How to make church participation easier within existing routines
TL;DR
Before launching another meeting or process, look at where people already gather and communicate. Let them respond in familiar places and add opportunities within existing rhythms where that helps you achieve the aim.
Creating our own uphill battles
Today I want to talk about how church communication often fails because of its context rather than its content.
I’ll start with something I learned years ago as a freelance marketer.
Why moving to a new platform can reduce participation
I used to run paid adverts for clients, normally local businesses, often on Facebook and Instagram.
The great thing about paid ads is the speed of the feedback. Unlike organic social media, you find out very quickly what works and what doesn’t.
So one of the first things I learned was that the context somebody is in when you ask them to do something changes the result enormously.
If I asked people to sign up to an event, far more of them did it when they could do it on the platform they were already using.
Ask them to click through to a website and take the same action there, and the numbers dropped.
It cost more per sign-up to take people off-platform, almost every time.
Not because the website was bad, because leaving introduced uncertainty.
Every time you ask somebody to cross from one place to another, a proportion of them simply don’t arrive.
That’s asking them to move from familiar to unfamiliar.
"I know Instagram. I’m comfortable there. The website is new, and I trust it less."
So before we get to church, here’s the thing to hold onto. Taking an action in a familiar place is far easier than taking the same action somewhere new.
Build participation into familiar church routines
There’s an obvious take-away here - applying this concept to our small announcements and signups.
But it gets more interesting when you apply it to the big things, because the same principle holds for whole campaigns and aims.
Say your church wants people to pray more, both corporately and personally.
The instinctive answer is a new prayer meeting during the week or month.
Look at what that asks:
A new night.
A new commitment.
An unfamiliar routine.
Getting people to buy into that is hard.
So, it’s worth going back to the aim. We wanted more people praying. Not more prayer meetings.
So the question isn’t "how do we get more people to a meeting?" It’s "how we get more people praying regularly?"
Which means starting in the places and routines people already have, exactly as we would have asked somebody to sign up on Instagram rather than sending them off to a website.
Ten minutes of prayer at the end of something people already attend asks almost nothing, and it moves you towards the same goal.
More prayer meetings don’t reliably produce more prayer. More opportunities to pray inside the rhythms that already exist might.
Three ways to reduce friction for church members
Let people respond while they are already in the room
If you want sign-ups, make the action happen somewhere people already go. Old-fashioned sign-up sheets at the end of a service never stopped working. We just stopped using them.
Use the channels your congregation already uses
If your congregation uses WhatsApp, Instagram or Facebook, try out taking sign ups in the apps. Don’t always route them through a system they open twice a year (unless necassary).
Add opportunities within existing gatherings
Look for gatherings and rhythms that already exist and build inside them. It’s less exciting than launching something, but it works far more often.