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September 2008 | |
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VISUAL PREACHING Church Marketing: The Discipleship FunnelBy Larry Witzel John was frustrated. He had put months into planning the church’s big annual outreach event, a “Concert in the Park” at the downtown green space. The church had rallied around the event. Hundreds of people from the community showed up. But that was six weeks ago, and now it seemed the whole exercise had zero impact—on the community or the church. “I just don’t see the fruit of our efforts,” he said. “This is the fourth year we’ve done this event, and I expected more results.” John made three mistakes, commonly made by churches across America. First, he never actually defined his goals and expectations for the event. Second, he put all his efforts into this one event, expecting that to have a lasting spiritual impact on people at different levels of spiritual growth. And third, he kept repeating the same activity, while expecting different results. Have you, like John, ever felt frustrated at the lack of apparent spiritual growth in your church? This article offers a simple process that has helped my own local church become more intentional in our ministry. This tool will help you visualize how each activity fits into the discipleship goals of your church—giving you an opportunity to be more intentional in your own activities. We’re in the midst of a series of articles on church marketing. As we’ve explored previously, secular marketing involves the activities leading up to an economic transaction, and is in many ways incompatible with the Kingdom of God. So our goal is not to shoehorn Kingdom activities into a secular marketing framework, but to find secular marketing practices that are based on biblical principles and redeem those for use by the church. Here, then, is our definition of church marketing: Church marketing is intentional, Spirit-led action influencing people toward becoming mature disciples of Christ. This month and next I’ll focus on that small word packed with meaning: action. This includes specific ministry activities, which I discuss today, as well as the promotion of those activities, which I’ll cover next time. Today I’d like to share a metaphor that has been helpful in my own ministry: the discipleship funnel. It’s based on a tool I used frequently in the secular business world, but is also a framework that has helped provide a strategic focus to the activities of my local church. The Traditional Sales Funnel Secular sales professionals often use a funnel to visualize the sales process for a company. Leads are generated any number of ways: broadcast advertising, direct mail, trade shows, seminars, and telemarketing are typical examples. Once the company makes contact with a prospect, they are cultivated through the sales process. At each step of the process, specific actions are taken by the company to lead the prospect to a successful economic transaction. 
For example, a product with a long sales cycle might have a sales funnel as shown on the right. It’s a funnel because some prospects drop away at each step of the process: some prospects already have existing suppliers; others find they are better served by a competitor; still others want the product, but don’t have the budget to pay for it. And of course, the end goal is a marketplace transaction with economic value. Steps in Discipleship In church marketing, we have a different goal in mind: we want to influence people toward becoming mature disciples of Christ. We want to give people the tools that they can use to cultivate a deeper spiritual life, tools that God can use to produce spiritual fruit. Again, let’s be clear. We don’t make disciples; God does. To use the farmer analogy that Jesus used, we plow the ground, fertilize, and plant the seed. Then “all by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head” (Mark 4:28). God works through us to create an environment where spiritual growth can happen. Indeed, the Apostle Paul wrote, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6). The text in Mark describes stages of growth: first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel, and then it’s ripe. The Apostle Peter also described a spiritual progression in discipleship, when he wrote, “Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love” (2 Peter 1:5-7). The Discipleship Funnel So let’s redeem the concept of a sales funnel for the Kingdom. Of course, I’m not the first to do this. I recently ran across a workbook that I used in youth ministry 20 years ago, Programming to Build Disciples. In it Duffy Robbins suggests using a funnel chart to visualize how youth ministry programs are developing increasing levels of commitment at all levels of discipleship. The goal here is to intentionally create environments that are conducive to transformational experiences. To be most useful, I would suggest that you create a funnel for each aspect of discipleship that God is leading you to nurture in this season of your church’s life: personal Bible study, prayer, worship, acts of service, small groups, evangelism, etc. The purpose of this tool is not to try and identify who might be your “prospects” and which stage each is in, but to identify key stages in growth for each discipline so you can intentionally create opportunities for individuals to move deeper in that area. 
To give you a better understanding of what I mean, let’s use the specific example of stewardship. To cultivate a biblical view of money, you might identify these stages of growth: knowledge, charitable giving, tithing, debt-free living, and simple lifestyle. There are two important things to note. First, these stages are obviously not necessarily linear. Some might adapt a simple lifestyle before debt-free living; others start tithing after already paying off their debts. But this is a progression that is likely to successfully lead one to the end point. The discipline of tithing is going to naturally lead toward debt-free living and a simpler lifestyle. Second, defining the end of the funnel is always going to be difficult. Simple lifestyle is the end of this particular plan, but it is not the true end point; the ultimate goal is 100% continuous surrender of your financial resources to God. I find that He has a way of moving the visible goal a little closer to Him every time I think I’ve reached the end. So as your congregation grows in this area, you’ll probably want to add more stages to the end of the funnel. But you need to start somewhere, and this will be adequate for our example here. 
Intentional Actions Once you have identified these stages, you get to the whole point of the funnel: planning deliberate activities that foster an environment where individuals can move to the next stage of that aspect of discipleship. You want to focus your ministry activities on moving individuals from one stage to the next. That’s the “action” part of our church marketing definition. So here are some actions you might take for each stage in a financial discipleship plan: Moving to stage 1, “knowledge”
Moving to stage 2, “charitable giving”
Moving to stage 3, “tithing”
Moving to stage 4, “debt-free living”
Moving to stage 5, “simple lifestyle”
Another approach might be to use a sermon series on stewardship as a launching pad for a financial class that covers the remainder of the stages. Programs like Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University or the Crown Biblical Financial Study provide an environment for intense, focused growth in this area. Strategic Intentionality The funnel metaphor is not intended to create another institutional program that propagates itself for generations to come. It’s also not meant to create a lock-step path that everyone must follow. What it does offer, however, is a framework for strategically allocating your efforts, helping you see where you can have the most impact on your congregation. It’s a tool to help you see the bigger picture beyond a single activity or event, in order to better understand how each activity fits into the ultimate goal of influencing people toward becoming mature disciples of Christ. Have you used a similar process in your ministry? How has it impacted your congregation? We’d love to hear from you. Send an email to info@sermonview.com. Previous articles in the church marketing series: Larry Witzel is Vice President for Product Development at SermonView. A former pastor, Larry has 15 years of marketing and public relations experience, and for the last 8 years has used his gifts to help church leaders communicate more effectively. Larry earned his MBA in marketing from the University of Washington, and lives with his wife and daughter in Vancouver, Wash. Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. |
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