Creating a Come and See Culture
Here are the notes from Andy Stanley at Catalyst One Day Seattle 2012
Creating A Come-And-See Culture : Three Essential ingredients
INTRODUCTION
The church is a bunch of environments. Staff and volunteers are from various church backgrounds. Every person that shows up to do ministry has a picture in their head of what a win should be. The problem is that if everyone doesn’t have the same “win” in mind it creates problems. You need to develop 3-5 win definitions of your own. North Point is unapoligcially attractional. If Andy could heal people at will like Jesus did, he would. He cannot. Instead he can do great children’s ministry and have a great band. Highlight the word “crowd” in the book of Mark. Everywhere Jesus went he was surrounded by people who couldn’t get enough of him. Jesus was attractional.
Every single program at your church is being evaluated every week by visitors and congregation members. If everyone is evaluating, shouldn’t we be too? When we get this right you create a lot of synergy with your staff. There will be far more wins because everyone is working from the same page.
1. AN APPEALING SETTING
A. Setting – the physical environment.
B. Settings create first impressions.
C. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. Andy doesn’t want issues in the environment to distract from ministry. For example, when asking people about their environment, North Point found that men want to know how long a service will be. Now they start each service by saying how long it will be. Now there is no concern about service length to distract from the worship experience.
D. Every physical environment communicates something. There are no neutral physical environments. Time in erodes awareness of. Do you even know what is in the lobby of your church?
- Clean. Clean says “we’re expecting you.”
- Organized. Organized says we are serious about what we are doing. A national bank lobby is the most organized because they want people to trust the bank with their money. “A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they are doing.” – Michael Gerber
- Safe. Safe says we value your kids as if they were our own. Anything that communicates safety is an invitation for parents to leave their children with you.
E. Design, decor and attention to detail communicate what and who you value most. Don’t miss an opportunity to reach culture because you are afraid you are appealing to their consumer instincts.
F. Design, decor and attention to detail communicate whether or not you are expecting guests and whether your organization is insider- or outsider- focused.
G. Periodically, we all need fresh eyes on our ministry environments. If you ever had a babysitter you know what this is about. You arrive home and see everything that has happened, even if the sitter does not.
QUESTIONS
- Are your ministry settings appealing to your target audience?
- Does the design, deor and attention to detail of your environments reflect what and who is most important to you?
- What’s starting to look tired? Address it… unless you just want to keep the people you have.
Tags: Andy Stanley, Physical, Rob Cizek, Setting
