This is part of a series of interviews with pastors of churches whose attendance has grown 20% or more in 5 years. We hope this series will be a resource of ideas to help increase worship attendance at your church.

“Let’s be Honest”
The easy thing would be to attribute Safe Harbor’s worship attendance increases to my dynamic leadership and preaching. Unfortunately, I have a conscience. The increases are more likely due to our efforts to provide diversified, worshipful experiences each week.

In the two years post-Katrina, at least 20 to 30 out-of-state mission team members stayed at the church and worshiped each week.

Safe Harbor took steps to upgrade its worship music by hiring a piano virtuoso, a great choir director for the load of talent this church has, and a worship leader/musician/songwriter extraordinaire. We have also set up a rotation of laity to read Scripture and present “A Time for the Child in All of Us”.

We added a second morning service for overflow reasons and continue to upgrade our worship technology. We use lots of movie clips, worship loops, lights, sound, catchy camera angles, etc. We offer no “traditional” worship service, which makes us stand out in the Coastal South. We employ a full worship band each Sunday morning, with guitars, bass, drums, keyboards, and even harmonica of late. We offer everything from classical piano to Southern Gospel to Lynyrd Skynyrd on Sunday mornings. We go to great lengths to evaluate every aspect of each worship service for effectiveness.

We make a big deal out of special events and occasions. New member banquet Sundays, Renewal of wedding vows services, Drama events, Confirmation Sunday, Mother’s day, Father’s day (we pass out root beers and moon pies to all of our fathers!), Promotion Sunday, Grandparents’ day, Vision Sunday (we don’t do Homecoming), Blessing of the animals, Children’s Sabbath, Laity Sunday, All Saints Sunday, etc.

We also track worship attendance trends in all 3 of our Sunday services and Wednesday night service (YTD 8:45 is 31, 10:30 is 249, 6:00 is 86 and Wednesday is 126).  As Leo Mazzone said, you can’t manage what you can’t measure!

I tend to preach sermon series (2010 series:  Biblical Scandals (4 weeks), Repent, America! (5 weeks), Leading Causes of Life (4 weeks), Things God Hates about the Church (5 weeks), Your Theological Questions Answered (4 weeks), etc.

In closing, my greatest challenge (personally) is to rejoice over whoever is there more than I mourn those who are not. 22 years under appointment and I still have a long way to go!

Rev. Tom Potter – potters@dixie-net.com

Church website: http://www.safeharborumc.com