chasing and fall down on our faces in the presence of the greatness of Jesus Christ, making Him central and supreme in our lives, our ministries, and our churches. In a word, my hope is that Paul’s statement in Colossians 1 will become a living, breathing reality instead of black letters on a page – “that He might have the first place in everything.” It’s one thing to parrot that sentence; it’s another to be so captured by Jesus that it becomes our biography. But this will never happen unless our eyes are opened to see His greatness. And with the Holy Spirit as our help, that’s what we are seeking to do with our book.

Len: What can I say but “Amen” to Frank.

Kenny: Thank you both for taking the time out to share some of your thoughts behind Jesus Manifesto.  I’m looking forward to seeing the conversations that will undoubtedly emerge from the book release!

–
Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ (Thomas Nelson) releases Tuesday, June 1st and will be available on discount from Amazon.com that day.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as a review copy. I was not required to write a positive review. Some of the links in the post above may be “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

It seems like it has been awhile, yet it happened just months ago.

For those of us that have forgotten, the Haiti earthquake struck on January 12, 2010 at about 5pm.

While our memories and the news media have taken Haiti off the front burners, Hell sill exists in Haiti for millions of survivors.

Perhaps the next time you pay $1.85 for your Starbucks Grande Pike Peak Light and Sweet, you’ll remember that the average Haiti lives on less then $2 a day.

Do you remember Haiti?

A brother in Christ that I am privileged to know has not forgotten . . . Here’s a video from his mission team that just returned in April 2010. . .

Here’s 3 ways you can help Haiti right now, from right where you’re sitting:

The following organizations are accepting SMS donations in the US only. You text now, and it will be added to your cell phone bill the next month — almost all major carriers in the US support these one-time donations as of now:

• Send the text message “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
• SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
• SMS text “GIVE10″ to 20222 to donate $10 to Direct Relief

Some other ways to help Haiti are available online as well.

QUESTION: Would you be willing to lift up a 30 second prayer for the people in Haiti, RIGHT NOW?

It’s Easter weekend!

…Kind of like the Superbowl of Christian faith.

Holy Week. Lent. Good Friday. . . Easter. This is ground zero.

Some ministries plan elaborate spectacles and turn the sanctuary into an open house environment this one time each year.

This is definitely the easiest weekend all church members can invite a friend from work, school, family or even those strangers you have regular relationships with such as the security guard, bus driver, mail carrier, etc.

Why not take advantage of Easter claiming to be the happiest day of the year for Americans? Everything is in your favor.

Besides using the major US holiday as an easy conversation starter, do your people have easy ways to describe your church?  What style would you characterize the worship service to people who haven’t been to church in ages (or ever!)?  How can people describe the lead pastor or the sermon messages?  And are you aware of anything else people routinely have trouble with when bringing up church with friends or co-workers? It’s the little things that many people need help with — For example, the logistics of explaining service times, location, directions, etc can be daunting to bring up.

The question of the day is: Are you doing everything you can to make it easy enough for people to invite a friend?

Here’s a great mailer I received from Liquid Church which has always been consumed with being an outward-facing ministry:

It was a great reminder to invite someone to church. And the message on the back reinforced the simple message I can use to convey when doing so — which is aimed at helping to set expectations in an easy 1-2-3 format.

But the best part of this postcard invite-a-friend mailer was in the simple detail:

The card itself was perforated on one side with a pass-along mini-invitation card with all the basic information anyone would need to know about visiting Liquid.

This is a 5-star example of making it easy for church members to go out and invite a friend to church. Successful outreach follows the classic word of mouth marketing strategies — and this church marketing piece serves to provide tools to make it easier for people to share the message with others.

QUESTION: What does your ministry do to make it easier for members to invite others to church on Sunday?