The Widest Funnel

On Sunday morning I talked about the first two areas of focus for our church: weekend worship experience and ministry with students.

(If you want to hear the sermon, click here.)

I want to expand some on my beliefs about weekend worship experience and why I placed it at the top of the list.

The reasons I gave on Sunday morning included:

1. Worship is the largest entry point for new people into the church
2. Worship is the largest gathering of the church body during the week
3. Worship is a critical time for us to make a great first impression

I want to spend a little time expanding on the first point.

When a person from our community (Wichita Falls) who has no previous connection with our church decides to find out what we are about, they will likely do two things: first, they will check out our website or phone book ad to find out what time worship begins; and second, they will come to worship at the time stated either on the website or the phone book ad.

Worship is a large funnel for new people into our congregation because there is a certain level of anonymity that comes along with joining with a large group of people. Most people looking to connect with God within a local church will begin with a weekend worship experience before trying any gathering smaller than that.

Granted, some people come into the life of the church through an outside group that meets in our building (i.e. Scouts, Bridge Club, etc.) OR through a Sunday School class OR through our Wednesday night Cornerstone Cafe, but those are only a very small percentage of new entrants. The largest percentage still comes through worship on Sunday morning.

Therefore, our weekend worship experience must continually be passionate, innovative, and relevant in order to give new guests the best opportunity to see who we are and what we, as a community of faith, are all about. We also need to make sure that we have good systems in place to follow-up with guests that come to worship and leave us contact information. This lets them know that we care that they worshiped with us and that we want them to continue explore a life of faith here with us.

P.S.
If you are interested in reading more about the future of the musical aspects of our worship service, read this article and let me know what you think.