Listening to members’ questions can take many forms, from surveys to a simple exercise we recommend in the Church Wellness Project: at Sunday services, pass out 3 x 5 cards and ask members what one question they would pose to God.
My two favorite restaurants in New York City are Cafe con Leche, a plain Caribbean place at 96th and Amsterdam and, 10 blocks farther down Amsterdam, a tiny hamburger joint called Harriet’s Kitchen, which does mostly delivery business.
Editor’s note: This column shows the practical use of listening advice Tom Ehrich has explored in previous columns. For further background, see the Church Wellness Report columns in the September 29 and November 10, 2008, issues.
“I visited this church,” said a leader attending a membership development workshop, “and I could get into the main door, but I couldn’t find the door into the sanctuary.”
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.
