Hey Friends -

This is email 8, the last email in our Vitality Matrix series. If you missed an email, here are the archives. Also, I’ve got some special news to share with you first at the bottom of the email.

​Is my church healthy? | Email 1​
​How healthy are the relationships in your church? | Email 2​
​How good are your metrics (and do they really matter)? | Email 3​
​What does financial vitality look like in your church? | Email 4​
​Beyond biscuits and Coffee (what is your ministry strategy?). | Email 5​
​How easy is it for new people in your church? | Email 6​
​How well does your church do evangelism? | Email 7​

Today, we are talking about the Vitality Matrix's 7th Core Category: Congregational Engagement.

For churches struggling with stability, I've discovered a few recurring things.

1. Why does this matter?
​​
Often, I’ve found churches see their average attendance and assume that’s how big the church is. So they have 60 or so people on Sunday morning, and they make decisions and plan things based on 60 people. But rarely have I seen a church whose average Sunday attendance and Active Adult number is that close. In my research and work here in Louisiana, that Active Adult number is anywhere from 30-300% larger than Sunday morning. Yes, you read that right…I had a church with 300% of the church active, but running significantly lower on Sunday morning.

I’m not going to go too deep into this, but you get the drift.

2. What ministries of the church are best attended?

This is congregational engagement at its core. If most of your church does Sunday morning, but nothing else, what can that mean? The only church I’ve worked with that didn’t have a larger Active Adult number had around 40% of the folks attending Sunday services doing anything else. The pastor called them “Sunday Morning Friends” and I absolutely stole that description for these situations.

Funny thing, in the early days of my church plant, we had the same problem. Much of how I approach this core category is based initially on lessons we learned trying to fix it. A low-engaged congregation is one where discipleship and the key nature of the church aren't being activated. We don’t want that to happen, especially if you are trying to establish stability.

3. Low congregational engagement decreases stability.

Sure, you might have a core group active at the church. But all of those folks existing on the outside of things are people Jesus has already put in your span of spiritual influence. Many of them want to get more involved. This is about intentional discipleship. Especially if these low-engaged people don’t have church history, it is 10x easier for them to quit coming and not be part of a local church. I’ve found these folks have an attachment to your church, and rarely will leave to attend elsewhere. They stop going to church.

Let’s get into the vitality matrix and see how this describes our four stages of vitality.

Unstable Churches

In an unstable church, the biggest indicator is that the church has no true awareness of how big it is. Sure, they know who these folks are, but decisions aren’t being made with them in mind. If they show up, it’s a bit of fun extra. Usually, these churches don’t have a solid communication path and rely on Sunday pulpit announcements for everything. They might ring up a phone tree, but since these people might not have the relational connections, they get left out.

If about half of your church members only attend Sunday morning, this might apply to you.

How do you figure out this active adult number? List all of the people who either attend a discipleship group, serve in missions, or gave to the church in the last month. Make sure not to double count people. Then, if you can, make a list of everyone who has attended worship during the same amount of time. Count everyone. Don’t forget the musicians (it happens).For smaller churches without much other ministry, I'll look at 2x a month Sunday attendance as part of active adults.

Then check the two lists against each other. If you are close to 50%, you’ve got some work to do.

Stable Churches

Stable Churches have either done the work above, or have good systems in place already. Note, at this stage, it isn’t about numbers, but awareness. Once you have those numbers in place, you can start thinking about goal setting. This is where I am a fan of percentage-based metrics. Those give you a goal range. We want to divide those categories of Active Adults by the average worship attendance.

50 in worship; 22 in Discipleship. 44% Discipleship engagement.

50 in worship. 13 in Serving. 26% serving engagement.

50 in worship. 31 Giving Units. 62% giving engagement (remember that around 2/3 of most households are dual adults. This might be different for your church).

If growth is a necessity in your church, I’d crunch those numbers once a month. If you use a database/Church Management tool like Planning Center, this is easy to do.

Stable churches are the ones who start doing the work in order to set goals. Make the goal a percentage increase, rather than just saying “We need more folks in Sunday School.”

For some churches in this category, the answer is starting new programs. If you don't have age group discipleship, or kids/youth, this is the time to begin thinking about starting those ministries. People can't attend and be part of something which isn't happening.

Vital Churches

Here is where we start to see the shift. A vital church has consistent congregational engagement in all areas, about 50-60%. As the church grows and adds new people, those new people are engaging quickly enough to not lower the percentages.

For example.

Imagine if the same church, worshiping 50, started growing and was averaging around 70, but didn’t put in place any engagement strategies. Then you’d have this.

70 in worship; 24 in Discipleship; 34% discipleship engagement.

Not a win. Sure, you have more folks in worship, but the church is actually LESS ENGAGED than it was when it was smaller.

Vital churches have consistent growth in both. As new people become integrated, they become part of the larger life of the church.

Sustainable Churches

In a sustainable church, you don’t see the actions of a vital church pumped up. At this point, engagement drives regenerative leadership and ministry creation. Sam Rainer says at this point, 80% of people should be active in discipleship, and I imagine serving will be close to that. Some churches have many more giving units than their average attendance.

Mike Breen wrote, “If you make the church, you sometimes get disciples. If you make disciples, you almost always get the church.”

I’d say that quote applies well to sustainable churches.

So how do you work on this?

This email has gone on long enough, but I offer a few brief suggestions.

1. Figure out your active adults. Build systems to make this easy, and run it once a month.
2. If you don’t have one, get a modern Church Management System. It’s valuable for daily ministry, not only finances and year-end totals.
3. Connect that CMS to both email and texting services. Much of the engagement growth is in your communication strategy. Stop trying to get all the information out there, and instead use it to build relationships and inform people of how they can take a step forward. I did a whole podcast series on this sort of thing in the past. Those episodes will help. I also did a video recently on why social media isn’t the silver bullet churches think it is.
4. Set a percentage goal and start building a strategy around it.

For those of you who stuck around for all 8 emails, thanks so much. I’ve gotten replies back from many of you telling me how helpful this has been and asking questions. You can always hit reply to these emails and get straight into my inbox. If you want to get a one-page version of the vitality matrix, you can download it here.

I’ll see you in the next email.

Chad

PS. I told you I had special news. If you’ve liked these emails, found them helpful, but wish I would have gone more in-depth in action steps, I’ve got news for you. I’m writing a book right now on the Vitality Matrix based around these emails, but I loaded it up with strategies and tactics for each one. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for information on that. It should be coming out later this spring.