The Procrastinator’s Guide to Easter Follow-Up
It’s the Tuesday after Easter. For most of us in church world, we’re still shaking off the Sunday night coma after months of planning, extra services, special touches, and tons of first-time guests.
If you’re part of a church staff, maybe you took yesterday off (congratulations). But now it’s Tuesday, and you realize it’s time to do the hard work of following up with people who showed up for the first time on Sunday.
But there’s just one problem: in all of the planning, you failed to make this plan. You don’t really have a strategy to reach out to your first-timers and ensure they’re second-timers.
If that’s you, I’ve got you. Let’s walk through The Procrastinator’s Guide to Easter Follow-Up:
1. Find any scrap of data you can.
First-time guest cards. Kids’ check-in cards. A note you jotted on Sunday. The spreadsheet that was populated by QR codes, keyword texts to numbers, whatever. Grab all of that data and pull emails and phone numbers from it.
Don’t have that data? Well, it’ll be hard to follow up. If you’re a smaller congregation and can remember that so-and-so invited such-and-such, maybe shoot a text to so-and-so and ask if they’d be willing to share such-and-such’s information. Let them know you’re just doing a simple follow up, not adding them to every email list your church offers. (And if this is your situation, an email will be less invasive than texting or calling their phone number that they did not share with you.)
If you just don’t have any data whatsoever, I have good news and bad news. The good: your reading load and to-do list just got lighter. The bad: you have to focus on next year, so skip to point #7.
[Related post: Q&A: How Do We Get Guests’ Contact Information?]
2. Spread the love.
If you have more than five people / families to follow up with, spread the love and share the load. Give the name of that mom with preschoolers to your kids director. Let the student guy take the family with the teenager. Doing this at this point in the game does two things: it allows others to benefit from hearing about a first-timer’s experience, and it keeps you from feeling a sense of overwhelm.
[Related post: Who Should Follow Up With First-Time Guests?]
3. Prep your spiel.
Repeat after me: no one likes unsolicited phone calls. But in 20+ years of being the guy who makes unsolicited phone calls, I’ve found that 98% of people appreciate them when there are no strings attached (i.e. “I’m simply calling to thank you for your visit”) and you keep the call intentionally short (two minutes tops, unless they begin to steer the conversation.).
So jot down a few points before you call. It’ll make both you and your caller feel better.
[Related post: The Art (and Science) of the First-Time Guest Follow-Up Phone Call]
4. Give them a concrete next step.
Your gratitude for their visit is fine. You should be grateful, and you should say that. But do more. If they are an in-town guest – in other words, not just in for the weekend visiting family – specifically invite them back this Sunday. Or better yet, invite them back this Sunday and invite them to a next step crafted just for them. You don’t have a “next step crafted just for them,” you say? Read on.
[Related post: How To Follow Up With Out-Of-Town Guests]
5. Create a next step crafted just for them.
You may not have a fully-developed assimilation process. Your last membership class might have occurred when Reagan was president. That doesn’t mean all is lost. Just grab a couple of church leaders, look at your collective calendars, and toss a pizza gathering on the schedule for the next two weeks. That’s an overly-simple way to create an environment for people to connect, for you to meet them face-to-face, and for them to have something that’s specifically for them.
[Related post: Q&A: How Can We Help First-Time Guests Know Their Next Step?]
6. Keep an eye out.
Now that you’ve made your call, sent your text, or invited them to pizza, don’t leave their follow up to chance. Spend this week praying for them. Walk in Sunday armed with your list of names, and watch out for those new faces, being proactive to call them by name when you see them. If it’s appropriate (and if you’ve implemented #5), send them another follow up via a different method to remind them of that concrete next step just before it happens.
[Related post: Make the Connection. Keep the Connection.]
7. Start your after-action report for next Easter.
Frequently after a larger service or massive event, our team will create an “After-Action Report,” a technique the Army uses that determines what just happened, why it happened, and how to improve the next time. For me – and maybe for you – my best ideas come in the heat of the moment or in the moments right after: “Shoot. We should’ve done _____.” So tap into your best ideas, write them down, and start creating a concrete plan for next year:
- Didn’t have a plan to gather data? Write it down.
- Didn’t have a pre-planned way to follow up? Write it down.
- Didn’t have any next step other than a hastily-planned pizza party? Write it down.
- Don’t know when Easter is next year? That makes all of us. Write it down.
[Related posts: Dancing with the Elephant: Debrief the Event; Beware the Emotional Postmortem]
Church leaders, God gave you a huge gift by sending first-time guests your way last weekend. Your guests gave you a huge gift by trusting you with their time. Don’t waste those gifts. Steward them well. Even if you’re a classic procrastinator, take fifteen minutes today and follow up well.
