Has your campus growth stalled out?

Have you launched a few locations but they aren’t reaching the community in the way that you’d like?

Are you wondering why your campuses aren’t growing as large as your initial location? 

In a recent study of the multisite church movement, Leadership Network found that the normative multisite church experience is that one campus accounts for the majority of church attendance. In fact, the data shows that, on average, one campus draws the largest crowds and accounts for 63% of the overall church attendance. While this is an important fact to keep in mind when benchmarking your church against the broader movement, there are some tactics you can employ to encourage your campuses to grow and reach more people. 

In my book and video course, Church Growth Flywheel, I explore the fact that the key factor for fast-growing churches is that growing churches create a vibrant invite culture where people are regularly encouraged to invite their friends. 

Growing churches are filled with people who frequently reach out to others and ask them to come to church. If your campus is going to grow, you need to get your people involved in the mission! Here are three ways you could increase the invite culture at your church: 

Leverage Regular Launch Cycles

Hopefully, your church is regularly launching new campuses. This provides an incredible opportunity to also see growth at your existing campuses. 

Often when a new campus is opened, there is increased communication in the church about the new launch. The church will celebrate milestones towards the launch, rally new volunteers to join the launch team, distribute promotional material in the community, and plan programming to help the new campus be as highly “inviteable” as possible. Take advantage of all those opportunities!

* Increase Your Volunteer Core // Healthy campuses are filled with lots of volunteers. Leverage the launch of the new location to raise up new leaders at your campus. Encourage your people to either go and help launch the new location or stay where they are and make that campus healthier. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage new groups of people in service.* Double Up on Promotional Material // Chances are you are investing in some sort of marketing for the launch of the new campus. The expensive part of that process is the strategy and planning piece. Use that same strategy to reintroduce your community to your existing campuses. You could even do a “grand re-opening” celebration around a milestone anniversary like five years! * Series Promotion // No doubt your church will host a “homerun series” with content that is guaranteed to get your people inviting others. Don’t miss the opportunity to go above and beyond with invite tools for this series at every campus. Develop invite cards and shareable social media content for your people to distribute and share. Countdown to the launch of the series so people know exactly when to invite their friends. Ask them who they are inviting in the weeks leading up to the series launch. Spend time publicly praying that God would draw people to the church for this special series. 

Big Days Make a Big Deal 

There are three or four days every year where you will see a spike in attendance at your campuses. It’s on these “big days” that two things happen: Your people are more likely to invite their friends...