Five Strategies for Finding & Keeping New Worshippers
Jack Cunningham

First: Understand how and why new people flow in and out of your church. When evangelizing any community or culture we must first understand the people we are tying to reach. Billy Cole once told me, “To reach the lost, you must understand them. You don’t have to agree with them, or even appreciate them, but you do have to understand what makes them tick.”

Second: Develop and utilize various strategies for finding new people, and be willing to adapt, or even change, ineffective and/or nonproductive strategies. One of our greatest mistakes is that we marry ourselves to man-made programs as if they were holy. If you are using something that is not working give it a decent burial and move on to something that will produce fruit. Don’t expend precious man hours, finance and effort on a non-producing program.

Third: Manifest a genuine concern for new people and a determined desire to meet their needs. George Barna wrote a book entitled The User Friendly Church. In it he tells pastors “It is imperative that we improve our church’s visitor consciousness.”

Fourth: Utilize music, message, service structure, etc. to create an atmosphere in every service that will produce a desire in the heart of the sinner to know Jesus Christ. You best accomplish this by continually presenting Jesus as the answer to every situation and circumstance.

Fifth: Make a commitment to discipleship. The bottom-line of church growth is keeping new converts (making disciples). T. Wynn Drost said, “Church Growth can be wrapped up in one word – retention.” Church growth is not measured by how many you have in Sunday school, Bible Study, in leadership, or even how many have spoke with tongues at your altars. Real church growth is based on…retention. How many are we keeping?

(Jack Cunningham is the Director of Global Impact for the United Pentecostal Church International. He also serves as the District Superintendent of the Virginia District, and is pastor of Bible World Church in Chesapeake, Virginia)

This article “Five Strategies for Finding and Keeping New Worshippers” by Jack Cunningham was excerpted from: Global Impact Newsletter UPCI August 2009. It may be used for study & research purposes only.