Reaching People In Motion

Posted by Anthony D. Coppedge in Technology on Sep 23rd, 2009 | no responses

What kind of strategy should a local church have for reaching their neighbors and community with today’s on-the-go lifestyle? I wonder how many churches are even trying to reach this mobile society?

You know these people well. They’re neighbors down the street, coworkers down the hall and employees at your local Starbucks. Many of these people won’t take the time out of their “busyness” to find out about the churches they drive by nearly every day. From a strategic standpoint, I think local church leaders can put some steps in place in order to be intentional about reaching people in motion.

Build Relationships

“Everything rises and falls on leadership.” – John Maxwell

People, by and large, will accept personal invitations from those they know and trust. Logically, for them to know and trust you, there must first be a relationship. As leaders, we can’t expect our staff, volunteers and other congregants to be highly intentional about building relationships if we don’t model that behavior ourselves.

Think of the places you go and the people you see on at least a semi-regular basis. Chances are you’ll be able to strike up a conversation that, over time and with consistency, will yield the beginnings of a relationship. Ask questions and be an excellent listener. People don’t have a problem talking about their favorite subjects: themselves! Before long, you’ll know more about them that you might care to know, but at least you’ll be building a relationship that is the starting point for inviting them to church, a Bible study or other non-threatening activity.

Simple invites

Churches have long been using creative methods for inviting friends and neighbors to come to church. From door hangers to the now infamous church signs (with those pity sayings – ugh), it’s not hard to invite people to come to church. While this is not a bad strategy, it’s certainly one that has a high barrier-to-entry: it requires them to meet on your terms.

Instead, look for simple invites to neutral-ground places such as parks, coffee shops or social service projects. While we certainly want to be able to invite our communities to our church services, think of ways to engage them authentically in other locations where they’re not meeting on your terms, in your location. Before long, you’ll have built the relationship to a point where they trust you enough to be your guest at church.

Mobile websites

The future is mobile. With so many people on-the-go, we need a strategy to meet them while they’re in motion, not just when they check their mailbox or their email account at home. Therefore, I’m a huge proponent of building mobile websites for a church, their ministries & activities.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: a mobile-friendly duplicate of your existing church website would be massive. However, the strategy for a mobile website is significantly different from a standard website. In fact, I recently wrote about the differences and industry best-practices over at Christian Post.com. Here’s the link for that article: http://www.christianpost.com/blogs/online/2009/09/creating-a-mobile-version-of-a-church-website-23/index.html

Get Going

Given all of this information and the obvious fact that people will be on-the-go more tomorrow than they ever have been, what’s holding your church back from developing a strategy for reaching people in motion?

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Reaching People In Motion

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