Have you gone to the hardware store to purchase glue only to be bewildered by a vast array of adhesives: synthetic glues, solvent glues, super glues, water-based glues, and plant-based glues? Which one you choose depends, of course, on what you want to keep held firmly together. By analogy, the kind of “glue” you use in your church is critical.
Church planters think “sticky.” Large, engaging Sunday gatherings are not the glue to hold your church together. Understanding the critical difference between being friendly and making friends is the key to stickiness.
Teflon or Velcro
Research confirms (Lyle E. Schaller, Assimilating New Members) that most guests who leave a church do so NOT because they didn’t enjoy the preaching or music or were not properly instructed. Instead, more often, there have been deficiencies in the relational aspects of the discipling process. The community functioned more like Teflon than Velcro. Guests found no reason to stick.
Win and Charles Arn in, The Master’s Plan for Making Disciples shows that making three or more friends in the first six months is a vital aspect of the stickiness factor.
Lego
In an established church, most people already have enough friends. Larry Osborne in Sticky Church uses Lego to illustrate this relational issue. People have a limited capacity for genuine friendships. Most people in an established church have no place left on their Lego piece to attach a new friend. No amount of guilt manipulation or gospel motivation can increase that capacity. You have to find people who have room on their Lego piece to make new friends.
Make Friends
Who is better than guests or new people, to make friends with other guests or new people? Your key is to help them find each other.
Plan a 2x/month, post-service gathering for guests. Share pizza, sliders, or flatbreads. Have two or three facilitators host the gathering. Their purpose is to connect guests with guests and introduce Next Steps.
The purpose of your Next Steps “classes” is to offer opportunities for relationships. Host three or four classes on consecutive Sundays. Content is important but connections are the end goal.
Twice a year (late October and late February) invite the entire church, along with the new guests, to make a commitment to attend a weekly program for just six weeks. Offer the program in a mid-sized community (30-40 people) in your facility and small groups in homes. Some people feel more comfortable in a mid-size group than a small group. The program consists of food, and a time of learning around relational skills: communication, conflict resolution, improving marriage, parenting, etc. Connect new people together with hosts whose purpose is to help make introductions.
Hospitality and friendship are the glue necessary for stickiness in your church.
Bob Jones is the founder of REVwords.com, an author, blogger, and coach with 39 years of pastoral experience. Bob is also an Advance Coach with the ABNWT Resource Centre. You can connect with Bob here.