In light of this research, if you have an average church attendance of 300, I believe that you could easily see 30-50% (100-150) increase at your Easter Service.  But what if you put some effort into it?  What if you spent 3 months planning and preparing your congregation for an explosive and transformational Easter this year?  I really believe that healthy churches can double their average attendance on Easter which will have a residual impact for the rest of the year.

With Easter falling later on the calendar this year, April 8, you have an opportunity to have one of your largest Easter attendances in the history of your church. Here are a few principles that you can apply in planning to have an Explosive Easter this year.

1.  Believe it can happen.

Leading a congregation can be a lonely and discouraging assignment. Helping pastors keep their heads in the game is one of the things I do all the time. It is so easy to get caught up with the negative distractions that ministry brings that we can get our eyes off the thousands of people who are so far from God but really close to us. Jesus said to his distracted disciples, "Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." (John 4:35)  What do you do as a leader to keep your eyes on the harvest? What do you need to do to keep your staff, leaders and church's eyes on the harvest? God is at work in your community! Do you believe it? Can you see through the eyes of faith the lives of families and neighbors who can be changed by the power of the gospel?

2. Have a record setting mentality.

What has been the largest Easter Service in the history of your church? What is holding you back to see it happen this year? The previous point deals with your belief in God and His redemptive work in the world. This point deals with your belief in your church, your team and God's work within and through your church. If you don't think it can happen as a leader then you and the church are in trouble. If you don't believe it then no one else will. What is keeping you for setting new Easter attendance record in the life of your church? 

3. Get your key influencers involved.

Getting key influencers involved in the process is vital to building positive momentum. Getting these individuals involved in planning and promoting your service is critical. Filling these individuals excitement about setting a new record and touching lives with the gospel is key, because it will spread infectiously throughout the congregation.

Too many pastors try to carry the load all by themselves, which is an unbiblical notion. Christianity is a team sport. Team building is one of the skills successful pastors need in their tool belts. Learning to pick the right players on your team is crucial. Guiding and leading the team is imperative. I encourage pastors to use short-term task forces with a specific task along with a starting and ending point.  If you build a task force for each of your major outreach initiatives for the Fall, Winter and Spring, your team building skills will improve each time and the impact on your congregation will dramatically improve. HT

4.  Put some effort into planning for before, during and after your Easter service
I call this the "three month rule" which is to begin the detailed planning process at least three months before launch of the outreach campaign.  Here is an overview of what would happen in those three months:

Three D's of Event Planning

• Develop a punch list - generating a complete list of 'to do's' with due dates that that need to be completely to insure a successful event.
• Determine a time line - listing major objectives 3 months before the event and 1 month after the event.
• Delegate assignments to your team - empower your team to own the tasks that need to be completed.
  • Here are the major areas that need to be covered
    • Intercession
    • Communication - Membership Awareness
    • Marketing & Promotion to Community
    • Worship Service Planning & Preparation
    • Follow up & Come back events

  5.  Promote prayer & fasting for friends, neighbors and family.

It is a must to incorporate a church wide prayer project for before and during the campaign. One example: Call the church to "pray for five neighbors, for five minutes a day, for five weeks" before the outreach campaign. Tim Beavis of The Orchard Church in McHenry developed a "Who is my neighbor?" campaign with this concept. Check out the card he used to encourage his church to pray for their neighbors.  You might consider using 2 identical cards in your church, one for the individual to hand in to the church for the prayer team to pray over and the other of the individual to take home with them.  In addition to this you could also call the church to a season of prayer and fasting.

6. Start recruiting help for Easter early.

Here is the principle, "The more people get involved the more likely they are to invite people to attend." Recruiting, deploying, and encouraging volunteers at all levels is vital to the success of your Easter Outreach.

Generate a list of Entry Level Service Opportunities

• Set Up
• Take Down
• Nursery
• Greeter
• Usher
• Hostess
• Sound Tech
• Musician
• Food Preparation
• Choir
• Children’s Ministries
• Video Production
• Audio Ministry
• Small Group Host
• Office Assistance
• Event Production
• Marketing Team
• Website Production

7. Write a personal letter to every member of the church about the Easter Service(s).

Leaders lead and sending a letter to your congregation shows initiative and leadership.  Make a heart felt appeal to your people to make this the best Easter ever in the life of your church.  The letter should contain the following:

• An enthusiastic vision: Why I am excited about this Easter Service?
• Encouragement & ideas for inviting friends: What invitational tools can I encourage them to use?
• Invite them to get involved: What serving opportunities do I need to specifically promote?
• Get the specific details: What logistical details do I need to share with them?
• Remind them of the reality of the resurrection in their lives: How can I encourage them to experience the victorious life promised in the resurrection?

See Sample Letter

8. Reach out to the fringe people of your church.

Send a special invitation or a personal note to all your visitors from the last two the years. There is nothing like a personal touch when it comes to outreach.  In may cases the most receptive people you can reach have already attended your services at some point.

9. Cast seeds of awareness to the community at large.

This principle is that you will always have to cast more seed than you think to get a significant impact. I encourage churches to spend 5-10% of their budget on marketing outreach.  If you are facing a certain growth barrier you will need to kick that up to 10-15%.

Here are a couple of posts on the various ways to sowing seeds of awareness through relationships and throughout the community.

• Sowing Seeds Through Your Webs of Relationships
• Sowing Seeds of Love in Your Community
• Sowing Seeds Through Servant Evangelism #1, #2, #3
• Sowing Seeds Through Marketing #1, #2, #3

10. Preach a message on personal evangelism the Sunday before Easter.

Laying a biblical foundation and creating a heightened awareness for personal evangelism with the immediate application of inviting someone to Easter will really pay off in the long run. In recent years evangelism training in local churches has really been neglected. In making this part of your strategy you create a new discipline so that great commission living becomes infused into the life of your church.

11. Deliver the best Easter Service(s) to date. 

You will need to communicate throughout the staff and volunteers that we want to put your best foot forward in this Easter Service. By creating a sense of urgency and taking steps to raise the quality of your service will have a lasting impact on your church.

It is important that you raise the quality of the service, not dramatically change your service or try to create an over-the-top experience. Turning your service into a Easter Extravaganza can back fire on you. 1) It does not represent who you are on a normal Sunday. 2) It can create a let down in your first time attender who returns the next week. 3) In bringing outside speakers or worship leaders you don't improve.  Nelson Searcy writes, "Make your Easter service excellent, but keep it normal. If you are the one who usually preaches, preach on Easter. Have your regular worship leader lead worship on Easter. The goal with your Easter service planning should be this: To provide a great, quality service that reflects what attenders will see the rest of the year. When you get too fancy in your efforts to capitalize on Easter, you step out of the realm of reality and that can only lead to disillusionment." 

Here are some other resources to help you have an Explosive Easter.

This Easter Outreach Idea Works by Chuck Warnock

18 Easter Factors by C Michael Johnson

Marketing Your Church for Easter by John E. Squiric

In 1993, I saw the web coming. I was hired to write the cover story for a now defunct computer magazine about the internet, and dismissed the new Mosaic browser in a single paragraph.

I figured the web was just like Prodigy, but slower, harder to use and without a business model.

About as expensive a wrong analysis as a single entrepreneur with an email company could make in 1993.

The reason it was an insanely valuable lesson: I got better at announcing that I was wrong, learning from it and doing the next thing.

Politicians, of course, are terrible at this. They are never wrong, apparently, and when they are, spin instead of admitting it. Which not only hurts their trustworthiness, it prevents them from learning anything.

Two elements of successful leadership: a willingness to be wrong and an eagerness to admit it.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Coming clean is essential for leadership but it is crucial for spiritual health. The Apostle John writes, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." I John 1:8-10 (ESV)

When Ben Helton signed up for an online dating service, under "religion" he called himself "spiritually apathetic."

Helton, 28, and Dohm, 54, aren't atheists, either. They simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever-trendy search-for-meaning and/or purpose. Their attitude could be summed up as "So what?"

"The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal," says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Only now, however, are they turning up in the statistical stream. Researchers have begun asking the kind of nuanced questions that reveal just how big the So What set might be:

• 44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom," and 19% said "it's useless to search for meaning."
• 46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.
• 28% told LifeWay "it's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.
• 6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum's 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.

Hemant Mehta, who blogs as The Friendly Atheist, calls them the "apatheists"

The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., calls them honest.

"We live in a society today where it is acceptable now to say that they have no spiritual curiosity. At almost any other time in history, that would have been unacceptable," Budde says.

She finds this "very sad because the whole purpose of faith is to be a source of guidance, strength and perspective in difficult times. To be human is to have a sense of purpose, an awareness that our life is an utterly unique expression of creation and we want to live it with meaning, grace and beauty."

'We might as well be cars'

Nah, Helton says.

Helton, a high school band teacher in Chicago, only goes to the Catholic Church of his youth to hear his mother sing in the choir.

His mind led him away. The more Helton read evolutionary psychology and neuro-psychology, he says, the more it seemed to him, "We might as well be cars. That, to me, makes more sense than believing what you can't see."

Ashley Gerst, 27, a 3-D animator and filmmaker in New York, shifts between "leaning to the atheist and leaning toward apathy."

"I would just like to see more people admit they don't believe. The only thing I'm pushy about is I don't want to be pushed. I don't want to change others and I don't want to debate my view," Gerst says.

Most So Whats are like Gerst, says David Kinnaman, author of You Lost Me on young adults drifting away from church.

They're uninterested in trying to talk a diverse set of friends into a shared viewpoint in a culture that celebrates an idea that all truths are equally valid, he says. Personal experience, personal authority matter most. Hence Scripture and tradition are quaint, irrelevant, artifacts. Instead of followers of Jesus, they're followers of 5,000 unseen "friends" on Facebook or Twitter.

"I think Jesus is getting lost in the data stream," says Kinnaman, president of the Christian research firm The Barna Group.

" 'Spiritual' is the hipster way of saying they're concerned with social injustice. But if you strip away the hipster factor," says Kinnaman, "I'd estimate seven in 10 young adults would say they don't see much influence of God or religion in their lives at all."

The 'Nones' are rising

This trend may have been leaving subtle tracks for years.

The hot religion statistical trend of recent decades was the rise of the "Nones" — the people who checked "no religious identity" on the American Religious Identification Surveys (ARIS). The Nones numbers leapt from 8% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.

The So Whats appear to be a growing secular subset. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Landscape Survey dug in to the Nones to discover that nearly half said they believed "nothing in particular."

Neither raging atheist scientist Richard Dawkins, author of numerous best sellers such asThe God Delusion, nor televangelist Pat Robertson would understand this fuzzy stance, says Barry Kosmin, co-author of the ARIS and director Institute for the Study of Secularism at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

"But a lot of these people are concerned more with the tangible, the real stuff like mortgages or their favorite football team or the everyday world," Kosmin says.

The Rev. Ema Drouillard, who specializes in San Francisco-area non-denominational ceremonies, said in 2001 about 30% of her clients refused any reference to religion at their weddings.

A decade later, 80% of her clients choose her carefully God-free ceremony. The only faith they pledge is in each other. No higher authority is consulted as they vow to walk beside each other, "offering courage and hope through all your endeavors."

"A lot of people just aren't on any spiritual path. They say, 'We are just focusing on the party.' Or they have no language for their spirituality so they just leave it out," Drouillard says.

When church historian Diana Butler Bass researched her upcoming book, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, she found the So Whats are "a growing category."

Says Bass, "We can't underestimate the power of the collapse of institutional religion in the first 10 years of this century. It's freed so many people to say they don't really care. They don't miss rituals or traditions they may never have had anyway."

For them, the Almighty is off the radar, like some tiny foreign country they know exists but never think about.

"God? Purpose? You don't need an opinion on those things to function," says Suhas Sreedhar, 26, a engineer working in a computer company in Manhattan.

Raised in New Jersey by his devoutly Hindu mother and staunchly atheist father, "I was saturated with both views and after a while, I realized I don't need either perspective.

"There may be unanswerable questions that could be cool or fascinating. Speculating on them is a fun parlor game, but they don't shed any meaning on my life," Sreedhar says.

Goodness more than Godliness

This is a disaster for Christians, says Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research,

"If you're not worried about heaven, you won't notice or care if Jesus is essential your salvation. You're not thinking about any consequences," McConnell says.

But Rabbi Micah Greenstein of Temple Israel, Memphis, is not so alarmed. He sees people behaving spiritually — caring for each other and the world — even if they skip the label.

"Judaism teaches that spirituality is practical. When you see something that is broken, fix it. When you find something that is lost, return it. When you see something that needs to be done, do it. In that way you will be taking care of the world and fulfilling your role as God's partner, know it or not," the rabbi says.

"Spirituality is about the relational — whether you are relating to God, to others, to the world or to yourself. I do believe most people see life more as a mystery than as a machine. I would call that God even if they don't," Greenstein says.

Bill Dohm, who lives in Broad Run, Va., is more inclined to talk about goodness than Godliness.

"I try to live my life and do the best I can. I figure if I do good, good things will happen. I'm not at all worried about the afterlife. How could they turn me down when people do whatever they want during the week. They go to church all the time then they come home and they gamble, they party, they use God's name in vain.

"So either it will be like a switch turned off and it's done or, if there is a heaven, I'm going have to do some talking to get up there."

Until then, every week, he faithfully drives to a Catholic church where, he says, "I drop off my mother-in-law, get back in the car and drive home."

HT

Pre-Conference Event for Ignite2012

One of the differences between a follower and a leader is that a leader knows what the next steps are for their organization. Even if they don't know what the actual next steps are they will relentlessly search for ideas, advice and counsel to get their organization to the next level. NextSteps For Leading a Missional Church is designed for any church leader who embraces the missional lifestyle. It offers ideas and tools to build healthy church systems that allow the church to actualize its values and achieve its mission.

Here are a few questions we explore:

• How will your leaders reproduce?
• What does inspiring worship look like?
• How do you sustain relational health in your church?
• How can small groups serve the mission of the church?
• Are your structures & systems functional?
• How does one raise the evangelistic temperature of the church?
• How does one handle a financial crisis?

This two day workshop is designed for any pastor seeking to lead their church toward health and global impact.

Who should attend:

• Church Planters who have just launched their church or who are ten years old 
• Pastors who desire to take their church to the next level
• Coaches who desire to know what's new in church growth and church health
• Restart Pastors who desire to lay a new foundation for a sagging ministry
• Lay Leaders who desire to just want to be a part of the harvest

Schedule:

• March12-13, 2012
• Phoenix, Arizona Hosted by Vision Arizona and Converge Southwest
• Sponsored by Converge Worldwide

Register Today

That's what we spend most of our time doing. The breakthrough speech that will change everything, or the giant insight that opens every door. We fret about the apocalyptic ending, the big crash, the slam climax as well.

Of course, it almost never happens that way.

Products and services succeed one person at a time, as the word slowly spreads. Customers defect one person at a time, as hearts are broken and people are disappointed. Doors open, sure, but not all at once. One at a time.

One at a time is a little anticlimactic and difficult to get in a froth over, but one at a time is how we win and how we lose.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Move your eyes off the crowd and get focused on the individual interactions. This is where we win or lose.

Download Top-ten-reasons-denominations-should-stop-starting-new-congregations-6.21.10-edition

The NAMB Missional Networks team has been researching Church Planting Centers and shares their findings in the document linked below. By church planting centers, they mean "environments where multiple disciples are intentionally selected, developed, and sent with support to make disciples - resulting in new churches. They examine four types of centers: the Church Planting School (EBI in California), the Church Planting Church (Fellowship Associates in Arkansas), the Partnering Church Network (DCN in Alabama), and the Disciple Making Church (Soma Community).

Concerning the document they want you to know: "This document reflects our learning about church planting centers to date and therefore, is not a completed work. The questions raised here are the driving force behind our research which has been conducted in the first half of 2010. If you have comments or would like to contribute to this discussion, please feel free to contact John M. Bailey at NAMB. (jmbailey@namb.net)  (HT)

Download CPC Research Findings 9-1

King David prayed, "Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it." (Psalm 141:5) As we continue our series on being a coachable leader David's prayer really gets to the heart of the matter. Coachable people seek out those who speak truth to them, even if it is a painful truth, because it protects them and it makes them a better person and leader.

5. Coachable people take initiative with the coach, instead of the coach pushing or motivating them.

It is sometimes perplexing to me how many self-starters I have coached that lack initiative in the coaching relationship. Why is this? Here are a few reasons:

1) Pride - "I can do it on my own." Self-reliance is an America virtue but not a biblical value. Solomon wrote, "The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice." (Proverbs 12:15) The word 'listen' carries with it the meaning of seeking out as well as receiving advice. A lot of pain can be prevented if leaders would just check in with their coach before a making a big decision.

2) Fear - "I don't want to look stupid." One of my mantras is, "The only stupid question is the question not asked!"  Actually, fear is another symptom of pride.  Solomon wrote, "Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice." (Proverbs 13:10) There should be a level of connection in your coaching relationship where there is no fear but only only freedom to question and explore leadership thoughts and ideas.

3) Fatigue - "I'm emotional exhausted and lack energy for the coaching process." This one reason is true more often than you can imagine. The energy needed for the coaching process can be overwhelming and sometimes people can hit their limit. It is at this time the coach needs to bring soothing encouragement. Solomon wrote, "Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of a friend springs from their heartfelt advice." (Proverbs 27:9)

4) Indifference - "I don't want to deal with the issue at this time." It is in times like these that we need to see indifference as a warning light; warning us of the sin and ramifications of idleness.  Solomon wrote, "If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks."  (Ecclesiastes 10:18)  No leader wants their ministry to suffer ... but idleness and indifference can bring a ministry down very quickly.  So let your indifference warn you as a loud siren sounding off to push you toward your coach.

5) Imposing - "I don't want to be a bother to my coach." I find with good coaches that just the opposite is true because they are so committed to your success that they welcome the questions, phone calls and emails. Solomon wrote, "Plans are established by seeking advice; so if you wage war, obtain guidance." (Proverbs 20:18)  We are in a spiritual battle. The consequences are eternal.  So seek advice at any cost.  Solomon wrote, "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed." (Proverbs 15:22)

Coachable leaders can easily slip into any of the reasons we just considered because leadership is intense, emotional and fatiguing.  Leadership demands a certain level of mental toughness and to have a coach who believes in you and is willing to walk alongside you is critical to their success.

Solomon appealing as a father to a son wrote, "Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding."  (Proverbs 4:5-7)

Reflective Questions:

• Are you praying for God to bring people into your life that will love you enough to speak the truth to you?
• Which of the five reasons do you wrestle with the most?
• What can demotivate you in your coaching relationship?
• Does your coach or mentor make themselves available to you?
• What are the signs that you are getting emotional or mentally fatigued in your leadership role?
• What habits are you establishing to develop a deeper level of mental toughness?

Next Time: Coachable people make key adjustments in their lives.

How does your organization respond to new opportunities?

Most companies launch new things, try out new initiatives, brainstorm new approaches. The internal response (or reaction) to these ventures is a cultural choice, one that often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If your organization is both pessimistic and operationally focused, then every new idea is a threat. It represents more work, something that could go wrong, a chance for disaster. People work to protect against the downside, to insulate against the market, to be sure that they won't get blamed for anything that challenges the system. In organizations like this, a new idea has to be proven to be better than the current status quo in all situations before it gets launched.

On the other hand, an organization filled with people who are rewarded for shaking things up and generating game-changing products and services just might discover that outcomes they are dreaming of are in fact what happen. The enthusiasm that comes from believing that this one might just resonate with the market is precisely the ingredient that's required to make something resonate.

One more thing: outsiders are way more likely to approach your organization with fabulous projects if they think they're likely to both get a good reception and succeed when they get to market.

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