According to all the books and materials I’ve read about launching a church, guess how many people we’re supposed to have at the next service? 65!
On the average, you are supposed to expect only 50% of your first service’s attendance (which was 130). This is largely because many people show up to a first service to simply “fill a seat.”
But I don’t think we need to be average!
Here are some things you can do to ensure we have another great monthly service on November 8th:
1. Pray a lot.
2. Invite all your family, friends and neighbors that you know. We work hard at creating a safe place for anyone and everyone to come check out EastLake. E-mail and Facebook are great ways to invite as well! Actually if you and you’re friends are on Facebook, they may have seen an ad for EastLake starting this week.
3. Be welcoming not only on November 8th, but as a daily habit to those around you!
4. Expect people to show up.
I think it’s entirely possible to have 110 attend our second monthly service. In fact, we’re preparing for more!
Yesterday’s connect event was fun. Over 40 people showed and it was a good time to, well, connect with people that we haven’t seen for two weeks! A month between services, although really beneficial when launching a new church, is a long time, so it’s good to have a chance to see people again in between them.
One of the big things I want our volunteers and attendees to know is that we can throw around phrases like “church for the rest of us” and “church for people who don’t like church” as much as we want, and we can have simple and polished presentation of a Sunday service, but if we aren’t interested and committed to being a loving, accepting and genuinely friendly culture to anyone who wants to come kick the tires of Christianity, then it’s all pointless. That’s what I love about our launch team! I’m so excited that even at our first service, people felt at home, not judged and welcome, regardless of where they were at. I can’t WAIT for November 8th!