I recently read a Lifeway article written by my friend, PJ Dunn. It is a tongue in cheek piece offering 10 Ways to Scare Off Young Adults from your Church.
The premise of the article is that churches need to invest in technology and communication strategies if they are going to be effective in reaching young adults.
You'll notice he is a Churchteams fan, but I wanted to add a few thoughts of my own to continue the conversation he started with this article.
In the article, PJ mentions the value of Google Maps, Social Media, Live Stream and your Website to get people's attention. Churchteams can help you create a beautiful, easy-to update website in which you can embed your Live Stream. Then link the website to Google Maps and your Social Media.
Suggestion #4 is that churches create and align their signage and branding. Your branding logo, colors, and strategy can be implemented not only into your church website, but also on email and content page templates inside Churchteams.
Suggestions #5 and #6 go right to the heart of the value of church software for reaching young adults. Registrations help people commit to events and information that help them discover and grow in their relationship with God.
Workflows can be used to distribute content by email or text either in preparation for, or as follow up to any event or discipleship process. These tools help churches build depth and consistency and can be used in our website, texting, and App environments.
Suggestions #7 and #8 are about managing space and people. Last year we did a showcase of videos on how to recruit, schedule, and care for volunteers in Churchteams.
In these videos we show you how to use reports, groups, and notes to find and recruit people. You'll see the three different ways to use our Service Volunteers feature to schedule people for ministry. We'll also help you discover how software can help pastors help their people find their best place to serve and avoid burnout.
Finally, PJ encourages pastors to be authentic personally and clear about their vision. We developed Churchteams to help with outbound texting and email, but also to get feedback from every part of the ministry.
Group meeting report reminders make sure pastors know what's going on and how to pray for their frontline small groups and discipleship ministries. Reports can be saved and even scheduled to give feedback on everything from enrollment, attendance, giving, conversations, registrations, and anything else we have data on.
This feedback is crucial to accurately knowing the condition of the church. It provides the opportunity for leadership to be authentic about areas of improvement and clear about direction and measures that benchmark improvement.
Independent and denominational consultants like PJ (and so many other friends of ours) help churches better understand their current situation and envision a better future. We highly recommend every church take advantage of their expertise.
When you do, we'll be here to provide a technology solution for implementation and feedback.
