Church Marketing

7 Ways to Attract More Visitors to Church

posted by | January 18, 2017 | |

Do you want to attract more people to your church?

In this training video, I lay out 7 practical low-cost ways to attract more visitors to your church and encourage your members to invite their friends. These are things that I discovered over the last decade running communications at my church and helping it grow from a weekly attendance of 500 to 2500 and why I was offered a Communications Director job at a church of 7,500. These things work and you can start implementing them right now to have a bump in attendance and get your church more on the map in your community.

Here’s the Cheat Sheet:

  1. Fix the front door (your website)
  2. Tell your church origin story
  3. Equip members to invite
  4. Make the worship service consistent
  5. Give a preview of what’s coming up
  6. Tell stories of God at work
  7. Make this Sunday special

 

 

1. Fix the Front Door (Your Website)

Your website is the front door to your church. If you are not getting many visitors, chances are our website is outdated, or not compelling. You need make your website really shine so it showcases your church. Design it with the visitor in mind. It’s important to use compelling imagery and visuals on the website.

2. Tell Your Church Origin Story

What’s the story you’re telling? I don’t just mean the Gospel story. I mean how does your church story intersect the Gospel story?  Your church origin story is one that needs re-telling. When was the last time you told it?

I’ll never forget visiting a church and I happen to visit on the Sunday that the pastor was telling their church origin story, it was in January and he was telling about the miracles God had done to make their church possible. He told where they had been and where God was calling them. I felt so connected to the church after hearing that. I told others how God had worked to make this church possible.

3. Equip Your Members to Invite

Jesus calls us all to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” (Mark 16:15)

Your church members need to understand they are plan A for reaching the community and there is no plan B. You’re not relying on advertising, or Facebook Ads, or people to just stumble into the church

Think about it… are you more likely to try a restaurant you know nothing about, or the one that you’ve heard people talking about, and your friend invites you to? It’s the same with church. You might say, how do you do that?

4. Make the Worship Service Consistent

Not that it has to be the same every time, that’s not what I mean…

What I mean is you to need to make sure people coming to your church know what they can expect. The reason your friend invites you to a restaurant is because he has been there a few times, and knows that the food is consistently great, it’s clean, and the service is fantastic.

If sometimes people come to your church, and the music isn’t that good, or there are technical glitches, or the sermon is not very engaging, then they will hesitate to invite people. They won’t say it, but inside they will have this fear of what if their friend comes on one of those Sundays.

So make sure the quality is good, week after week. The sermon is on point. The music is worshipful and engaging. People are welcomed, regardless of what they look like, whether they’ve been there before or what time they show up.

5. Give a Preview of What’s Coming Up

The reason that sermon series are so popular in churches right now is because they give a natural way to invite people to church every few weeks. It allows churches to preview what is coming up.

So if you’re going to spend 4 weeks looking at the Leadership lessons Timothy learned, then why not give it some kind of title that will be intriguing and let people know a couple weeks in advance that is what you are going to be studying.

6. Tell Stories of God at Work

If you have church social media accounts or if you’re using your own social media accounts to promote the church, stop promoting and start telling stories.

That’s right, focus less on promoting and more on story telling. There’s a great book on this topic by my friend Greg Koorhan, Don’t Sell Me, Tell Me.

7. Make This Sunday Special

There is a very good chance that someone is going to walk into your church this Sunday, and not come back. It could be the only time they hear the Gospel or are in an environment that is positive and uplifting. How are you going to make this Sunday special?

What if people were so excited about what God was doing at your church that they planned their vacations around it? Make coming into church a breath of fresh air.

Obviously these special moments cannot take the place of a genuine experience with God or the Holy Spirit’s work in our services, I think there is still a valuable place for our Sunday gatherings.

We need to pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on us. So how can you make this Sunday special?

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