Effective planning requires both high-level strategy and ground-level tactics. Today let’s “get granular” and examine a tactic in Membership Development.
The heart of any effective Communications Strategy is a radical commitment to communicating information. You have to believe that constituents need and deserve information in order to participate effectively.
They say a pastor at Church of the Heavenly Rest, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, built his congregation by standing outside the doors on Sunday morning and inviting passers-by to come inside.
The most effective Membership Development Program will be balanced.
Churches will give equal emphasis to recruitment, retention, and transformation. Put another way, that means equal emphasis on helping people through the front door, helping them to avoid the back door, and helping them to discover the new life that they probably came seeking.
When we use the term “customer-driven,” as opposed to “provider-driven,” to describe best practices in church management and program, we aren’t redefining church members as paying customers in a profit-making enterprise.
If the First Beatitude is true about the blessedness of knowing our need of God, the current financial crisis opens the door to important progress in Spiritual Development.
