Churches run a lot of events. Even if your approach is a “simple church” model chances are you still are asking people to come to leadership team meetings, small group nights, children’s ministry stuff and more. What is your standard approach to ensuring that you are gaining maximum attendance and impact from these events? Here are three phases that I believe every effective event at your church needs to go through …

• Sign Up // If you don’t know how many people are thinking about coming to your event it’s difficult to know if your promotion is working. Having some sort of registration system gives you the ability to gauge response and helps your team can plan the event effectively. You could use a free & simple Google Form, an online ticketing system like Eventbrite or a lot church management systems include an event registration module right in them.
• Show Up // There is a disconnect between how many people will sign up and actually show up to your event. You need to build a communications plan for encouraging those people who have expressed interest by registering to actually take action and show up to the event. Email reminders the day before (or day of) the event can be effective. Taking time to have your team call the people who are registered can be even more effective. Going out of your way to let your guests know that you are excited to have them attend will increase your attendance and also help build anticipation for whatever it is you have planned.
• Follow Up // This final stage of the registration process is often overlooked because we are just so happy that we were able to get the event out the door! What is your strategy for following up with the people who attended your event? Do you have some “next steps” that you want them to take? How can you make it super easy for them to take action on what you talked about at the event? Design a follow up process for people who attended your event to help extend the ministry beyond that one time. Send an email to attendees that they’ll receive on the way home with links to what they could do next. Connect with those people who signed up but didn’t show up and help them get involved as well. Events without follow up is like picking fruit and leaving it on the ground in the orchard … all those good intentions will just rot and go to waste!