Fusion

Turning First-Time Guests into Fully Engaged Members of Your Church

Jennifer Dykes Henson and Nelson Searcy

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493412235
• Topic: Theology & Religion

Fusion offers a step-by-step, biblically grounded, tested, and proven plan for establishing a relationship with newcomers that ultimately prompts them to become fully developing members of our churches. This innovative, practical guide is full of how-to information, testimonials, examples, and self-assessment tools. Engaging, informative, and immediately applicable, here is help for setting newcomers on the path toward true life transformation and spiritual maturity.

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The Power of Assimilation

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.

W. Edwards Deming

Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things.

Jesus (Matt. 25:21 NIV)

How do you feel about thank-you cards? Are you one of those people who sends them for everything? For Christmas gifts and casual lunches? Or do you reserve the gesture for truly special or unexpected courtesies? My wife, Kelley, and I come down on different sides of this issue. She grew up in a family where thank-you cards were a way of life. She couldn’t wait to get started on them after our honeymoon. When baby shower time came, she was on a thank-you card mission. Of course, I was completely on board with getting these done quickly, but the idea of sending thank-you cards for birthday gifts was a little foreign to me. While I still say there’s a fine line between graciousness and overkill, I have come to understand that receiving a gift always demands some form of reciprocity. I’ve also begun to realize that my response—or lack of response—to a gift speaks volumes to the giver.

During my years of ministry, I have messed this up more times than I care to admit. My slips have taught me that failing to say thank you to the right people at the right time leads to embarrassment. I’m sure you know what I mean. Has anyone ever given you a gift and you just never got around to saying a proper thank-you? After a few weeks or months, didn’t it hit the point where you were embarrassed to acknowledge your innocent inaction and found yourself avoiding that person—and an uncomfortable situation—altogether?

Not long ago, a couple in our church gave me a great, unexpected gift. They were not members and hadn’t been around very long. I wasn’t sure of their last name or where they lived, and the card they included with the gift didn’t help me out at all. Without their last name, I couldn’t track down an address to thank them properly. At first, I found myself looking out for them on Sundays so I could thank them personally, but I never seemed to catch them. The more time that passed, the more embarrassed I got. After about a month, I began hoping I wouldn’t run into them and wondering what they thought of my apparent rudeness. We’ve all been there, right?

Here’s another truth I’ve discovered: what you do with a gift you’ve been given speaks volumes about your level of appreciation. You may say thank you to the giver or even send a nice note, but what happens to the gift itself? Do you toss it, still in the box, to the corner of your room where it collects dust until it becomes useless? Or do you examine it thoughtfully, cut off the tags, and integrate it into your life? Actions always speak louder than words. How you respond when you’ve been given a gift—and what you do with the gift itself—proves just how much you really appreciate it.

So, have you been given any gifts lately?

Let me ask the question another way: Did you have any first-time guests at your church last week? How many guests have you had in the last month? Over the last year? Each of those guests was a gift from God to you. How did you receive them? Did your response show the Giver your appreciation? Did you handle those gifts in the way they deserved by having a plan in place to integrate them into the life of your church? Or did you just say a quick thank-you and move on? Maybe you would have liked to do more to show your thanks, but you weren’t sure of the best approach. Like me with my mystery givers, you may have wanted to respond with more excitement, but you didn’t know how.

God gives you and me the gifts we call first-time guests freely—and strategically. He expects us to handle what we’ve been given with similar strategic care. First-time guests are full of unparalleled potential. As God brings them through our front doors, our prayerfully planned reciprocation can result in changed lives for the kingdom. God has set up the perfect win-win scenario. He is bringing us the new faces. Our responsibility is to show our gratitude and commitment by doing our part to turn those new faces into new fully developing members.

Why Assimilate?

Assimilation leads to life transformation by giving people the means and opportunity to become maturing followers of Christ. In broad terms, assimilation can be defined as the process used to encourage your first-time guests to continue coming back until they see and understand God’s power, accept Jesus as their Savior, and commit themselves to the local church through membership.

As you think about the power of assimilation, consider Paul’s example. Paul’s heart cry for the Galatians was that Christ would be fully formed in their lives. Everything he did for them and all of his exhortation was with that one purpose in mind. He wanted them to be unhindered in their quest to know Jesus and follow him closely.

Do you have the same passion for your church? For your community? Isn’t that why you went into ministry in the first place? When God called you to serve him, did he call you to maintain the status quo, or did he call you to see that Christ would be truly revealed and reflected through the lives of those he would entrust to your care?

At The Journey, the crux of assimilation is also the heart of our overall mission: to give people the best possible opportunity to become fully developing followers of Jesus Christ. We know, as I’m sure you do, that the majority of people who visit a church do not come to faith in Christ on their first visit—or their second or third. Instead, continued interaction with God’s people, teaching from the Bible, and involvement in volunteer opportunities all work together to open unchurched hearts to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Encouraging people to stick around our churches is not about making our auditoriums look full and our numbers impressive; it’s about leading them to faith in Jesus, through the Spirit’s prompting. Putting a strong, strategic assimilation system in place is the best way to ensure that our newcomers will stay with us long enough to respond to Christ’s pull. (To see an outline of The Journey’s assimilation process, turn to appendix A. For a downloadable version, visit www.FusionBook.com.)

A Numbers Game

I’m sure you know how the critics think: To those of us who advocate healthy, growing churches, it’s all about the numbers, right? Well, the critics are right to an extent: we do care about numbers. Why? Because every number represents a life. In a properly facilitated assimilation system, the number of new members you have is a reflection of the number of new lives in your church that belong to Christ. Your regular attenders represent people in the process of becoming fully developing followers of Jesus. Your guest count gauges the effectiveness of your evangelism and outreach. When grounded in the right perspective, numbers are an indication of life change. They are a testimony that God is at work. But anyone who looks at numbers with a competitive spirit or who wants to grow a church for growth’s sake alone, without life change being the driving force, is not truly in alignment with the heart of the Great Commission.

Not one person who comes through your doors comes haphazardly. By sending a guest to you, God is giving you the privilege of cooperating with him to move someone forward in his or her journey toward Jesus. When you have a clear plan in place to make your guest feel welcome, to encourage the person to return as a second-time guest, to keep that individual coming as a regular attender, to see the person accept Jesus and to decide to commit to your church through membership, then do you get to include that person in your number count? Well, only as a by-product. More important, you get to rejoice over another person saying yes to God’s will for his or her life. You get to glorify God with another person who came to you unchurched and now wants to commit to the local fellowship. It’s never about numbers for numbers’ sake—it’s about the people the numbers represent.

Context: Crowd to Congregation

The Circles of Commitment were conceptualized by Rick Warren to define the progressive levels a person moves through as he or she becomes committed to the local church. In The Purpose-Driven Church: Growth without Compromising Your Message and Mission, Warren contends that the goal of a living, growing church is “to move people from the outer circle (low commitment/low spiritual maturity) to the inner circle (high commitment/high spiritual maturity).”1

The assimilation system detailed in the following pages builds the bridge for people ...