Seven Critical Activities For Growth: Build Your Contact List

Activity Based New Church Growth: Build (and Keep Building) Your Contact List

Great churches and great network marketing businesses are built by focusing on activities rather than outcomes. This series takes a look at the 7 Critical Activities of successful network marketing and draws the corresponding activity in the new church start world.

Activity One: Build (and Keep Building) Your Contact List: Make a list of everyone you know (family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, school friends, insurance agent, doctor, etc.) - this is your “warm market” and the most likely group to consider becoming your customers. If you believe in the beneficial product your business is based on then you will not hesitate to introduce it to anyone. You must also make a point to build you contact list on a daily basis by gathering the names and contact information of people you “naturally” meet in the course of your day.

A Culture of Family

“Grand Opening” services draw a crowd of friends, family, other churches, and spies. The drop off in attendance from week one to week two is often over 50%. The percentage of “Grand Opening” attendees that stick (become members) is less than 40%.

The vast majority of the people who become members are the launch team and the individuals they have connected with. Network marketing pros call them “warm market”, I prefer to call them “family”. Having multiple families as members of a new church start is a sign of potential grown because the level of commitment to and ownership of the mission tends to be higher. Launch teams should never be shy about inviting their family and friends to “taste and see” what they are up to for God (I will discuss this at length in a future blog). This process starts with identifying ALL of the launch teams local family members and creating a database of people to be prayed for and invited to church.

I suggest each launch team member be challenged to create a list of at least 100 people they know in the local area of the church (within a 45 minute drive). Jim Griffith of Griffith Coaching suggest that this list is also essential for raising financial support. While many people will not opt to be part of a new church start launch team they might be inclined to make an investment in the Kingdom building work of a close friend or family member.