Category Archives: Marketing & church growth

The right thing to do

I missed the phone call, but I got the message: “Hi, this is Dr. ——, and I’m just calling to se how you’re doing….” It was the periodontist. He said that if I had any problems, I could call him at a phone number that I knew was not his office number (it was a different area code); perhaps a cell phone or home phone. It was not a mechanical or rote phone call; he sounded genuinely concerned, and if I was having problems this evening (I’m not, everything is fine) I would have had not hesitation in calling him.

Did I feel good about that call? You bet. The two hours I had spent in his office that morning had not been exactly pleasant. It was very nice to get a phone call tacitly acknowledging the unpleasantness. It’s tempting to say that it’s “good customer service,” but I’m not a customer, I’m a patient who had some minor outpatient surgery. So let’s say that the phone call was the right thing to do.

It occurs to me that much of what I tend to call “church marketing” isn’t marketing at all; it’s just the right thing to do. Of course you write a handwritten note to someone who signs the church guest book; it’s the right thing to do. Of course you welcome any all visitors to your church, treating them like honored guests; it’s the right thing to do. You don’t do it to grow your church, you just do it.

Classic church growth methodologies (that don’t work)

An earlier post on Carl George’s church growth books: Link

This past week, I was leafing through Carl George’s book Prepare Your Church for the Future. I was particularly struck by some of the things George says in the second chapter of this book, a chapter titled “Tally What You Inherited.” George claims that every church “embodies growth strategies that can be both identified and analyzed.” Then he proceeds to list sixteen different of the most common church growth methodologies. To my mind, four of these methodologies are of particular relevance to Unitarian Universalist congregations. These four existing and common growth methodologies are Sunday school, feeder and receptor patterns, next-door-to-the-right-institution syndrome, and capture by committee involvement.

Below you’ll find my brief notes on these four popular Unitarian Universalist growth strategies. Unfortunately, as I’ll detail below, these have not been effective growth strategies for us. We have also managed to screw up so-called Small Group Ministry, a growth strategy based on Carl George’s work, and I have some thoughts on that as well. But first, four classic growth methodologies that don’t serve us very well….

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The coming revolution

I’ve been rereading Carl George’s book The Coming Church Revolution: Empowering Leaders for the Future. Carl George is a church consultant, and he is the most prominent advocate of so-called “Meta-Church,” a church organized primarily around small groups. The Coming Church Revolution is one of the books that inspired the “Small Group Ministry” movement within Unitarian Universalism.

I decided to re-read George’s book because I noticed that current Unitarian Universalist approaches to growth through the formation of small “cell groups” are simply not working. For example, the most recent issue of Interconnections, the newsletter for lay leaders published by the Unitarian Universalist Association, makes the following statement: “First Unitarian Society in Newton, MA (385 members), may have one of the best Small Group Ministry (SGM) programs around. The program began in 2001 with ninety people in nine groups. Today there are seventy-two members in eight groups.” [Link] In other words, the best small group ministry program within Unitarian Universalism is losing members, not gaining members for the congregation.

Opening George’s book at random, I happened to find myself in the middle of the chapter on worship. At this point, those accustomed to Unitarian Universalist Small Group Ministry programs are probably asking themselves what does SGM have to do with worship? Unitarian Universalists are accustomed to think of SGM as another church program, but George makes it clear that Meta-Church is not another program you add to your congregation, it is instead a different organizational model, a different way of organizing and empowering leaders in your congregation.

In the context of his overarching organizational model, George sees worship as an artistic celebration that can involve many lay people in the congregation. The Meta-Church model of organization is scaleable, that is, it can be scaled up from small churches like ours here in New Bedford, to very large (over ten thousand members) churches. Therefore, George believes that worship should involve more than just the preacher — indeed, while he respects preaching and believes it is central to worship, he also believes that preaching is not always necessary for successful worship: “I’m not preaching against preaching. I’m not even questioning the legitimacy of long sermons…. Rather, I’m affirming that there are times when… God’s message is communicated as effectively — or perhaps more effectively — by elements of the service other than preaching.” [p. 145] At the same time, Gerore asserts that his Meta-Church organizational model is “transparent to worship style” — Meta-Church will work with any worship style.

But the Meta-Church organizational model insists on empowering lots of lay people to participate in worship services, through developing the skills of lay people, bringing those artistic skills to worship services, and also out into the community. So there are Guilds in which artistic skills are cultivated and developed — guilds might include group music lessons (e.g., some choir rehearsals), a conservatory for vocal music, an acting academy, etc. Then as people develop skill and talent, they are organized into troupes — troupes might include an a capella choir, a handbell choir, a liturgical dance troupe, a sound team or video production team, etc. These troupes perform at worship services, and also out in the community (e.g., a Christmas concert at a local mall).

One of George’s most interesting bits of advice relating to empowering lay leaders seems counter-intuitive at first. When hiring staff, he does not necessarily recommend hiring staff people who are good performers themselves. Rather, he urges churches to hire producers: “Don’t hire any more music directors; you can usually get volunteer artists to do that for free. Hire worship-service and pageant producers and make sure they have an impressario flair about them; that is, do they know how to create a solid, flowing sense of worship that is put together and produced by various worship groups?” I don’t mean to anger the Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network (UUMN), but I think George is right, while the UUMN is heading in the wrong direction — we don’t need more paid musicians, nor do we need more paid music directors, but we do need producers who can facilitate and empower lay people to succeed in worship.

Of course, by now you’ve figured out some obvious things. Lay worship leaders are supported and trained by paid staff, and lay worship leaders have an outward-directed ministry that makes them feel great. Troupes of lay worship leaders can function as support groups, and troupes can draw new people into a congregation. In fact, these troupes probably do a better job of supporting individuals and promoting growth, than do the small groups of typical SGM programs. It’s an old truism that if you want to grow your church, one sure bet is to have a great choir — because great choirs make people want to come to church, great choirs attract newcomers who want to sing in the choir, and the members of great choirs provide excellent support to one another.

So there you have my thoughts after re-reading just one chapter of The Coming Church Revolution. I’d be curious to know what you think about this….

Delightedly annoyed (again)

The mail dropped through the slot in the door. Mr. Crankypants picked up the newest issue of UU World, the denominational magazine and mouthpiece, and opened it expecting to be delighted. UU World almost always has at least one article that annoys Mr. Crankypants, who delights in getting annoyed. And he was delightedly annoyed once again.

The first annoying article that caught his eye was titled “Not My Father’s Religion: Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class” by Doug Muder. (There may be other annoying articles in this issue, but Mr. C. is taking so much delight in being annoyed at this one that he hasn’t read any further.) Muder started off with one of Mr. Crankypants’s favorite critiques of Unitarian Universalism:– that we don’t welcome working class people. How true! But, annoyingly (delightfully annoyingly), Doug Muder places the blame on theology. Theology is a nice thing to write about, but to do so ignores a whole host of other, more than sufficient, reasons why working class people avoid Unitarian Universalist congregations like the plague.

What’s that you say? What are those other reasons?

You could start with social snobbery. Take, for an example, something Mr. Crankypants saw with his own eyes. The new Unitarian Universalist was talking with some long-time members at social hour one Sunday. The long-time members were talking about what their fathers did for work — lawyer, doctor, university professor, other professional high-status jobs. Wanting to include the newcomer, one of the long-time members turned to him and asked, “What does your father do for a living?” The newcomer replied, “He’s a janitor.” The conversation died abruptly and everyone drifted away from the newcomer. That newcomer lasted less than a year as a Unitarian Universalist.

You could add geography, demographics, and congregational lust for money. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, many Unitarian Universalist congregations decided to move their church buildings out of the downtown and into the suburbs. Mr. Crankypants has heard an apocryphal story that in January, 1953, the Board of Trustees of one Unitarian congregation was discussing selling its downtown building in order to move out to the suburbs. The minutes of that meeting supposedly record that the Board chair asked, “Why not go where the money is?” To which the minister (whose salary was dependent on contributions) replied, “Yes, why not?”

You could add the Unitarian Universalist obsession with college education, coupled with little support for helping people get a college education. In our snobbier congregations, one is simply assumed to have a college degree (preferably from a “good” college). But don’t bother to ask your typical Unitarian Universalist congregation for a scholarship, for tutoring, for moral support, or for any other help while you’re in college. They only want to see you when you get out of college, are married and in your thirties with children and a job. (Oh, and be warned:– if you want to be a non-traditional student, and finally go to college when you are middle-aged, expect even less support.)

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Wait, what does this church stand for?…

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This year’s theme at the annual religious education conference is how to spread the word about Unitarian Universalism. Which raises the interesting question — how do you tell a visitor to your church what “Unitarian Universalism” means, anyway? I interview Peter Newport, one of the ministers at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Unitarian Universalist church, and I ask him that very question.

Not to kill the suspense, but we don’t come up with an answer…. (1:24)

Screen grab from the video showing two middle aged white guys laughing.

Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.

Audio postcards

At this year’s General Assembly, an NPR reporter named Krissa Palmer volunteered with the Web staff, and produced a series of “audio postcards.” Much more interesting than the usual podcast fare. Worth listening to, and thinking about, as you plan ways to promote your own local congregation — which is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Link.

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How big is our church?

It’s notoriously difficult to accurately measure how big a church is.

Official membership may be defined differently from one church to the next, thus not allowing accurate comparisons; criteria for what constitutes a member or standards for membership may vary widely not just from church to church, but over time within the same church; and membership can be affected by outside factors such as denominational dues being pegged to membership (which tends to lower the number of members counted). I believe official membership has an unacceptably high margin of error, perhaps as high as 50%, and so I tend to discount it as a useable metric.

Other measurements have been devised, and the most common in mainline and liberal Protestant congregations is “active membership.” Active membership is determined by counting the total number of people present in the building during weekend worship services each week, and taking the yearly average. Margin of error is usually under 10%, as long as records are taken every week. However, active membership does not count other people who might be active in the congregation, e.g., people who are active with the Women’s Alliance but who do not come to worship services regularly.

Given the often gross inaccuracies of these two methods of determining congregation size, my feeling is that we need additional metrics. Since congregational size is such a slippery concept, I suspect it is best determined by using several different metrics together.

One obvious additional metric might be to determine the number of volunteer hours people contribute to the congregation. This would take into account all the people who seem to feel that the church’s mission and goals are important enough that they are willing to devote their precious volunteer hours to the church — and it would include those who may not come to the worship service. It will be difficult to accurately measure volunteer hours, and the best we could hope for is an approximate measurement. However, it should be possible to come up with some basic techniques to make a reasonable estimate of volunteer hours, e.g., determining the number of people who volunteered in any capacity during the year, and estimating the average number of hours per volunteer. Even counting the number of volunteers alone would provide useful information.

Another obvious metric for determining church size is obvious:– determine the size and sources of operating budget. The size of the operating budget should tell us the potential impact the church could have on its members and on the wider community. We would also need to know the sources of the operating budget, broken down into member contributions, endowment income, rental income, and grants — a smaller percentage of operating budget coming from member income would most likely indicate low member commitment and/or fewer members.

One or two additional metrics would be very useful for those of us who want to take organizational development and growth seriously. It’s too easy to say, “Oh, there’s just such a good feeling around this church so we must be growing.” Good feelings are important, but in my experience there is not a strong correlation between good feelings and growth — good feelings may (or may not) be a necessary precondition for growth, but in most cases good feelings do not lead to or cause growth.

The perfect church Web site

I’m still searching for the perfect church Web site.

The perfect church Web site would have to have a lot of things going for it. It would allow committee chairs, staff, and others to directly add content to their pages on the Web site without going through the Webmaster; it would allow several levels of password protection including pages that can only be viewed by members; it would allow online payment of pledges, and online registration for events; it would support an online calendar of events; it would support a forum for congregational conversation; it would integrate staff blogs; it would allow easy posting of news; it would be inexpensive or free; it would be easy to navigate; it would be easy to maintain.

I spent today investigating Drupal, a free (and open-source) content management system. Drupal meets every single one of the criteria above — except the last two. It is not easy to maintain, and it’s easy to give it a bad navigation system. For example, it looks like it’s a pain in the neck to upgrade the software when security patches are released — and as for the navigation, you’ll have to invent it totally on your own. If you wanted your church administrator to maintain a Drupal-based site, you would have to send him or her to a substantial class in Drupal — and, outside of a few major metropolitan areas, where are you going to find such a class?

There’s a smaller subset of Drupal called Civic Space, which was developed in 2005 to support the Howard Dean presidential campaign. It’s now available for non-profits either as a free program, or a for-pay program with lots of technical support. However, it doesn’t look like it’s quite the right thing for a church Web site.

What I’d like to see is some Unitarian Universalist geeks commit themselves to maintaining a subset of Drupal (or similar content management system) for use by Unitarian Universalist congregations. This group of dedicated geeks would volunteer to be on-call via email for technical support (just as I make myself available to support a couple of WordPress blogging sites), and they would also come up with a basic installation of Drupal preconfigured with permission levels, basic navigation, etc. I’d say I’d take this on myself, except that it looks like the Drupal learning curve is pretty steep and I’d need a year (and training in PHP and CSS) to get to the point where I could do this. But maybe there’s some geeks out there who already have the knowledge?…

Just thinking out loud

We had a meeting of the Ballou Channing District Board at First Unitarian in New Bedford tonight.

“Hey,” said Don, one of the board members, “I was looking for directions on how to drive here, and I found your Web site. I like your Web site.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’ve been working on the church Web site for some time and….”

“No, actually I found your Web site first,” said Don. “When you type ‘new bedford uu’ into Google, your personal Web site comes up first.”

“Oh,” I said. “My Web site comes up before the church Web site?”

“Yep,” said Don. “Oh, and I liked your church’s Web site, too.”

Hmm… my Web site isn’t supposed to come up before the church’s Web site. Unless maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way. Yesterday’s New York Times Magazine has an article about how today’s pop musicians and singer-songwriters are building audiences with blogs and Web sites: “…this is a trend that is catalyzing the B-list, the new, under-the-radar acts that have always built their successes fan by fan.” Am I supposed to be marketing myself (and the church) the way the singer-songwriters are marketing themselves?

On the one hand, there is no doubt that Unitarian Universalism is a B-list religion and that Unitarian Universalist congregations don’t have the resources to mount massive media campaigns. On the other hand, I don’t think we can use the same online marketing techniques as the B-list singer-songwriters — creating a MySpace site, writing blogs, answering email, and then finding out which cities have enough fans to warrant staging a concert there. And I have to say I am a little surprised and uneasy that my personal Web site sometimes comes up on search engines before our church Web site — this blog is supposed to be a hobby for me, and I’m not sure I want it to become part of my job. I’m not quite sure what I think about all this. What do you think?