Making the most of January - with Andy Hobbs and Dave Allen

January is the key time of the year for welcoming newcomers to church in the southern hemisphere.  In the northern hemisphere it’s August/September.

But how do we best follow up new people who are moving into the district and looking to join a church? Someone visits your church, but what’s next.  What sort of ‘visitor pipeline’ should you have?

What kind of system can be devised that is most effective for welcoming the largest numbers of people over a year? - while making sure that everyone doesn’t get exhausted?

Should you visit? phone? email? text? or nothing?

Where is too much effort just that.  Too much effort?  

How do you grab the ‘low hanging fruit’?

What mistakes can we avoid?  Where should we ignore the American advice here as just being too cultural?

Someone has visited our church and we have invested lots of effort in them, and it’s all come to naught.  Someone else visits, we do almost nothing, and they end up joining.  What’s with that?  

Dave Allen is from Hunter Church in Newcastle and Andy Hobbs from Salt Church in Wollongong.  Both have great advice for us in this area.