How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church (c) 2012 Cathy Townley / Townley Coaching townleycoaching.com [email protected]952-270-3865 HOW TO INCREASE WORSHIP ATTENDANCE IN YOUR CHURCH The Workbook to Accompany the teaching video by the same name
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HOW TO INCREASE WORSHIP ATTENDANCE IN YOUR CHURCH · 2015-07-19 · About the Originator of How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church Cathy Townley is a former worship leader,
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How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church (c) 2012 Cathy Townley / Townley Coaching
About the Originator of How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church
Cathy Townley is a former worship leader, and author of two books: Designing Worship Teams, Abingdon Press 2001, and Missional Worship, Chalice Press 2011. She is a Deacon in the MInnesota Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.
Cathy’s ministry has spanned 25 plus years. She has started churches and worship services, has served as a supervisor for new church start projects, and now as a coach for start up pastors and for pastors and churches that are working on growing their churches.
Worship and evangelism is Cathy’s ministry niche. She serves as a coach with Martha Grace Reese on the Unbinding the Gospel Project, and she is an associate with Jim Griffith in his coaching and consulting ministry.
Cathy is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston Il. She was born and raised in Chicago, and moved to MInnesota for her husband’s job transfer in the late 80’s, and has been there ever since. It was after the move to MInnesota that Cathy had a life-changing, “thunder-bolt and lightening” conversion experience, which led her into ministry.
Cathy and her husband Terry have two grown sons and two daughters-in-law. Cathy and Terry are AVID golfers. In January of 2012, it was unseasonably warm, so Cathy and Terry joined their other golfing friends for a round of golf in 52 degree weather. The flags were frozen in the cups, and you couldn’t get the tee in the ground, but everyone got a lot of roll. There’s always a trade-off...
Cathy’s heart in ministry is to be authentic. That means to be unabashed about being a Christ follower and yet remain welcoming of those that aren’t. She longs to help pastors and churches grow into that same mindset and way of life. That perspective is central to worship and evangelism.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church is a free video and workbook. Consider using this process with it:
1. WATCH THE VIDEO WITH A TEAM 2. DON’T TAKE NOTES ... it moves too fast and you’ll miss too much!3. USE THE WORKBOOK TO DISCUSS WHAT YOU SAW ... fill in the blanks as a
memory and discussion exercise to see what made an impact in the video, and to discern what you need to do to grow
4. WATCH THE VIDEO AGAIN ... with stops, to confirm your responses5. MAKE A PLAN TO INCREASE WORSHIP ATTENDANCE IN YOUR CHURCH!
Other Townley Coaching materials to enhance this video are referenced throughout the workbook as they apply to various topics
Missional Worship: Increasing Attendance and Expanding the Boundaries of Your Churchis FREE with the purchase of any townleycoaching.com resource
HAVE FUN!!
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
What are the two ways to increase worship attendance?
_____________________ more people
Increase the __________________ of your service
Discussion question: Do you agree with these two methods? Or did you think that there might be a way to do something in the service to get regulars to attend more often? If the latter, what would that be?
2. REACH MORE PEOPLE
What are the two ways to reach more people?
________________________________ , which would be starting a new _______________*
________________________________, which would be how the early church grew, like in the book of Acts, when God “added” to their numbers daily
Discussion question: What do you think were the most important factors in the book of Acts that enabled to, “add to their numbers daily?”
*HOW TO START A NEW WORSHIP SERVICE IN AN EXISTING CHURCH is available for purchase on townleycoaching.com. It outlines the 12 benchmarks you need to hit to have a successful launch.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
What are the phrases most of us use to describe our desire to increase worship attendance, according to the video?
“How do we ____________________ more people?”
“How do we ____________________ the young people?”
Discussion question: Have you ever used the language of attraction? Why do you think it’s not useful? For what other reasons (besides those outlined in the video) do you think that the attempt to attract people to your church works against you?*
*HOW TO INVITE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD TO CHURCH explores the unchurched landscape in America in Module One, and the plight of the average mainline church in America that has grown isolated from the neighborhood in which it is located.
4. EMBRACE INVITATION
What is invitation, according to the video? Make a list of the activities connected to invitation, and define who does them.
We follow God into the ________________ in which the church is located
We develop authentic ____________________ with those that live there.
Discussion question: What feelings does this process evoke in you?*
*HOW TO INVITE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD TO CHURCH provides a detailed accounting of how invitation lays a foundation for invitation to take root in your church, in Module One.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
What are the roles of pastors and laypersons in invitation?*
Pastors ________________ the way into the mission field. They are the primary
___________________
Laypersons are inviters (and spiritual leaders) within their own circles of
___________________________
Pastors spend about _____________ of his or her workweek in the mission field inviting multiple laypersons into Christian community
Multiple laypersons invite _______________ person each
Worship is a ________________ between you and me, our church friends, our unchurched friends, and God
Discussion Questions: What is your role in invitation? How scary is it to think about your role?
What do you think about the pastor spending 1/4 of his or her time in the mission field?
What do you think about the statement, “We never really mature as Christians until we answer the call to go and baptize.”
*HOW TO INVITE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD TO CHURCH provides a detailed accounting of the pastor’s role in invitation, and laypersons too, including the kinds of things to invite people to (for laypersons), and places to go and what to say (for the pastor), in Module Two and Three.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
For every 10 invites by the pastor, you can expect about ________________ “yes,” (give or take)
For every one invite by 100 different laypersons, you can expect about ____________ yeses, plus the few more here and there that the pastor is inviting.
As your faith community grows through invitation, more people will be inviting more people, and soon, growth could become ________________________, like it did in the book of Acts
Discussion question: What most strikes you about the mathematical component of invitation? How hard is it to realize that you get many more “no’s” than “yeses?”
7. SPEND TIME WITH GOD
In order for the numbers to work out, we have to be immersed in God’s presence. But prayer is a lost art ...*
Growing congregations are ______________________ congregations
Most of our churches do not use ______________________as the foundation of community life. Most of us do not have disciplined ____________________ practicesMost of us are not asking God to lead us into invitation through ____________________
The learning curve is not just to invite, but to _________________ to invite
Discussion question: How well are you doing in prayer, personally and as a congregation, according to those fill-in-the-blank statements, above?
*HOW TO INVITE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD TO CHURCH spells out the process for organizing a prayer team and growing a praying community within your entire church, in Module Five.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved
Relevance grows from our relationship with the mission field. That’s why we have to wait until the end to discuss it. It’s the convergence between prayer and invitation.
Invitation teaches us what our mission field ___________________ about. We pray and talk about those things in the worship service.
If we’re praying at a deeper level, we will experience the __________________ service at a deeper level
We’ll evaluate all aspects of our service to see how welcoming it is to guests, like first
_____________________________. Guests make up their minds if they’re coming back
within the first ________________ minutes of being there.*
Not all guests will come to the worship service first. Some will participate in a small group, some in a service project. Those can be worship experiences. Increasing attendance
has to do with what we’re _________________________**
The infrastructure we build to sustain growth must be “current.” Committees and teams are
not current. __________________________ is the value that reflects the 21st century.**
Discussion questions: How relevant do you think your worship service is, and why?
*HOW TO SELECT THE RIGHT MUSIC FOR YOUR WORSHIP SERVICE gives you insight into how to improve first impressions in your worship service
**Chapter 6 of Missional Worship, and Modules 4 - 6 of HOW TO INVITE YOUR MISSION FIELD TO CHURCH deal with creating an infrastructure around the values of community.
(C) 2012 Townley Coaching How to Increase Worship Attendance in Your Church All Rights Reserved