In this installment of Church Management I will be covering
contact points. Contacts come in many
different forms from first time visitor cards, prayer request cards,
communication cards, bulletins, to phone contacts. Each of these contacts has to be handled in a
different way. Many of them have
multiple contact items on each form. So
to get started I am going to define some terminology that will be used:
Contact: A contact is either a card or phone call
that may contain multiple contact items.
Each contact is kept intact
as a whole with many parts that can be worked by multiple people. For example, a communication card from the
bulletin that is turned in might have first time visitor, my age group is
18-25, and I want to know more about volunteering checked off.
Contact Item: A contact item is the before mentioned
check boxes that can reside on a contact form.
First time visitor, second time visitor, my age group is X-Y, I want
more information about X ministry, prayer request, confidential prayer request,
I heard about this church by X, and many more are considered contact items.
A common issue that I see churches facing is how to process first time visitor cards. Many churches that I work with have a tried
and true way to process those contacts.
They make as many copies of the contact as necessary to distribute to
the ministers who will be working the contact items. In the definition of what a contact was I
mentioned three items that were checked off.
Here they are listed with the ministries responsible for the contact
items as well as what they are expected to do with the card.
- First
Time Visitor (Member Services – Send Form Letter)
- First
Time Visitor (Member Services – Update Database)
- First
Time Visitor (Executive Pastor – First Time Visitor Phone Call)
- First
Time Visitor (Welcome Ministry – Deliver Bread to Visitors Home)
- My age
Group is 18 – 25 (??? - Should go to College Ministry to let
them know but doesn’t or they don’t know what to do with it when they get
it)
- I
would like to know more about Volunteering (Children’s Ministry – Phone
Call)
Note: in the above
example one contact item has initiated 3 actions
Now most churches that I visit say they are performing all
of the above tasks to the best of their knowledge. The problem is that they have no way to be
sure it is getting done. A quick visit
to the Executive Pastors office and you will see dozens of first time visitor
contact cards, in various states, scattered around his office.
One key to church growth comes from making the best possible
impression to first time visitors. I
will not be discussing what I think is a best practice for a particular item
(phone call, home visit, form letter).
This is very regionally based. What
is a good idea in rural Mississippi will be
seen as invasive in Seattle. What I will be discussing is how churches
should document their process and then implement that process. That will come in next week’s installment…
Matthew McMaster
Church Process Expert
(I figure if your going to make up a title make it GRAND)