This session is for those who are looking for practical tools that will greatly increase visitor assimilation in their church. Gain insights from a leading authority on assimilation in a concise presentation that provides practical Äúlessons learnedÄù and Äúbest practicesÄù from fifteen years of working with thousands of churches.
You will learn:
* 7 Laws of Assimilation with associated principles
* Best practices and lessons learned in assimilation.
* The big picture of assimilation
Speaker: Allen Ratta
CEO, ConnectionPower.com
Bio: Allen has been highly effective as the senior pastor of a rapidly growing church for many years and a successful Christian businessman. Allen continually developed, implemented and modified the Visitor Touching and Tracking System in the church he pastored. It was a key to their growth from 17 to over 1200 in average weekend attendance. The Visitor Touching and Tracking System was also utilized by thousands of churches around the country with very positive results. He has most recently completed program design and beta testing on a robust web-based version of his visitor retention methodology that is being enthusiastically received as a cutting-edge tool for significant church growth.
5 Signs of a Good Church Health
They understand their purpose
They understand Ministry Processes
They achieve purposes thorugh processes
They know how to develop and implement good processes
They know how to troubleshoot and improve ministry processes
Ratta says all churches have an assimilation process, it is whether it is effective (healthy) or not. ConnectionPower provides a tool to assess your church assimilation of new visitors. They recommend people set-up Guest Centers and give visitors increasingly more valuable gifts when they visit to capture information. They also offer an online ‘church growth calculator‘ to determine where your church is growing toward.
The Seven Laws of Connection (with new visitors)
Law #1 Visitors represent 100% of your church’s growth potential
Law #2 Visitor Retention is beetween 10 to 20 times more significant thatn visitor volume
Law #3 It takes people to reach people
Law #4 Set expectations and meet them
Law #5 Be proactive to connect people
Law #6 it takes time to connect with people
Law #7 Listen to your visitors feedback
Other tidbits:
Visitor retention rate is highest when you follow-up with visitors w/in 48 hours.
Retention rates of a first time visitor is 34%, 2nd time visitors 51% and 3rd time is 78% in fast growing churches.
The THREE major Exodus periods for visitors
Based on a study of 9,000 visitors.
1. Weeks 1-6 The ‘honeymoon‘ phase when people first visit the church.
2. Weeks 21-33 The ‘do I fit‘ phase when people determine whether they feel connected and have made friends.
3. Weeks 42-54 The ‘fulfullment‘ phase, will I get my spiritual needs met and have meaningful involvement?
CONCLUSION
This seminar was mainly a platform to sell their web-based software. Much of their program is created from techniques and Purpose Driven Church models. There are things I believe can help a church, if they tailor things to fit their particular context. (EDIT: As long as whatever method is done first lines up with scripture, second is done with a correct heart/motivation and third that we trust God. The last thing we’d want is churches trying to market/package techniques for their own glory in growing a really big church. That is a total rejection of the gospel.) You can see more on their website at ConnectionPower.com
EXTRA read Ekklesia’s Church Assimilation Method
