Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to have Dennis Gingerich with us today. Dennis is the founding pastor of Cape Christian Church in Florida.

One way or another, every church is going to lose its pastor. Yet very few congregations are preparing for that. Would your church survive if your lead pastor suddenly had to step back from leading? Today Dennis is here to speak with us about what that succession process looked like for him at Cape Christian.

* Start thinking about succession now. // For many lead pastors, nurturing, shepherding and growing their church has been their life’s work. The last thing they want is to see the baton passed poorly and their church lose sight of God’s vision for it. Dennis was faced with exactly this question when he was about 50, and he knew he needed to begin an intentional plan toward pastoral succession now. In speaking about Cape Christian Dennis says, “I wanted it to be thriving and going up and to the right in every way five years after I’m out of the lead seat.” Don’t wait to start having conversations about succession. When lead pastors are in their 40s, they should already be thinking about the succession process and who else they can be training up for the future of the church.

* Gradual transition. // Succession is a hard adjustment for some people, especially those who have been in the church for a long time and have grown along with it from the beginning. One way to prepare the congregation for the switch is to start doing team teaching. This will expose the community to a variety of voices from the stage. Slowly transition from the previous lead pastor doing most of the teaching to the upcoming lead pastor doing most of the teaching. Do half and half sermon duties a year or months before the full-time switch, then gradually increase the amount of time that the new pastor preaches until he has the full-time duties.

* Step back for the good of the church. // If the previous lead pastor will continue to be involved at the church, how do you manage their role while letting someone else take over? It’s important that communication stay open during the transition process so that the new pastor can express whether he needs more or less input from the previous pastor. In all things consider what is best for the church. True leadership comes with being willing to step back for the sake of the organization. Let God work on the parts that may be hard to adjust to at first.

* Develop a timeline. // Create a timeline on what tasks will be transitioned to the new pastor and when the transition will take place. Let the new pastor share his ideas and plans multiple times with the rest of the staff through meetings before the formal succession. Over-communicate, both with the staff and your congregation, about all aspects of the transition so that there aren’t any surprises. The goal is to help people understand again and again what can be expected in the days and months ahead. This will help everyone to feel secure about the transition.

* Be open from the beginning. // In the interviews, ask the potential pastor if he or she will be able to get along with the former pastor. Will they feel that the previous pastor will be watching over their shoulder, or will they be uncomfortable having that leader so close? Be open ahead of time about the fact that the previous pastor will still be involved so that the new pastor won’t be surprised. Keeping everything open from the beginning will help make the transition as smooth as possible.

You can learn more about Cape Christian at their website www.capechristian.com. And you can visit Dennis’s website on church succession at www.successfulsuccessions.com.

Thanks so much for taking the time to join us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We have a treat today with guest Pastor Karl Vaters of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Orange County, California. Karl is with us to talk about small churches, their unique challenges and how they can be great when they are in this place.

When Karl first arrived at Cornerstone, the church was very small and in need of a lot of help. Through hard work they were able to help the church grow over several years, from 75 to 150, eventually breaking the 200 barrier and getting over 400. But then something happened, and attendance suddenly dropped dramatically all at once. Karl is with us today to talk about that shift, what he learned about pastoring a church of under 250, and what he’d do differently next time.

* Focus on health, not growth. // Looking in from the outside, Cornerstone was thriving and growing as more people filled the space. But when the church broke the 200 attendance barrier, there was a lot more work behind the scenes than the staff was prepared for. Karl was busy hiring staff and overseeing so many business details that took him away from the actual pastoral work, and he found that being manager was not his calling. The unhappiness Karl felt in all this stress and work rubbed off throughout the rest of the church. People may not have known what was wrong exactly, but they could sense the tension, and it drove them away. Through this difficult season, Karl sought counseling and learned how to redefine success detached from numbers. When the church dropped back below 200, he examined what a healthy small church looked like and sought to understand how healthy small churches operate differently. Karl’s biggest advice is not to focus on growth, but to focus on getting healthy, which was what he shifted his mindset to. At that point, he decided that if they got bigger again, next time they would be ready for it.

* Large and small churches need different things. // Imagine large churches and small churches on a Venn diagram with the large church principles in the left circle and small church principles in the right circle. The smaller the church, the less overlap; the larger, the more overlap. If you listen to Rick Warren and your church is about 2,000 people, you can still apply much of Saddleback’s princples to your church. But when you drop a zero and your church is around 200, it behaves in a completely different way. A lot of principles for large churches don’t work in small churches. For example, systems, while important in small churches, are not as important as the relationships, culture, and history. Meanwhile, a large church needs to put a lot of energy into developing systems. Small groups are another critical area that large churches need to develop, whereas a church of 50 people may not need to break down into smaller groups since individual ministries in the church (kids, women, youth, etc.) already serve that purpose.

* 90% of churches around the world are under 250 people. // So many of us look at large churches and feel like grasshoppers in a land of giants, instead of seeing that a small church is “normal”. God wants to use the church, regardless of how many people are gathered in one place. As Karl says, “The power of the Holy Spirit is not more concentrated because there’s more of us in the room. God wants to work in these small groups scattered all over the face of the earth as well as He wants to work in places where large groups of Christians are gathered together. He will use both.” If you have a small church, work hard to get it healthy. If it’s healthy, but you still don’t get big numerically, celebrate the fact that you got healthy instead of mourning the fact that you didn’t grow. The goal is to get healthy.

* Finding time for small church pastors. // The majority of pastors at small churches are bi-vocational.

Thanks so much for taking the time to join us for another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We have a treat today with guest Pastor Karl Vaters of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Orange County, California. Karl is with us to talk about small churches, their unique challenges and how they can be great when they are in this place.

When Karl first arrived at Cornerstone, the church was very small and in need of a lot of help. Through hard work they were able to help the church grow over several years, from 75 to 150, eventually breaking the 200 barrier and getting over 400. But then something happened, and attendance suddenly dropped dramatically all at once. Karl is with us today to talk about that shift, what he learned about pastoring a church of under 250, and what he’d do differently next time.

* Focus on health, not growth. // Looking in from the outside, Cornerstone was thriving and growing as more people filled the space. But when the church broke the 200 attendance barrier, there was a lot more work behind the scenes than the staff was prepared for. Karl was busy hiring staff and overseeing so many business details that took him away from the actual pastoral work, and he found that being manager was not his calling. The unhappiness Karl felt in all this stress and work rubbed off throughout the rest of the church. People may not have known what was wrong exactly, but they could sense the tension, and it drove them away. Through this difficult season, Karl sought counseling and learned how to redefine success detached from numbers. When the church dropped back below 200, he examined what a healthy small church looked like and sought to understand how healthy small churches operate differently. Karl’s biggest advice is not to focus on growth, but to focus on getting healthy, which was what he shifted his mindset to. At that point, he decided that if they got bigger again, next time they would be ready for it.

* Large and small churches need different things. // Imagine large churches and small churches on a Venn diagram with the large church principles in the left circle and small church principles in the right circle. The smaller the church, the less overlap; the larger, the more overlap. If you listen to Rick Warren and your church is about 2,000 people, you can still apply much of Saddleback’s princples to your church. But when you drop a zero and your church is around 200, it behaves in a completely different way. A lot of principles for large churches don’t work in small churches. For example, systems, while important in small churches, are not as important as the relationships, culture, and history. Meanwhile, a large church needs to put a lot of energy into developing systems. Small groups are another critical area that large churches need to develop, whereas a church of 50 people may not need to break down into smaller groups since individual ministries in the church (kids, women, youth, etc.) already serve that purpose.

* 90% of churches around the world are under 250 people. // So many of us look at large churches and feel like grasshoppers in a land of giants, instead of seeing that a small church is “normal”. God wants to use the church, regardless of how many people are gathered in one place. As Karl says, “The power of the Holy Spirit is not more concentrated because there’s more of us in the room. God wants to work in these small groups scattered all over the face of the earth as well as He wants to work in places where large groups of Christians are gathered together. He will use both.” If you have a small church, work hard to get it healthy. If it’s healthy, but you still don’t get big numerically, celebrate the fact that you got healthy instead of mourning the fact that you didn’t grow. The goal is to get healthy.

* Finding time for small church pastors. // The majority of pastors at small churches are bi-vocational.

Welcome to our new podcast all about multisite! I’m chatting with a group of multisite ninjas and answering your questions about the ins and outs of launching new campuses. Our group is as follows:

Natalie Frisk is our family ministry expert. She is a key leader from The Meeting House. This church has 19 (!) locations and is doing all kinds of great stuff, including a killer kids’ & youth curriculum that they give away for free. Natalie’s a lot of fun and will have so many great insights around leading in a thriving multisite church.

Greg Curtis is our guest connections and assimilation expert. He leads at Eastside Christian Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and literally, is the “go to” source for getting people to stick and stay in the church. (Eastside has assimilated something like 1,500 people in the last 18 months!) His coaching practice around assimilation is amazing.

Ben Stapley is our communications and service programming expert. Ben is one of the most helpful leaders I know. His day job is at Liquid Church in NJ, but he does so much to help other leaders with the “big show” part of church world.

And I, Rich, have been involved with 14 different campus launches over the years and enjoy helping churches that are thinking about multisite.

We are here to answer your questions about running a multisite church and are excited to be here today with our first episode.

Q1: When do we make the switch from a traditional stacked church staff to a matrix model?

Churches traditionally have a stacked leadership that works like a pyramid. It goes from one level to another throughout the entire organization. But multisite churches typically have two layers of staff responsible for making everything happen. They use a matrix model, which basically means that if you’re responsible for a ministry area in a campus you have two supervisors, the local campus leadership and the central staff. How those two relate to each other is a matrix, where it no longer operates on a pyramid level, but both vertically to the pastor or lead team, and horizontally to someone responsible to your specific area.

You should make the switch to the matrix staff model as soon as you can without overextending your budget. The staff will have to accept the new reality of their positions and then implement and refine that reality. It can be confusing to get used to a new system of reporting, so the sooner you make the switch, even before completing final the changes to multisite, the better. Keep communication within the staff clear and have them sit down together to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Q2: How do you keep unity across different campuses and pastors?

The common thought is that multisite churches use video to share their central message among all their campuses. But that isn’t exclusively true. There are many multisite churches that do focus on video teaching, and others that have their own individual teaching pastors at each campus, and still others that do a combination of the two. Natalie explains that at The Meeting House they’ve begun something they call “local teaching” where there is a common thread or theme among the campuses. They also provide a “quotes package” or slide templates to keep everyone connected. Among the children and youth curriculum, you can thread together common themes each month so that the campuses can share the learning experience across all ages up through adults. Campus pastors can check with each other midweek to share ideas on messages. Also, create projects for the entire church to work on together. For example, you could put together an event for the whole church to participate in, develop initiative to help less fortunate people locally or globally, or volunteer together and teach volunteerism in one central campus to draw in members from all the campuses.

Welcome to our new podcast all about multisite! I’m chatting with a group of multisite ninjas and answering your questions about the ins and outs of launching new campuses. Our group is as follows:

Natalie Frisk is our family ministry expert. She is a key leader from The Meeting House. This church has 19 (!) locations and is doing all kinds of great stuff, including a killer kids’ & youth curriculum that they give away for free. Natalie’s a lot of fun and will have so many great insights around leading in a thriving multisite church.

Greg Curtis is our guest connections and assimilation expert. He leads at Eastside Christian Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the country, and literally, is the “go to” source for getting people to stick and stay in the church. (Eastside has assimilated something like 1,500 people in the last 18 months!) His coaching practice around assimilation is amazing.

Ben Stapley is our communications and service programming expert. Ben is one of the most helpful leaders I know. His day job is at Liquid Church in NJ, but he does so much to help other leaders with the “big show” part of church world.

And I, Rich, have been involved with 14 different campus launches over the years and enjoy helping churches that are thinking about multisite.

We are here to answer your questions about running a multisite church and are excited to be here today with our first episode.

Q1: When do we make the switch from a traditional stacked church staff to a matrix model?

Churches traditionally have a stacked leadership that works like a pyramid. It goes from one level to another throughout the entire organization. But multisite churches typically have two layers of staff responsible for making everything happen. They use a matrix model, which basically means that if you’re responsible for a ministry area in a campus you have two supervisors, the local campus leadership and the central staff. How those two relate to each other is a matrix, where it no longer operates on a pyramid level, but both vertically to the pastor or lead team, and horizontally to someone responsible to your specific area.

You should make the switch to the matrix staff model as soon as you can without overextending your budget. The staff will have to accept the new reality of their positions and then implement and refine that reality. It can be confusing to get used to a new system of reporting, so the sooner you make the switch, even before completing final the changes to multisite, the better. Keep communication within the staff clear and have them sit down together to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Q2: How do you keep unity across different campuses and pastors?

The common thought is that multisite churches use video to share their central message among all their campuses. But that isn’t exclusively true. There are many multisite churches that do focus on video teaching, and others that have their own individual teaching pastors at each campus, and still others that do a combination of the two. Natalie explains that at The Meeting House they’ve begun something they call “local teaching” where there is a common thread or theme among the campuses. They also provide a “quotes package” or slide templates to keep everyone connected. Among the children and youth curriculum, you can thread together common themes each month so that the campuses can share the learning experience across all ages up through adults. Campus pastors can check with each other midweek to share ideas on messages. Also, create projects for the entire church to work on together. For example, you could put together an event for the whole church to participate in, develop initiative to help less fortunate people locally or globally, or volunteer together and teach volunteerism in one central campus to draw in members from all the campuses.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast! Thanks for joining us for our chat today with Jamey Stuart from Believers Church in Suffolk, Virginia.

Believers Church is an active church with a unique story surrounding their building. The church is full of energy with an average age of 35 and lots of young families. Being in a military town, the congregation is very diverse and constantly changing. Today we’re speaking with Jamey about how they handled facility issues as they grew.

* Multi-site isn’t always the answer. // Growth always brings challenges, regardless of whether it is explosive, or slow and steady like Believers Church has experienced over the years. When Jamey first became senior pastor, Believers Church was in the process of turning a gymnasium-type building into a new sanctuary and converting the old sanctuary into the new kids’ space. They were reconfiguring their space constantly, moving offices around and freeing up more space for kids ministry. As soon as they freed up space it got filled. However, Jamey and his team felt the solution to their facility space issues wasn’t multi-site. Instead Believers decided to seek a bigger and better space while putting their existing space up for sale.

* Campaign on an idea. // Jamey wasn’t sure exactly what their next step was, but he felt very strongly that they needed to be prepared for whatever God put in front of them. The problem was, they didn’t have cash on hand to be able to move when that opportunity came. So they did a capital campaign simply based on the idea that they needed a bigger and better space. They didn’t have a drawing or a map or anything picked out; they only had an idea of a bigger space. Yet from this idea, they raised over one million dollars in two years. Casting a compelling vision for why you’re doing what you’re doing is key to inviting that investment and commitment from your community.

* Be open to new ideas. // During this time, the staff at Believers attended a free lunch seminar at Building God’s Way to explore ideas for the design of their new church. The old church property was still for sale, but it wasn’t too soon to start thinking about ideas for what they wanted in the new building and where God might be leading them. During the Building God’s Way seminar, they were challenged to consider constructing a space to be used not just for multiple church events, but rather a host of events within their community. The idea of constructing an event center immediately clicked with Believers Church and they began to dream about the possibilities in Suffolk. Eventually they bought land and began a building project for the Hub 757 event center, which the church uses on weekends for their services.

* Serve your community. // Jamey says Believers Church now sees themselves as a portable church with a permanent location. As a result, they don’t have expectations of accessing the space whenever they want because they share it with many other organizations and businesses who rent the space during the week. Believers does not use any church money to pay for event center costs. Rather the event center is a separate organization generating its own revenue, which is also put toward paying off the loan needed to construct it. The event coordinator hired to take care of hosting events attends Believers Church, but is also paid from the event center income. Hub 757 has hosted everything from weddings to catered business events to birthday parties, and the local chamber of commerce loves that it’s there for the community.

* Break down hurdles. // When it comes to church, meeting in an event center immediately breaks down barriers for people. Unchurched people are often intimidated to come into a church building, but chances are individuals in the community are already familiar with the ...

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast! Thanks for joining us for our chat today with Jamey Stuart from Believers Church in Suffolk, Virginia.

Believers Church is an active church with a unique story surrounding their building. The church is full of energy with an average age of 35 and lots of young families. Being in a military town, the congregation is very diverse and constantly changing. Today we’re speaking with Jamey about how they handled facility issues as they grew.

* Multi-site isn’t always the answer. // Growth always brings challenges, regardless of whether it is explosive, or slow and steady like Believers Church has experienced over the years. When Jamey first became senior pastor, Believers Church was in the process of turning a gymnasium-type building into a new sanctuary and converting the old sanctuary into the new kids’ space. They were reconfiguring their space constantly, moving offices around and freeing up more space for kids ministry. As soon as they freed up space it got filled. However, Jamey and his team felt the solution to their facility space issues wasn’t multi-site. Instead Believers decided to seek a bigger and better space while putting their existing space up for sale.

* Campaign on an idea. // Jamey wasn’t sure exactly what their next step was, but he felt very strongly that they needed to be prepared for whatever God put in front of them. The problem was, they didn’t have cash on hand to be able to move when that opportunity came. So they did a capital campaign simply based on the idea that they needed a bigger and better space. They didn’t have a drawing or a map or anything picked out; they only had an idea of a bigger space. Yet from this idea, they raised over one million dollars in two years. Casting a compelling vision for why you’re doing what you’re doing is key to inviting that investment and commitment from your community.

* Be open to new ideas. // During this time, the staff at Believers attended a free lunch seminar at Building God’s Way to explore ideas for the design of their new church. The old church property was still for sale, but it wasn’t too soon to start thinking about ideas for what they wanted in the new building and where God might be leading them. During the Building God’s Way seminar, they were challenged to consider constructing a space to be used not just for multiple church events, but rather a host of events within their community. The idea of constructing an event center immediately clicked with Believers Church and they began to dream about the possibilities in Suffolk. Eventually they bought land and began a building project for the Hub 757 event center, which the church uses on weekends for their services.

* Serve your community. // Jamey says Believers Church now sees themselves as a portable church with a permanent location. As a result, they don’t have expectations of accessing the space whenever they want because they share it with many other organizations and businesses who rent the space during the week. Believers does not use any church money to pay for event center costs. Rather the event center is a separate organization generating its own revenue, which is also put toward paying off the loan needed to construct it. The event coordinator hired to take care of hosting events attends Believers Church, but is also paid from the event center income. Hub 757 has hosted everything from weddings to catered business events to birthday parties, and the local chamber of commerce loves that it’s there for the community.

* Break down hurdles. // When it comes to church, meeting in an event center immediately breaks down barriers for people. Unchurched people are often intimidated to come into a church building, but chances are individuals in the community are already familiar with the ...

Is your church leveraging chatbots to reach people? Are you leveraging a social media listening tool to understand the sentiment towards your church? What’s your Instagram story strategy to engage people in your community?  Is your church ready for augmented reality and the impact that will have people attending your services?

STOP!

Too many church leaders are running too quickly to optimize the latest communication tools to reach people in their community while they are ignoring “low hanging” fruit with “old school” technologies with proven abilities to do the same. Before your church figures out the latest tool or trend, you need to make sure that you are leveraging existing channels.

In January, Facebook announced its latest changes to the news feed which means organizations like ours are going to see even less “organic” reach on that channel. In fact, many brands are reporting a 50% drop in traffic from the social media behemoth in just a matter of weeks. [ref] This underlines that no church communications strategy can be single source dependent but needs to employ a wide variety of channels to reach your people and your community.

3 Reasons Church Leaders Are Drawn to the Latest Communication Technologies

Shiny Object Syndrome // Too many of us are drawn towards the “latest” thing because it’s the latest thing. We hear some tech blogger talk about the latest whiz-bang service and we’re convinced that will solve our communication issues. The act of jumping from one shiny object to the next means that we don’t take time to dig deep and optimize any given channel.  

FREE is in our Budget // Most of us are trying to figure out how to reach more people with little or no financial investment. Lots of digital marketing solutions start out using “free” as a marketing tactic to get businesses using their platforms, and we’re drawn to that pricing! Over time, these platforms end up charging for what they were giving away, which means, we need to move on.

We’re Aware Consumers // Lots of church leaders I know are actively engaged in the world around us. We spend time not just floating through life but are curious individuals. This is a great way to be! We see other organizations and businesses communicating with their communities and wonder what would happen if we applied those lessons to what we do in our church. In the end, we can be left bolting on one new strategy after another and ignoring legacy approaches that are still highly effective.

Your Church Should Be Sending More Emails

The industry’s average open rates for email for churches is 25.62%, and average rate that people will click on links in those emails is almost 8%. In fact, in a recent study it was found that as an industry, religious organizations have the highest open rates among dozens of tested industries. [ref] In a world where less than 1 in 100 people will see a post on Facebook that your church publishes, the fact that 1 in 4 people will open an email you send them starts to seem like a great opportunity!

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with email. In fact, if we’re honest most days we hate email. However, don’t allow your stress around managing your inbox drive assumptions about how your people think about receiving emails from your church. Well-crafted emails need to be at the core of your communications strategy. Regardless of how many emails your church sends on a regular basis, you need to increase the frequency.

Is your church leveraging chatbots to reach people? Are you leveraging a social media listening tool to understand the sentiment towards your church? What’s your Instagram story strategy to engage people in your community? Is your church ready for augmented reality and the impact that will have people attending your services?

STOP!

Too many church leaders are running too quickly to optimize the latest communication tools to reach people in their community while they are ignoring “low hanging” fruit with “old school” technologies with proven abilities to do the same. Before your church figures out the latest tool or trend, you need to make sure that you are leveraging existing channels.

In January, Facebook announced its latest changes to the news feed which means organizations like ours are going to see even less “organic” reach on that channel. In fact, many brands are reporting a 50% drop in traffic from the social media behemoth in just a matter of weeks. [ref] This underlines that no church communications strategy can be single source dependent but needs to employ a wide variety of channels to reach your people and your community.

3 Reasons Church Leaders Are Drawn to the Latest Communication Technologies

Shiny Object Syndrome // Too many of us are drawn towards the “latest” thing because it’s the latest thing. We hear some tech blogger talk about the latest whiz-bang service and we’re convinced that will solve our communication issues. The act of jumping from one shiny object to the next means that we don’t take time to dig deep and optimize any given channel.

FREE is in our Budget // Most of us are trying to figure out how to reach more people with little or no financial investment. Lots of digital marketing solutions start out using “free” as a marketing tactic to get businesses using their platforms, and we’re drawn to that pricing! Over time, these platforms end up charging for what they were giving away, which means, we need to move on.

We’re Aware Consumers // Lots of church leaders I know are actively engaged in the world around us. We spend time not just floating through life but are curious individuals. This is a great way to be! We see other organizations and businesses communicating with their communities and wonder what would happen if we applied those lessons to what we do in our church. In the end, we can be left bolting on one new strategy after another and ignoring legacy approaches that are still highly effective.

Your Church Should Be Sending More Emails

The industry’s average open rates for email for churches is 25.62%, and average rate that people will click on links in those emails is almost 8%. In fact, in a recent study it was found that as an industry, religious organizations have the highest open rates among dozens of tested industries. [ref] In a world where less than 1 in 100 people will see a post on Facebook that your church publishes, the fact that 1 in 4 people will open an email you send them starts to seem like a great opportunity!

Most of us have a love/hate relationship with email. In fact, if we’re honest most days we hate email. However, don’t allow your stress around managing your inbox drive assumptions about how your people think about receiving emails from your church. Well-crafted emails need to be at the core of your communications strategy. Regardless of how many emails your church sends on a regular basis, you need to increase the frequency.

Thank you so much for joining us for another great episode of the unSeminary podcast. I’m thrilled to be speaking with Matt Engel, a research fellow at Leadership Network and also works at Gloo, a technology company. Our talk today is all about data intelligence.

So what is data intelligence? We as ministry leaders are taught to steward well and have great intentions when it comes to measuring data. But we tend to measure the three B’s: butts, budgets, and baptisms, rather than measuring how people are engaging with our church. So how do we get better about the type of data we collect and how we are using it?

* Analyzing and quantifying data. // Matt realized that every week in his church the staff prayed for requests that came in, but no one could identify what they specifically prayed about in a quantitative way. So he and his staff team began to analyze the prayer requests that were submitted during a three-month period to see what people were concerned about. These requests were then divided into specific categories, and it allowed Matt and his team to see that the top prayer request was for marriage while the second was for health. They then repeated this exercise during another three-month period, from January to March, with the same process and measurements. The staff was surprised to see that the top prayer requests had changed. During that time most prayer requests were for finances. After doing some research, the staff also discovered that February, in their state, was one the highest months for divorce filings. So between analyzing prayer requests and doing research in the larger community, the staff was able to identify the top two concerns of their people with regards to relational health during this time were sex and finances.

* Act on results. // With this new information, Matt developed a plan to preach on stewardship and generosity in November, before the financial pressures of the holidays. When you want to get actionable insights, you need to develop a culture that is responsive to the results. Matt’s church wanted everyone to know that the reason finances were being addressed in November is because of the studies they did in the first quarter of the year. As a result, attendance grew and continued into the next year, plus they saw an improvement in people’s finances and a drop in requests for help in this area. Matt found when people in the church knew the results of surveys and understood what the church would do about them, it encouraged the people who didn’t respond to get their voices heard, and led the congregation into a path of action. When gathering data, explain why you’re doing it, share what you learn, and what your response will be to the results.

* Know and match. // At the end of the day if we’re going to be accountable to our people, we need to know them well. There’s a core process Matt talks about: connect, know, match, catalyze. First we connect with people and then we get to know them a bit. Next we need to match them with their next step according to what they need and catalyze them into whatever God’s calling them to do. Ask yourself: How as a ministry leader can I do a better job of knowing and matching my people? First we need to increase our ability to know, and to do that we need a level of infrastructure and rationale on how and why to collect that data.

* Fill the gap. // Matt now works at a tech company called Gloo, which helps you look at the individual growth of your church and then use technology to support community and facilitate relationships. We need face-to-face relationships, but there is a gap in that area. Gloo helps facilitate “know and match” so you will better be able to connect the people in your church to what they need and ultimately serve them better.

You can learn more about the Leadership Network at leadnet.