October 2-3 — COR Leadership Institute
Reaching new folks for JC will require change:
3 Questions for Consideration:
- Why do people need Jesus Christ?
- Why do people need the church?
- Why does anyone need our particular church?
Many congregations suffer from low self-esteem. Part of our job is to help congregations see what is remarkable about themselves. What’s special about your church? Help them believe in themselves.
Tips for preparing for visitors coming to your church:
- Look at facilities and ask how an unchurched person would see our facilities. Check signage, is the church warm and welcoming. Check the nursery for how it looks and smell. Send trustees around with cameras to take pictures of things that need to be improved.
- Information station and someone to take folks to the nursery.
Outreach:
- Pay attention. Leaders look at name tags and call folks by name.
- Giving away pocket new testaments to church members to give away.
- Conversations with an Atheist sermon series. Printed brochures given to church members hand out to others.
- Give your church folks tools to help invite their friends.
What happens when someone visits the church?
- Followup
- Personal note from sponsor and visit with gift on Monday following the visit. COR does coffee mugs. Today they have teams called “Methodist Muggers.”
- During the worship service right before the anthem have folks do the attendance notebooks and give time in the service for them to complete it.
- If you can call someone by name on their second visit, they will become a member.
- People coming to the church is about you caring enough for you to learn someone’s name.
- Home contacts after third visit. Adam invites himself over. Jesus as the example. People love to tell their stories, but no one wants to listen.
Adam became a UM not because he was raised that way. Went to ORU to be a pentecostal preacher. He discovered a world filled with gray and that there was more to faith than what was being sold in the Pentecostal church. He was converted to Methodism by reading the Book of Discipline in reading the historical and theological statements and the Social Principles. Methodists have a way of holding things together in the world. Both conservative and liberal, both grace and holiness, both evangelical and social.
Only Wonder Understands 
Adam linked all of your posts in his weekly e-mail to the congregation – 14,000 people. So don’t be surprised if you have a bit higher than usual number of hits on your blog over the next few days!
nice clif, why didn’t jay get linked when he called cor the “metho-mall?” haha! that was a classic moment during leadership institute back in ’06