What does your church do well? And how long does it take a first-time guest to experience it?
Your response to those questions may be the single biggest factor in how successful your church is at attracting and keeping new people.
According to church leadership experts, most people will subconsciously decide whether-or-not to come back to a church within the first 7-10 minutes of driving into the parking lot.
If your church is doing everything great, keep it up. But that’s not the case for most of us. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit we do some things well, but there are other aspects of the Sunday morning service we struggle with. And some parts we’re just awful at.
What’s worse, many churches take the things we don’t do well and put them at the beginning of the service. That means our church guests have made a yes/no decision about being a part of our congregation when all they’ve seen are the things we’re not that good at.
No, a 7-10 minute window isn’t enough time for people to make a fair assessment. But it is reality.
The Biggest Mistake We May Be Making
Despite the fact that most pastors are aware of this 7-10 minute phenomenon, few of us have done much about it. But it’s not because we don’t care.
Here’s an example.
Most Small Churches have a hard time finding someone to lead in worship. I know because I spent a lot of years – decades, actually – fighting this battle. By the time I got up to preach, I often had to rescue the church from the hole that had been dug during the front half of the service.
I know I’m not alone in that experience. Most Small Churches don’t have the people or equipment to do worship music well.
Yet, how do most of us start our services? By singing together. Badly.
Yes, I know the scriptures say “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” but that doesn’t mean we should front-load the noise.
What Options Do We Have?
How does a church break away from burying our best ministry 15-20 minutes into the middle of the service?
Change that game. Flip the script.
Front-load the value and give them our best stuff up front.
With that in mind, I’m going to propose a radical idea. One that I wish I’d thought of 30 years ago so I could have implemented it when I needed it most.
(If your church is high-liturgy, in which the order of service is prescribed for you, I respect that. This post may not be for you. Maybe my next one will be just what you need.)
Re-Design Your Service Template
Start by writing down every element of your church service in the order you usually conduct them.
For some churches, that might look something like this:
- Worship through music
- Prayer
- Bible reading
- Communion
- Special music
- Offering
- Preaching
- Fellowship time
Now comes the hard part. Look at those elements, honestly rate them by how well you’re currently doing them, then re-write the list, from best to worst.
For some churches, your list might look something like this:
- Fellowship time
- Bible reading
- Preaching
- Prayer
- Communion
- Offering
- Special music
- Worship through music
Now look at your list and ask yourself this question.
Why aren’t you conducting your church service in the order you just wrote down?
Before you reject that as a crazy idea, sit with it for a moment.
It’s Not About Theology
Right now your church service may be putting your worst foot forward instead of your best.
Why?
You don’t have to do it that way. There’s no theological reason for it. There’s no order of service listed in the bible. Your service template is not holy writ. At least it shouldn’t be.
For most churches, this template is a holdover from some long-forgotten past. If you asked the people in your church “why do you have the order of service you have?”, most would have no clue.
Some leaders might be able to give some makeshift theological justification for it. But the key word in that last sentence isn’t “theological”, it’s “makeshift”. Our order of service isn’t theologically based. It’s just what we do, so we’ve tacked a quasi-theological explanation onto it.
You Can Do This!
Here’s the great thing about this re-boot idea. It’s still your church. These are the elements you’re already doing. You’re not adding anything to your to-do list. And you’re not adopting another church’s ideas and hoping you can pull it off.
You can do this! You know you can, because you’re doing the elements already.
All that’s changed is that you’re letting people see your best stuff first.
The one exception you might make is to move one of your better elements to the end of the service, so it starts and ends on high notes.
What If It Worked?
I know what some of you are thinking. “What if I try this and it doesn’t work?”
That’s easy. If it doesn’t work, just go back to doing it the way you’re used to.
But what if it does work?
Here’s an idea. Summer’s coming. Try it for June through August. Call them your Flip-the-Script Summer Services, (or a better name that works for your church) and see what happens.
If it works, keep doing it after summer’s over. If it doesn’t, go back to your current order of service when the kids go back to school.
But even if you don’t stick with the entire new service order, I’d be very surprised if this new way of looking at things didn’t help you discover something new. Something fresh. Something everyone loves. If so, keep that and carry on.
So what do you think? Is this something your church might try?
We want to hear from you. Yes, you!
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(Smart Stamp photo from Kyle Van Horn • Flickr • Creative Commons license)
