{"id":658,"date":"2010-12-10T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T06:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=658"},"modified":"2010-12-09T23:39:24","modified_gmt":"2010-12-09T23:39:24","slug":"guest_post_carey_nieuhof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/10\/guest_post_carey_nieuhof\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest post by Carey Nieuhof &#8211; Are You Actually Attracting Unchurched People?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Today\u2019s guest post comes from Carey Nieuhof, lead pastor at Connexus Church, with campuses in Barrie and Orillia, Ontario. Carey is one of Canada\u2019s sharpest Kingdom leaders, and in today\u2019s post he poses a question that I believe every church leader in Canada needs to wrestle with; \u2018Are we REALLY attracting unchurched people to our faith communities?\u2019 But Carey takes it one step further, by outlining the steps that they took at Connexus to come to terms with this vital question.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Read, and be challenged.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Carey Nieuhof's Blog\" href=\"http:\/\/careynieuwhof.com\/2010\/12\/are-you-actually-attracting-unchurched-people.html\" target=\"_blank\">Click here to visit Carey&#8217;s blog<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most church leaders says they want to reach unchurched people. So did we when \u00a0we started <a title=\"Connexus Church\" href=\"http:\/\/www.connexuscommunity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Connexus<\/a> three years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Saying it is one thing. \u00a0Living it is another. From the start, we  adopted an &#8220;invest and invite&#8221; strategy. \u00a0We encouraged followers of  Christ need to build authentic friendships with people in their  community, family and workplace. \u00a0We see our job as creating the kind of  environment they can invite their friends into. \u00a0We tell the people who  attend Connexus all the time that we designed the church with their  friends in mind and to please bring their unchurched friends to church.<\/p>\n<p>But we realized when we launched we created a dual system. \u00a0While  telling people to invite their friends we also had a &#8216;safety net&#8221; &#8211; we  advertised, inviting people with no relational connection to come to our  church as well (that&#8217;s what traditional advertising is &#8211; selling a  product to people with whom you have no relational connection).<\/p>\n<p>In 2009, we stopped the double talk. \u00a0We cut all forms of external advertising:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We canceled a very well listened to radio show featuring our messages.<\/li>\n<li>We stopped all flyer distribution to homes in neighbourhoods<\/li>\n<li>We decided to spend nothing on any form of external advertising.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We made it almost impossible for our church to grow unless the people who attended Connexus invited their friends.<\/p>\n<p>But how do you measure that? \u00a0The church could still be growing but it might all be transfer growth.<\/p>\n<p>So early in 2010, we completely redesigned our welcome card. \u00a0We  designed it to measure whether people had attended church before coming  to Connexus, asking them if they never attended church, rarely attended  church (1 or 2 times a year), attended monthly or weekly. \u00a0We also asked  them how they got to Connexus, giving three options: invited by a  friend, invited by a family member, and &#8216;other&#8217;. \u00a0(We didn&#8217;t know what  other would be, but we put it in anyway).<\/p>\n<p>People have to go to the Welcome Desk in our foyer to fill out a  card, and we in turn give them a gift basket with CDs, orientation  material and (yum) chocolate in it.<\/p>\n<p>We have had 285 families fill out a card to the end of October. \u00a0Here&#8217;s what we learned:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>85% of the people at our Barrie campus were invited by friend or family<\/li>\n<li>70% of the people at our Orillia campus were invited by friend or  family. (Orillia is a smaller city, so we wonder if word of mouth might  be the 30%)<\/li>\n<li>68% of our first time guests were not regular church goers (didn&#8217;t attend or attended less than once or twice a month)<\/li>\n<li>26% of people who were not weekly church attenders have become weekly attenders this year<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We&#8217;re still learning tons about how to figure this out, and we can  probably get a lot better at this, but here are some quick thoughts on  why the trends are encouraging:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cut the safety nets &#8211; make it hard for your church to grow unless people invite your friends.<\/li>\n<li>Give your regular attenders space to build a life. \u00a0We have almost  no mid-week programming. \u00a0We like families to build into each other and  into their neighbours, not be at church six nights a week.<\/li>\n<li>Program to your target. \u00a0That means potentially offending  Christians. \u00a0We play songs some churches wouldn&#8217;t play. \u00a0We even tatooed  people once on stage. \u00a0Christians left. \u00a0That wasn&#8217;t the goal, but it  can happen. \u00a0While a few Christians have left, \u00a0unchurched people came.<\/li>\n<li>Commit yourself to seeing life-change. \u00a0If you don&#8217;t see people  being baptized and moving into a growing relationship with Christ,  you&#8217;re missing the point. \u00a0It&#8217;s not attracting a crowd that&#8217;s the  mission &#8211; it&#8217;s leading people into actual life change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you want to see a cross section of some Connexus stories, check out the comments on the Connexus <a title=\"Connexus blog\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.connexuscommunity.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">blog<\/a> from November &#8211; December 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise&#8230;what do you think? \u00a0What have you seen as effective in  helping a church reach its mission? \u00a0What&#8217;s the potential downside you  see?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s guest post comes from Carey Nieuhof, lead pastor at Connexus Church, with campuses in Barrie and Orillia, Ontario. Carey is one of Canada\u2019s sharpest Kingdom leaders, and in today\u2019s post he poses a question that I believe every church leader in Canada needs to wrestle with; \u2018Are we REALLY attracting unchurched people to our&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4,7,8,12],"tags":[459,987,460,983,450,449,448,451,104,454,453,457,458,456,452,447,455],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-community","category-leadership","category-missional","category-tension","tag-actual-life-change","tag-church","tag-church-reach-its-mission","tag-community","tag-connexus","tag-family","tag-invest-and-invite","tag-invite-your-friends","tag-leaders","tag-neighbours","tag-no-mid-week-programming","tag-people-being-baptized","tag-relationship-with-christ","tag-seeing-life-change","tag-space-to-build-a-life","tag-unchurched-people","tag-unchurched-people-came"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}