Assimilation

I wanted to share our assimilation process at Turning Point Church and fill you in on our constantly evolving process. We first started out with making calls each week and had a strenuous 4-5 week follow up plan. We also for a season tried to do visitations. Both showed very little fruit. We are constantly evaluating our process, but I wanted to share some of the new ways we have implemented in church assimilation to potentially help you in your ministry.

Our assimilation starts at the parking lot. We have implemented an amazing Welcome Team to make people feel welcomed. We have an amazing team of Parking guys who are giving direction and waving. We also have front door greeters, childrens check in and sanctuary greeters who all have been trained to welcome all who come in. We have ushers who show people to their seats and have a coffee bar for those who need the coffee. We have posted everything online also to show new visitors what to expect from how to dress to how to park. You can check that out Here if you want.
We ask in the welcome to have visitors fill out the communication cards which are given out at the door inside the bulletins. We also ask our members with any prayer requests to do the same. We pick those up at the end of the service and have them placed in the offering baskets. The next steps are usually handled by me. I get the cards and usually within 24 hours I will send them an email thanking them for coming. I also attempt to find them on facebook or twitter—if they checked the box (we have this as a question on the communication card). I befriend them and sent them a thanks. We then have a admin team who usually will send out a welcome letter. I do not make any calls unless they ask for one. We call it our no hassle-life giving process.

The next step for them is always being communicated. Come out to our Growth Track—Church 101 is always on the first Sunday of the month, 201, 2nd, 301 is the 3rd and 401 is the 4th Sunday always. Check more about that here. We make it easy, obvious and strategic. If anyone wants to get connected and into the life of the church—we invite them to the growth track. We also have small groups to connect to as well. I will explain what we do with our small groups is another blog.
Again, we are constantly evaluating our process and the effectiveness of it. We have shown consistent growth through this process and are continuing if for now.