5 Common Core Issues in Churches (Part 3)
Two common issues in churches tend to show up together, even though at first glance they don’t feel related at all: first engagement steps and physical capacity.
On the surface, they sound like two completely different problems. But in reality, they’re way more connected than most leaders realize. You can’t grow sustainably if you’re not engaging people well, and you can’t engage people well if you don’t have the space to serve them.
These are two of the most common barriers we see, and the good news is that these have proven solutions.
We’re wrapping up our series on 5 Common Core Issues in Churches by talking about revitalizing your playbook for first engagement steps, what to do when you’re bumping up against your capacity limits, and thinking strategically to support health and growth in these areas.
You can't grow sustainably if you're not engaging people well, and you can't engage people well if you don't have the space to serve them. [episode 436] #unstuckchurch Share on X Their prior first step used to be more educational, and now their first step is much more relational. [episode 436] #unstuckchurch Share on X What's a healthy way to think about the issue of running out of space? It's get ahead of it. Don't let growth surprise you and put you behind the eight ball if possible. [episode 436] #unstuckchurch Share on X Understand when you will hit your ceilings or lids before you hit them. [episode 436] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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More Episodes in this Series
The Strategy Issues – Episode 434
The Leadership Bench Issues – Episode 435
Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. We are in the final stretch of our series of the five most common core issues we see across, more than the 750 churches that we’ve served now. And so far in this series, we’ve talked about getting clear on how you’re actually reaching your mission field, building financial health that lasts, and what it looks like when a church just can’t seem to develop a leadership bench. Today, we’re wrapping up things with two issues that tend to show up together, even though at first glance, they don’t really feel related at all. So we’re talking today about first engagement steps and also physical capacity, space capacity. So, Amy, on the surface, these sound like two totally different things, but in real churches, they’re way more connected than most leaders realize, right?
Amy:
Absolutely. You know, you can’t grow sustainably if you’re not engaging people well, and you can’t engage people well if you don’t have the space to serve them. And again, these are two of the most common barriers we see. And the good news, just like the other challenges in this series, is these have some proven solutions. So you are not the first church to navigate this.
Sean:
Right. Before we get into today’s topic though, let’s stop and say thanks to our podcast sponsored Planning Center. Planning Center is an all-in-one church management software that’s really built to help churches simplify administration, so they can actually focus more on people. You can easily track first time guests, you can schedule volunteers, you can manage check-ins, create event signups, and even accept online giving all in one place. Planning Center really helps you better nurture your community, reduces your stress as a leader, and then keeps everyone on your team engaged so you can learn more about Planning Center and even start for free at planningcenter.com.
Well, let’s start this conversation by talking about first steps, kind of those early engagement steps. What we’re seeing pretty consistently is that churches are just kind of struggling to create engagement steps that people actually want to engage in, which probably tells us something right there, right? In a lot of cases, what we’re offering to people just isn’t compelling enough to compete for their time in other areas. So, Amy, are you seeing that too in the churches that you’re working with?
Amy:
Yeah and you know, this is a subject, Sean, you and me, we talked about this a lot last year, so I’m guessing at least the churches connected with our Unstuck tribe have started to pay more attention to this, but there are still so many churches out there where this is just not on their radar. For a lot of churches, people are showing up on Sundays. So I would guess the churches feel like they’re winning, right? To a lead pastor, when the seats are filling up, it feels like their ministry is healthy and it’s growing, but so many of these people are not moving beyond that gathering because churches don’t have a compelling pathway to move them from new attender to engaged participant. And, Sean, I think this is even harder these days because coming outta the pandemic, people’s behaviors changed. Right? They got much more selective with time.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
They got much more comfortable with digital or anonymous participation. And of course, there’s been a decline in the trust with institutions, including churches, which means it’s probably taking people more time to get comfortable with becoming known. And, but what we know to be true as well is that it’s also just not enough to, for people to simply attend church, that’s a win for sure at the beginning, but we know we need to create intentional next steps towards connection and towards spiritual growth. So as church leaders, I think it’s easy to assume that discipleship and engagement systems that they’re working, but how many of us actually stop and evaluate if people are moving through them or not?
Sean:
That’s a great question. So what would you encourage churches to do if they want to evaluate their current processes on discipleship and engagement?
Amy:
Well, first just identify and name your current path to engagement at the church. Get clarity, make sure everyone has the same idea on what steps you are hoping people will take beyond the weekend service. In other words, define your current strategy, map it out. And then of course, leverage data and assess if those first steps are working. For clarity, I think it’s a good exercise to map out the full path of engagement, but the first steps of engagement is really what we’re focusing on today. And if your current engagement strategy has things only like groups serve, give, be a member, you might learn that we’re actually missing this first step and it’s a major step.
But back to my point, when you evaluate how well your current strategy is working, I think too many churches can kind of rely on their gut or they don’t feel the need to question it if it’s working. You know, healthy churches, they leverage data to access if it’s working. And as we say all the time, hope is not a strategy. But I think Sean, some leaders resist doing this because it’s just this feeling of this is how we’ve always done it. So dig in. That’s what we need you to do. Dig in and let the data say what it’s gonna say, and you might discover that your strategy is working. And you may discover that your current first step strategy isn’t, and again, you’re not alone. A lot of churches are using engagement strategies that worked in 2005, but they don’t work now. And there may be exceptions to that, right? But here’s what I see that used to work that isn’t working so well now: connect cards, connect cards on the back of the seat, like I just said, this might have worked sub 2005, but people are not quick to wanna give you their information these days. It might be a step in the process where they fill out a connect card, but it is rarely an effective first step.
Sean:
Amy. I think there’s a lot of fatigue around filling things out. Completing surveys, sharing your information, everyone out there. Of course, you mentioned 2005, what’s so different now from then is everything’s digital. Everyone wants my feedback on something, wants my information for something and very little, very, very little of those people are actually providing some value for my information, so I think part of that is just fatigue with sharing information and filling out forms.
Amy:
How about the survey that they say, you know, how did you like it? And you give ’em a score and then it opens up into like a 99-question survey.
Sean:
Yes.
Amy:
Don’t do that.
Sean:
Not enjoyable.
Amy:
Sean, how about starting point, right? When North Point launched this strategy, I think it was in the late nineties, it had remarkable success. Many churches saw what they were doing and they started their own version of that. North Point was always so kind to share what they were doing and what was working. And it was a great first step back then. But today I am just not seeing many churches get traction on eight weeks small groups, you know, as a starting point. Or a multi-hour long classroom experience or a multi-week commitment type of thing. And lastly, the old strategy of having the bulletin lead with become a member, join a group, sign up to serve, today, those are way too big of steps for people who are new to church and faith.
Sean:
Amy, I could just envision somebody’s listening right now, and they may be thinking, well, that is working at my church. The eight week classroom experience is working in our church. We’d love to hear from you. We would love to know that. So sean@theunstuckgroup.com, SEAN, at the unstuck group dot com. We’d love to hear your story if that is working, but by far the common theme that we see is those environments aren’t working for people anymore. So, Amy, if that old kind of playbook isn’t working, what should churches be doing differently from your perspective with their first engagement steps?
Amy:
I think once you map out your current engagement process from new attender to becoming known, and frankly the remaining bigger steps that come after that and after you pull your data on how many people are taking those steps, then the next would be to evaluate the health of each step, right? What is the data telling you? What steps are working? What steps are lagging? And maybe there are some that are thriving, and if they are, try to understand why they’re working so well. Well, once you’ve taken the shot at evaluating how many people are taking this first step, if you’re really happy with the results, I would say just further the conversation to say, why is it working so well? But if the data is telling you that there are not enough people taking that first step, then you know, this is an area you need to get better at.
So if that is you, and I’m gonna share a couple success stories here after I talk through this, but the big headline is reinvent it, run an experiment, right? Get a team together, brainstorm, a long list of new ways you could approach that first step. And then just pick one. Pick one. Because you’ll learn something no matter what you do. Run it for, I would say three to six months. Run a three to six month experiment to see if you can get some traction. And I say that because it takes people a while, to take a new, you know, to accept a new behavior. So at our church, they have just, they’re experimenting in this area now. So as an attender, I’ve only heard about it for two weeks, but the more I hear about it, then the more courage I’m gonna get to go and take–you know, if I weren’t the pastor’s wife–go take the first step. And this is exactly, I wanna share a couple stories.
This is exactly what Sarah Gower and her team did. Sarah is a part of our executive pastor cohort, and I reached out to that group just to hear what experiments they’re running. I got many responses back, but here’s what Sarah shared. She said they implemented something called First Step, and it’s a hosted 10 minute conversation after every service. It should sound familiar because they borrowed the idea from Orchard Church that we talked about so frequently last year, but they made it their own. So a 10 minute hosted conversation after every service, they decided to hold it in their auditorium, and what they’re learning is that people like, they like the feel of staying in that room. They’re already warmed up to that environment. So it’s a very safe space to hang out a little bit longer.
Sean:
That’s good.
Amy:
And then she said having a group of volunteers there to help host is a key to the success and actually moving people to take their next step. So it’s not just Sarah or not just a staff member hosting this, but they’ve got a whole host team that comes to it. And then, they will present about a five to seven minute presentation about the church. And then the rest of the time is just volunteer sitting down next to people, making conversations and talking about the next steps they can take. So they offer three next steps. They say people can try a group, which is a big step. People can try a serving team, which is a big step. Or they say, or just come back to church, which is that doable small step until they get more comfortable.
Sean:
That’s great.
Amy:
And then Sarah said, for those who select, come back to church, then the campus pastor invites them to a 45 minute like cup of coffee with a campus pastor just to get to know people better. And she said, this has been, this part’s been really effective in just providing another smaller step for those who aren’t ready to jump into a group or serving team.
Sean:
I love that.
Amy:
So in obviously multisite church, so she said so far attendance at first step has been a little bit lower than they expected, but they’ve also been doing the math. And she said, if only one person showed up at each service with 24 services across six campuses each weekend, then we are connect. Like that’s the lowest, you know, they could achieve.
Sean:
Sure.
Amy:
Then we’re connecting 24 people per week into a next step that’s 96 per month. And that’s 1,150 per year, which is, again, if that’s just the bare minimum, those results would be triple than what they were seeing with their previous new here event. Okay.
Sean:
I love that.
Amy:
So that’s, they ran an experiment. They’re in the midst of it, they’re failing forward and they’re learning from it. I also, you know, our good friends at Upward Church in Flat Rock North Carolina, Sean. They’ve been experimenting with something very similar, and they’re seeing three times the results in people taking first step. And I reached out to our friends at the Bayou Church to check in with them, and again, something similar, but I thought this was a great perspective. They added, they said as they approach this first step, they have a new perspective. They said their first step, their prior first step used to be more educational, and now their first step is much more relational. So that was the tweak, and hopefully that maybe opened some ideas for our listeners.
So here’s my encouragement. When you’re having, when you’re experimenting with the first steps of engagement, and this just comes from the feedback I’ve been getting around the experiments that churches are running, like the three I just shared. First, you wanna make this first step as simple and low barrier as possible. You wanna remove friction or barriers where wherever you can. Like, make it convenient right after the service–right now. Make it often after every service, make it short, five minutes, 10 minutes, remove objections. Like if you have kids, no worries. We’ve got ’em covered where they can stay in kids’ care, and maybe this underwhelm them, right? Focus on meeting them and sharing just a few key pieces of information. Don’t have them walk away with a bag of information and resources or try to tell them everything about your church in five to 10 minutes.
Churches that are doing this well right now, the last thing I’ll say, they’re leveraging technology instead of overwhelming everybody with that information. They’re leveraging technology to drip information about the church through workflows so that people can consume this information on their own. In fact, our friend Jonathan Smith at onechurch.to, and picking up on his language, he says, automate the transaction, not the interaction. And so, and I would just say, here’s a carrot. Have something that’s in it for them. And I will say, Crumble Cookies still seems to be the winning bribe right now.
Sean:
Can’t disagree with that.
Amy:
Coffee mugs are very 2005. People seem to like immediate gratification these days. I was on a call with one of our cohorts, and all they did was change the treat from whatever it was to crumble cookies and it doubled overnight. So.
Sean:
Yeah. Yeah.
Amy:
One last thing, and I probably assumed this, but for all of the steps that you’re doing in particular this engagement step, do you know who the leader is of the overarching pathway? And if you’re a larger church, the owner of this first step experience? Healthy churches, they always have a champion for this engagement process. And this is a great example of if everyone owns it, nobody does. So just make sure someone on your team feels the ownership for this. And by the way, if you’re experimenting with things and you’re finding success, man, Sean threw his email out there earlier. Share that with us. We’d love to hear because I love to share what churches are doing so that we can all get better at this together. We can learn from one another.
Sean:
We’d love to hear those from those churches out there who are trying things, learning. We could share those stories and the more stories we can share with others, the better the Big C church will be. Now let’s shift to the other challenge in this episode, and that’s physical capacity. We’ve talked about this before, but there’s so many churches running into this that it’s great to come back to it. You know, growing churches, just, they’re running outta space. So what’s the healthiest way from your perspective, Amy, to think about this?
Amy:
This just continues again to be one of those headline issues for many growing churches. And if you wanna hear a more in depth conversation on this topic, I would encourage you to go back to episode 421, where you and I, Sean, we shared stories and examples from what churches are currently trying related to capacity and service time challenges. So here’s where I wanna begin when it comes to capacity issues. Here’s how I’d counsel you.
First, understand when you will hit your ceilings or lids before you hit them. The key word here is before, if you are a larger church, this is something the executive pastor should be monitoring with the senior leadership team. And it’s simply leveraging a tool like Microsoft Excel to track your numbers and project them out so that you know when you’re nearing capacity. And Sean, I feel like this is basic. So if you’re listening today and you’re thinking, duh, then you probably have some secular job history in your past or a business degree because I work with very smart pastors across North America, smarter than me for sure, who do not know how to do this or they haven’t thought of it.
So if that’s you, it’s okay. But identify someone on your team who just loves a good spreadsheet, like me, who can build this out. And the three lids that we want you to monitor and project out are auditorium capacity, parking lot capacity, and kids capacity. Hitting any of these lids will put you in a turn-away situation with new people. So for example, we would say that the red zone is when you pass 80% in your auditorium, right? So you take the number of seats you have and multiply that times 0.8, and that’s when you’ve entered the red zone. It’s an 80% capacity rule. It’s been around forever. Yes, there are open seats, but probably not, space for a family of four to sit together. We would also say your kids’ space, 80% capacity is when you hit the red zone. For parking capacity, we would counsel you to take the number of auditorium seats you have, divide that by 1.5, and that’s how many parking spots you have or that you need for your service.
So figuring out your true capacity can be complicated because these lids are interdependent. And I hate doing podcast math, but here’s what I mean. Let’s say just for the sake of easy math, you have a thousand seats in your auditorium. That means you can grow per your auditorium, lid to 800 people before hitting the red zone. And would assume you have adequate parking at about 667 parking spots. But what if you only have 500 parking spots right? Like you don’t have enough parking for a thousand seat auditorium.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
That would mean that your parking can only support 750 seats, and that’s your true lid. It’s not 800 people in the auditorium.
Sean:
Amy, you’re, I think you’re redefining pastor math here. And while I love this type of math, I know a lot of pastors who don’t love this type of math,
Amy:
Right? And I’ll stop with the math, but if you don’t know these numbers, someone on your team needs to start doing the math. Here’s why: you need to get ahead of space issues, because they are not easy to resolve. They take time. I mean, for instance, you need to know at least six months in advance that you’re gonna need to add another service time. Why? Because you have to make decisions on the new service time with input from kids ministries, facilities, and then other teams, that need to pivot, right, to make the new times work. And then you need to build volunteer teams to support that new service time. And you need to build a communications plan that helps people move with you. And honestly, if you have capacity to add service times, just know that’s the easiest way to address space issues. But you need a time buffer to get ready for it. So my first response to your question, Sean, what’s a healthy way to think about the issue of running outta space? It’s get ahead of it. Don’t let growth surprise you and put you behind the eight ball if possible.
The second approach, I think, is to be thinking about your longer term growth strategy. Think about that earlier. By doing the math early, you’ll know when you have to add a service. And that is, again, comparatively the easiest and most affordable way to accommodate growth. But after that, make an advanced decision about whether your next best option would be, you know, A. expanding the footprint of your current facility, right? Do you have enough land and enough parking around the current facility to eventually make that building bigger someday? Or would you be expanding through launching a new location of your church? Right?
Those are the kind of the two things. Once you’ve optimized all your optimal service times, we’ve got a big, we need a bigger building, we need a bigger boat, or we need to think about a multiplication strategy. And if you launch out of your church, will you be one church in multiple locations or will you be sending out a pastor in a group from your church to plant a new church? Again, these are all great conversations to have before you start to hit these ceilings. And each of these approaches can be successful in creating more space. But these last three, they don’t take months to pull off. They take years often, right?
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
So before you run out of room is the time to begin planning for this growth, right? Beyond just where our current growth is, when will you need to add services? And then when will you need to expand your current location, launch a new location of your church, or whatever your growth strategy is. I think, Sean, that can take three years to get off the ground. So the key is to strategically plan facility decisions so they can support your continued health and growth and not just solve immediate problems. You wanna be thinking longer term, by the way, this is what senior leadership teams should be doing. Thinking longer term, what do we need? Not just today for a capacity issue, but what’s our capacity solutions for the next five to 10 years?
Sean:
Yep. Yep. That’s so important. And it’s really critical for leaders to get out of the day-to-day weeds in order to be able to do that. I think that’s what’s so challenging about the conversation, to have the right time when the right people sit together and look at some real data and get a true sense of at what point do we hit our capacity because, Amy, you know this, we have so many churches reaching out to us right now who’ve already hit that lid.
Amy:
They have.
Sean:
And they’re asking about expansion, they’re asking about multisite, and we’re saying, you’re probably 18 to 24 months from that. And there’s nothing worse for a pastor than to be in an essentially a turn away situation because you just don’t have the space. So start now, get in front of those. If you’re experiencing growth as a church, get in front of those issues today. For churches that are bumping up against those capacity limits right now. Amy, they’re already there. How would you coach them?
Amy:
Yeah. Again, episode 421 will give you some very tangible examples, if you’re facing those barriers now, but, so start there. Listen to that episode. Second, just keep in mind that before you pull the trigger for a building project, like an expansion or a multisite launch, just make sure you’ve maximized your current space with additional services. And that’s what episode 421 went through so well. First, because it’s the most cost effective way to open space. But second, because a building project will require a significant giving base and launching a multisite will require a much larger people base, typically. So maxing out service times, maxing out the spaces within your church. There’s a lot of creativity out there that we talked about in episode 421. But I also say this, if you do need to build or expand, I recommend bringing in expert help. Because we have heard from so many churches that are facing space issues, we’re actually hosting a free online event called the Church Building Projects Masterclass. And that’s on Thursday, March 5th. I recommend you just go to our website, get signed up for it at theunstuckgroup.com/build.
Sean:
I think it’s gonna be a great masterclass, Amy. You know, we’re gonna spend several hours with outside experts in areas of financing, facility building and design. So it’s gonna be very practical. and for anyone who’s considering a project now or in the future, I think it’ll be really helpful, a lot of great insights for you. So, alright, this has been really fun to revisit the five new core issues that churches are facing. But today is a wrap on this episode and this series. So as we wrap this up, any final thoughts?
Amy:
On today’s episode, I think these two challenges of engagement and capacity, they’re actually connected. Like I said at the beginning, you can’t grow sustainably if you’re not engaging people well, and you can’t engage people well if you don’t have the space for them. So I’m hoping there’s a few nuggets in there to get you out ahead of these things. If you’re not in this situation right now, what you have is a gift of time to get ready for it. And then to everyone, you know, just be willing to evaluate honestly, and make changes not only to your first steps of engagement, but to your ministry strategies as a whole. It’s important that we’re always revisiting what we’re doing and seeing if it’s producing the results that we want. So hopefully, again, there’s a nugget or two in there as to what you can do to increase the engagement and the first steps in your church.
Sean:
Yep. And if you’ve been recognizing these challenges in your church throughout this series and you’re ready to do something about it, of course we’d love to help with that. The Unstuck Group, we have a proven process for helping pastors lead unstuck churches that are moving towards health. We’ve worked with more than 750 churches now to identify their core issues and then develop customized solutions, solutions that are unique to them, their church, their community, just like the ones we’ve been discussing in this series. So you can start a conversation with our team today at theunstuckgroup.com/start.
Again, thanks for joining us for the series of the five most common core issues that we see in churches right now. Whether it’s reaching your mission field, improving financial health, developing that leadership bench, creating first steps like we talked about today, or navigating capacity issues. You are not alone. You are not the first church or the only church right now to face these challenges. So we hope that this series has helped you identify where your church might be stuck, even though you’re healthy, you could be stuck somewhere. And then also giving you some practical next steps towards long-term sustainable health. Next week, we’re back with a really special episode where we’re gonna actually take some questions from you, our listeners, and respond to those. So we hope you’ll join us again next week.
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