“Remember – discipleship is relationship. Church planting is relationship. You will never have church planting problems, only people problems.” – Pastor Dennis Sy
http://www.dennissy.com/the-more-personal/
I couldn’t agree more with Pastor Dennis when he wrote how ineffective giving out flyers, sticking posters and pulpit announcements when inviting people to church. Don’t get me wrong, they might actually catch people’s attention but what is the probability that they will respond to it?
I first discovered the effectiveness of establishing a relationship as a marketing strategy when I was a volunteer at the UNICEF. I became a volunteer for one of UNICEF’s education project immediately after graduating from college. My work basically was to stand in the middle of a mall and ask the people passing by to either make an onsite donation or make a monthly pledge to give certain amounts – most challenging work ever! I remember, my first time to do it was disappointing. I kept running after one person to another and sometimes even practically shouting: “sir/ma’am, would you like to make a donation?!” I got practically nothing! The second day, after half a day of running and shouting, I gave up! I left my post and started checking out shoes in one of the nearest shoe store. At the shoe store, I ended up in a conversation with one of the ladies who were buying a pair of shoes. To cut the story short, after a brief conversation on wedges vs. heels, I asked her if she would like to make a pledge for UNICEF and she did. From then on, I realized that people would actually stick around and listen to what I had say after having small talks with them that were not related to asking money.
When it comes to discipleship, I learned the importance of establishing a relationship first before anything else with my very own first small group. It was my first time to lead a small group and I was excited about it! My former small group or victory group was composed of 4 young ladies, ages 14-17, and three of them were from the community. Val and I chose the topic “How to Know God’s Will” as we think it’s one of the easiest topics to explain to our victory group (we initially started with a mixed group with Val leading but it didn’t work out).
Anyway, I planned it so well! I prepared a week in advance – I made a topic outline of the second chapter and flow of discussion (yes, they were nicely type written and printed in an A4 paper and in colored). I even practiced the night before our first meeting. On the day it self, I started our victory group with a quick hi, hello, welcome, etc as stated in my color coded script. Then I started with our main event – chapter one of “How to know God’s Will”. After a couple of minutes of talking, I noticed that two of the girls weren’t listening at all (and looked really bored) while the other two were looking at me with a “what the heck is she talking about” expression on their faces. I asked them if they have any questions and they all answered “none”. I started talking again and realized that it’s not working. So I put my booklet and script down, called their names and asked them: “who’s your favorite singer?” They all suddenly paid attention to me and said their favorite artists, songs, actors, etc. Then we talked about school: how annoying some of their classmates were and how difficult their teachers were. The college student started opening up about not being happy with her current course. They asked a lot of questions about me – how old I was, how long have I been a Christian, how am I related to Val, where do I live, what’s my work, where do I work, etc. We didn’t finish chapter 2 (in fact, we didn’t even reach the half of it) but we’ve established a relationship with one another. The following week, we finished our discussion on Chapter 2 (and yes, they were attentive from then on).
In addition to establishing a relationship with the persons when inviting them to church, I say it is also critical to maintain or even enhance that relationship in order for them to stick. Do not just be satisfied in making them attend a couple of services and pay no attention to what’s going to happen to them next. You don’t have to baby sit them but you just have to maintain (or enhance) that relationship you have with them.
