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Tag Archive for: executive pastor

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Marketing Blog

How Finding Your “One Thing” Can Help Transform Your Ministry

If you’ve ever looked down at a to-do list of 5, 7 or 10 tasks and felt that sinking feeling of “how am I ever going to accomplish all this?”, you know that numbers can be daunting. On the other hand, if that list just has one task—even if it’s a big one—it feels more doable simply because it stands alone.

That’s the power of one. When it comes to taking steps toward improving your ministry, harnessing “the power of one” is an important strategy to keep you and your staff from feeling overwhelmed. The idea is simple: Rather than focus on accomplishing many things at once, instead focus on one key goal and invest all your collective energy into making it happen.

3 Steps to Help Determine Your Church’s One Big Goal

“What’s ONE thing you would change about this church and why?”

This is the key question you want to ask because it gets people really focusing on one thing—not three or five—but one. It makes them think about their top priority. Asking a specific question like this will get you very specific answers.

  1. Seek feedback

Who should you ask this question to? Everyone involved with the church. That includes both all staff and congregation members. You want as much data as possible in order to make the most informed decision.

  1. Analyze and overlay results

Once you have all your answers to the question above (whether collected through interviews or surveys), take your results and look for the top trends. What are the most common answers? What are the most frequently mentioned concerns?

  1. Decide where to focus

Use the data you’ve collected to determine the most important thing you can do to improve your church and the wellbeing of its members. Then make sure you clearly communicate that goal with all staff and congregation members.   

Examples of things your church might want to improve could include:

  • Increasing generosity overall
  • Finding people who are falling through the cracks before they fully disengage from the church
  • Increasing the number of families that are giving on a monthly basis (recurring giving)
  • Focusing on church growth (population)
  • Making it easier for guests to become members (guest follow-up and assimilation process)
  • Improving the facility appearance and/or function

Once You Ask, Be Prepared to Act

If you’re going to ask a one-thing question, it’s really important you have a plan of action. Even if your ultimate action isn’t focused where someone wanted you to, at least they can see where the ministry is heading (the heart of your church) and that you are taking their feedback into account. 

Discover more ways your church can use feedback from members to transform your ministry—download “The Field Guide for Data-Driven Ministry” now.

 

May 1, 2018/by Steele Billings
https://www.touchpointsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/blog-featured-image.png 125 400 Steele Billings http://tpsoftware.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/TP-logo-blue-no-slogan-300x62.png Steele Billings2018-05-01 09:55:412018-04-12 10:03:57How Finding Your “One Thing” Can Help Transform Your Ministry
Marketing Blog

5 Ways to Use Feedback to Make Better Ministry Decisions

all hands in

There is a term in the tech world called “Minimum Viable Product” or MVP. It’s where a new product or website is developed with sufficient features to satisfy early adopters, and then the final set of features is developed after considering feedback from the initial users.

What this does is it creates a sort of feedback loop where you build something, you put it out there, you take your data and learn from it, and you make improvements. This is a great approach to apply to your ministry.

Even once you reach your goal and accomplish what you set out to achieve with a specific project or fundraising effort, the process doesn’t end. You should always be looking to get feedback from your congregation members and find ways to improve. That should be continuous.

Examples of How Your Church Can Put Data to Work

There are a number of ways you can leverage feedback to make better ministry decisions. Here are five examples:

  1. Segment contacts based on their communication preferences

You have to get the right message to the right people at the right time. You also need the right communication channel. May churches still have a number of aging individuals who are active in the congregation, which means having a social-media-only communication approach is probably not a wise decision. It’s important that you’re segmenting within your church based on communication preferences. Learn how members want you to communicate with them.

  1. Use spiritual gifts responses to discover potential volunteers

Getting people involved in volunteer opportunities that match up with their spiritual gifts can have a big impact on their discipleship. One church we worked with had their members do a spiritual gifts assessment and logged that information in their database. That enabled them to search for people with specific gifts and see if they have a heart for something like teaching in addition to the gift.

  1. Discover where people are disengaging or falling through the cracks

If someone’s attendance or giving start slipping, that is a really good indicator of a heart problem. Maybe it’s a problem at home—with their marriage, kids, or a death in the family. Or maybe it’s a problem with the church or questions of faith. Either way you want to be there. Discovering those things through the data—having red flags that go up—creates an early warning system so you can act. Your team can chase down those lost sheep before they walk out the door for the last time.

  1. Make smarter technology investments

To have a deeper impact on the lives of the people you serve, it’s important to offer more than just a one-hour impact each week. To do that, you need to understand demographically the makeup of your church and what technology they’re using. Think about what investment will help you expand your reach. Whether it’s video streaming technology or a new PA system, do what makes sense for your members.

  1. Use data analytics to track giving

Tracking giving trends throughout the year can be helpful for strategizing and planning. For example, you can see if giving is down from this time last year and work to figure out why. Or you can plan a giving series during the time of year when you traditionally have the highest attendance and/or giving. Tracking and monitoring analytics can help you do all those things—and more.

Download “The Field Guide for Data-Driven Ministry” today to learn how to solicit constructive feedback from church members and use it to make smarter ministry decisions.

July 11, 2018/by Steele Billings
https://www.touchpointsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/blog-featured-image.png 125 400 Steele Billings http://tpsoftware.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/TP-logo-blue-no-slogan-300x62.png Steele Billings2018-07-11 08:46:262018-04-12 15:49:275 Ways to Use Feedback to Make Better Ministry Decisions

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