Epic!  How Stetson Baptist helped people invite people back to worship

Sometimes we hear about really creative ways churches are using our software for ministry.  I've shared a few before, but I need to do it more. 

In fact, from now on, anytime you see Epic! in the subject line, you'll know it's an interview or a story from a user.

This one is from Stetson Baptist Church in Deland, FL where Dan Glenn is the Sr. Pastor.  Dan wanted to do a series on "The Power of Routine" to help his church establish some essential habits for spiritual growth.

He and his Admin Pastor, Brad Gwartney (CT FB Top Contributor), started talking about how to add follow up interaction to the sermon series.  The series started last week (as of this interview) with a message on establishing the Routine of Worship Attendance.

You're obviously preaching to the choir on this subject, so Dan asked his congregation to think about someone they know who used to attend church but doesn't.  Then he asks them to invite the person they thought of to attend.  Here is a 2 minute segment of him telling the  congregation how to do that using Text-to-Chat.

Behind the scenes, he and Brad had a few other goals:  1) Get people involved including volunteers, 2) Pray for people, 3) Get people comfortable using Text-to-Church.

Here are the results:

1. 120 out of 600 people responded by texting first and last name or initial to their church office number.  That's 20%!
2. Brad used Text History to copy the names texted as well as names associated with phone numbers and pasted them into a spreadsheet for staff to pray over.
3. One volunteer responded back to the chat messages from within Churchteams, on her keyboard, from home.  She loved it!  Live chat, not bot.  Got a volunteer involved.

Next week they are moving on to the second Routine in the series - Bible Reading.  Here's the plan using a registration, Text-to-Church, text templates, and a workflow.

• Text BIBLE to register.
• Get a text with a link to the 7 day YouVersion Bible Reading Plan.
• Day 6 - Get a text, "Almost finished, see you tomorrow."
• Day 7 - Get a text, "You finished the plan, here's a link to keep going."

By now, you get the idea. 

Here are the rest of the topics in The Power of Routine series.  We'll circle back with Dan and Brad when the series is over to see what they learned.  What would you do to interact with people on these topics? 

• Pray every day
• Fast regularly
• Give generously
• Share your faith
• Practice community

Finally, Brad mentioned that it did cost them a little money on texts, but that was not even a consideration.  And it shouldn't have been.  Here's my math.

If their volunteer sent out 200 texts total, that's well under the 500 allotted, but even if those were used up, that would have been a total of $4.00 for week one.

If 200 people sign up to read the Bible for 7 days and they each get 3 texts that week, that will cost $12.  

Pretty good ROI, don't you think?

If you have other creative ways you've used Churchteams, email support@churchteams.com and share in a couple of sentences the problem and how the software helped solve it.  This would be a great opportunity for your church to bless other churches!