The Family Ministry team had a small goal for this year:

Raise $60,000 in Camp Scholarships.

A small goal . . .but essential.  Well, I am happy to say that we hit the goal today!  What an exciting faith journey we – as a team – have been on. I wanted to quickly share several lessons we learned along the way and how we reached our goal.

1. Team Effort: Yeah, sounds like one of those "contrite" sayings. BUT IT IS TRUE. Every person on the team pulled on the same rope.  Jud Wilhite (Sr. Pastor) and Mike Bodine (Sr. Leader) were essential in casting vision.
2. Vision: It’s all about vision. (O.K. . . another simple saying.) Seriously . . .the vision of camp is simple. It’s about the life impact of a child/student.  There is nothing more impacting in the life of a child/student than a week of camp.  People get that and want to be a part of it!
3. The Plan: We came up with a killer plan . . . simple, yet strategic. We had staff writing "support letters" . . .like a missions trip.  We had leaders owning the need with us.  Students . . .gave scholarships because they caught the vision.
4. Follow Through: Everyone stepped up to the plate to accomplish it. Accountability was high.

I could get in the weeds . . .maybe I will later.  What I know . . . is God moved in the hearts of so many to impact the lives of kids/students.

Lori Wilhite, the wife of Central Christian’s Sr. Pastor Jud Wilhite, started an awesome ministry/community/opportunity for wives of Pastor’s.  Her heart is simple, provide a place for wives to share, be challenged, and grow.  One of the components to this is a blog where pastor wives can comment – share – respond to each other.  I would strongly suggest you, or someone you know, check it out.

BLOG:  Leading and Loving It

You have to check this out!! Lake Pointe Church located in Rockwall Texas has an incredible family site called Home Pointe.  I could explain it all  . . .but why when you can take 10 minutes and check it out.

CentralParents.com went live on May 11th.  This project has been underdevelopment for over a year.  This website is part of a multi-layered parent strategy.  One of of our Family Ministries values at Central Christian Church is to provide tools and resources to parents.

WHY?

Parents are the number one spiritual influence in a kids/students life!

The CFM (Central Family Ministries) team has been having lengthy discussions about how to help parents disciple their kids.  The church has (purposely . . .or not) successfully taken this responsibility out of the parents hands (and parents have allowed it to happen).  As a team, we are linking arms over the next year to begin to crack the code on this. The website, is just the beginning on creating a communication tool for parents. We are also emailing out a monthly email that will link to the website.

Here are some future thoughts:

1. How do we connect what we teach on the weekend to the parent/child? We are simplifying our teaching to one Core Truth and same scripture for all of Family Ministries (Birth-High School).
2. Connect with Parents after Camp
3. Parent Focus Groups
4. Parent/Child – Summit

What are your ideas? What are you doing?  I would love to hear from you.

I am not sure where your church is at when it comes to growth, building space, and resources.  Central . . . growth has been off the chart for the past 4 years.  Building space is maxed out. Resources . . . extremely limited.  So, the leadership got together and started thinking outside the box.  We have 5 services every weekend. 2 on Saturday night and 3 on Sunday. Sunday’s 10:20 and 11:45 services have been at "max" capacity (85%+) for the past 6 months. As you probably know . . . when a church runs out of seats at the most opportune service times, it will stop growing.  What we know is this . . .1) We will not be building another building any time soon. 2) We really do not think that 6 services is an option. (many reasons for this). 3) We are trying to reach every person we can in the Las Vegas valley.

So . . .we had to answer a simple question: How do we move people to Saturday night?

Here are several steps that we have taken . . .only time will tell whether or not we are successful.

1. Vision Vision Vision:  Yeah . . .a pretty logical step. Jud Wilhite
   (our Sr. Pastor) has sold the vision for people moving to Saturday night services.
2. Fun: All of our age specific environments have added a "fun" element to their programming. Just simple, age specific pieces that we only do on Saturday Night.  Jr. High now gives out free pizza.  FREE PIZZA.  Simple, yet has created a real cool atmosphere on Saturday night. Plus it is cheap!  Central Kidz has started "double point Saturdays".  If you attend a Saturday night service you get double points for bringing your Bible or bringing back your parent sheet signed. Our Preschool ministry has launched a "parents perk" program.
3. Family Event: Last night we showed the movie CARS after the last Saturday night service.  The movie was shown in our main auditorium . . .Blue Ray DVD . . .1080 P on a massive screen. It looked amazing.  What was even more amazing then that . . . we had over 1300 kids – parents – grand parents- stay for it.  It was an amazing "family" event . . . plus a great opportunity for families to check out a Saturday night service.

I could keep going  . . .but here is the point. There are simple things that you can do to create space and keep reaching unconnected people for Christ. Don’t let a building stop from fulfilling God’s mission of the church.

It doesn’t matter the size of your church – 100 -1000 – 10,000 . .. this principle is the same.  The formula for church is growth is the same.  You build/grow a church . . .1 life at a time.  If people feel personally connected, they will stay and be a part.  If people feel like they are just a part of the "masses" . . .then they won’t stay.

I received this email this week and i wanted to share it with you . . . the power of impacting "1".

I received an email with an "enlightening" attachment.  On the surface, it was one of those boring data attachments, but then I quickly realized how vital the "data" was.  We pulled this data from our Family Ministries Check-In software/data base.  We use Fellowship One
as our church database, check in, registration, everything software.
(If you have never checked it out, I would suggest it!  It has
revolutionized how we connect with "people".)

Take a look: Download weekend_attendance_by_household_checkins.pdf

How long did it take for you to see what I saw?  10 seconds?  12 seconds?  Eye opening isn’t it?!!  Our people come on average .  . . once a month.  (O.K. . . not exact scientific empirical data . . . but close enough.)  Seeing this, a host of questions/thoughts popped into my head. Here are a few thoughts .  .

1.  Weekend Programming:

• How does the data effect how we program our weekend services?  Seriously . . .if 2/3’s of our people come 1 time a month, then how do we streamline our programming?
• If we program a 4 week series and our "audience" only experiences one week, then what do we do with the other 3 weeks of material?

2.  Communication:

• How does the data change how we communicate to parents/ kids/ teenagers? 
• Does the marketing of events and core strategies (small groups, serving, reach events, etc.) take on a different look?
• How important is "repetition"?

3.  Increase Attendance:

• What can we do to increase people’s attendance? (or at least encourage weekend attendance)
• What if everyone took a step to attend "more often"? If the person who attends once a year decided to attend once a month?  If the person who attends once a month started attending twice a month?
• What does this say about people’s outside commitments?

What are your thoughts?