The marketing is working. The demographic that Jesus has called you to reach is coming and checking out your church and seeing “what Jesus” is all about.
The praise and worship is to your guests liking. The children’s church is reaching kids. The youth are learning and professing their faith in Jesus. New people are joining and participating in small groups. The preaching style is comfortable to the people seeking to learn more about Jesus and people are receiving Christ and are being baptized.
(Side bar – It just drives me crazy when I hear church leaders bragging about how their church makes “sinners” nervous when “sinners” come to their church. Funny thing as I read the Gospel. “Sinners” sought Jesus and his forgiveness, while the Religious leaders nervously hid and plotted and schemed against Him and ultimately had Jesus crucified. Don’t know about you, but I don’t think I want to be part of the crowd that had Jesus crucified.)
Everything is seemingly in place, now what?
When success comes, customer service is more important than ever. As a church grows, it is easy to go to two extremes. One extreme is to concentrate on the established members of the church. The other extreme is to concentrate on the new guests of the church.
Retail stores battle this all the time. Concentrating on the tried and true customer while trying to concentrate on gaining new customers. It isn’t easy.
Have you ever gone to renew your cell phone plan expecting to get the deal you saw advertised during the SuperBowl only to find out that that plan is only offered to first time subscribers? The cell phone company is too concentrated on new customers.
Have you ever gone to buy a new car and thought you were going to receive an advertised rebate because you were trading in your SUV only to find out when you got to the dealership the rebate only applied if you were trading in an SUV from the same manufacturer you were now purchasing from? The car company is too concentrated on retaining old customers.
Tomorrow we’ll talk about what is easy and what is difficult.
