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.

Rudy Guess

(Portions of this article were included in an earlier posting. We want to share the entire article from Dr. Rudy Guess, Senior Pastor)

During the first decade of this century, Gardendale-Mt. Vernon grew from 430 in two Sunday morning worship services to over 750 in three morning worship services.  This growth has taken place while I, (Rudy Guess) have been the pastor.  I was asked to share about three or four of the keys to this growth.

The First Key is our Diversity in Worship Styles. Early in the decade, Dr. Bill Easum challenged the church to offer a more Contemporary Worship experience starting somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30.  He suggested that the 8:30 Contemporary Service, which the church had begun in 1998, was too early to reach the truly unchurched.  This led to a complete change in Sunday morning.  Gardendale-Mt. Vernon now offers three Sunday morning worship experiences, each one unique.  It also offers two full adult and youth Sunday school hours.

The Sunday morning schedule now looks like this:

• 8:30
  • Sonrise Worship Celebration led by an Ensemble (key board, drums, bass guitar) with a mixture of contemporary, early praise, and hymns.  Some form of liturgy is used on occasions.  It is held in the Sanctuary.
  • Adult and Youth Sunday School Classes.  Most of our youth who attend Sunday School attend at this time and participate in our 9:45 worship.  Our largest classes for those who fall between the ages of 20 to 50 are at this time.
  • Children’s Worship held in our gym.
• 9:45
  • Crossfire Worship Celebration is led by a Praise Band.  The last couple of years this has become our largest service.  This is sometimes called the “Rock the Flock Service.”  The music is the popular contemporary Christian music that is being played on the radio.  The service is informal, high energy and held in our gym.
  • Adult, Youth and Children’s Sunday School Classes. Bill Easum suggested that unchurched people generally do not want to have their children in worship with them.  That led us to have Children’s Worship at 8:30 when many of their parents are in Sunday School and have Children’s Sunday School at 9:45 when most of their parents are in Crossfire Worship.

• 11:00
  • Traditional Worship in the Sanctuary. For some, this may seem a little more like a blended service. Organ and piano are the main instruments.  The Chancel Choir generally sings.  Instead of all verses of three hymns, the service generally includes a melody of two or three hymns and/or choruses along with some of the basic liturgy (Creed and Lord’s Prayer).
  • Children’s Worship

While we offer these three different styles of worship, the message is essentially the same in each one.  Whoever preaches on Sunday morning, which I do the majority of the time, preaches at all three services.  We hear that this is a strength in that everyone is on the same page.

The second key is Message Series that address life-faith issues.  We learned this from Adam Hamilton at the Church of the Resurrection.  Each year we begin with a message series that we hope will address needs within our congregation, as well as the unchurched community.

August is back to school month in our area.  We have found this to be another good time to offer a message series that addresses life-faith issues of the unchurched.  For us, August is “Reach” Month – August Camp Meeting Month, depending on the service.

We do not only use Message Series to address life-faith issues of the unchurched.  We have found that Message Series provide great ways to grow disciples.  Either during Lent or in the fall we will have a Spiritual Growth Campaign that springs out of the message series.  For example, last fall I wrote a Spiritual Growth Campaign entitled “Living the Good Life.”  It included daily Bible studies and Small Group experiences in addition to the Message Series.   This enabled the whole church to grow together, while providing an excellent opportunity to invite the undiscipled.

Here are some of the benefits we have found from developing worship around Message Series:

• Message Series provide week to week continuity and leads people to not want to miss a message in the series.
• Message Series help our worship teams in their planning of worship.
• Message Series are easier to promote in the community than a new message every Sunday.
• Message Series seem to catch the attention of seekers, while providing believers with a way to grow. Themes lend themselves to teaching to which seekers and new Christians readily respond
• Message Series allow the pastor to more deeply explore a life-faith issue over a period of time.
• Message Series draw interest within the community when they address something that the community is talking about.  For example: The DiVinci Code and the Chronicles of Narnia.

I have mentioned some of the Message Series we have done.  Here are some of the better attended series:

• Love, Sex and Lasting Relationships
• Living the Good Life
• Life’s Big Questions
• Keep the Change – Resolutions that Stick
• Amazing Grace – We did this at the time the movie was showing.
• Experience the Nativity – We also did this at the time the movie was released.
  • We have found movies to be good ways to offers a series that creates conversation within our community.  We do these in one of two ways:
    • We buy out a theater and encourage our congregation to invite their unchurched friends.  Members who invite unchurched guests get their guest tickets free.  We have been able to work it out so I have about five minutes at the end of the movie to share about the Message Series.
    • We have also purchased licenses in order to show the movie at our church.  For example, for the series, “Fireproof,” we have a Saturday night and a Sunday afternoon at the movies, complete with popcorn, candy and drinks.

Another Key to growth is something that some may consider a little out dated:  Direct Mail. Two or three times a year we use Direct Mail to promote the upcoming Message Series.  We generally insert the first of the year Message Mailer in our Christmas Eve Bulletins and then mail them to reach our community the week before the series kicks off.  We cover all or part of 4 to 8 zip codes when we do these mailers.  We have found “Outreach” ministries to be a good source for these mailers.

One other key that I was asked to share about is what we call our Evangelism System.  Our Evangelism System helps us to be very intentional about our follow up with guests in our worship services.  We have even provided training for our District and some other churches in our Conference on our Evangelism System.  Years ago I learned that it generally takes a minimum of five touches to move a person from being a first time guest into membership.  Our Evangelism System helps us be very intentional in creating these touches.

Here is the outline of our Evangelism System:

• Ushers hand out Friendship Pads during the greeting time in each service.
• Computer Teams collect those pads and enter attendance into our data base.  This is done after the first two services and along with the offering at the 11:00 services.  These Computer Teams develop first time guest visitation cards, which are ready by the end of the 11:00 service.
• First Time Visitation Teams visit all first time guests on Sunday afternoon, taking them a gift and information on the church.
• All first time guests also receive a note from the pastor and a telephone call from our lay calling team.
• All first time guests are placed on the mailing list to receive the “Connection” the church newsletter.
• All Second Time Guests receive a visit from our Director of Outreach or a staff person assigned by him.
• Four Weeks after their initial time in worship every guest receives a telephone call by a lay person.
• Six Weeks after their initial time in worship every guest that has shown some interest in the church is contacted by our Discipleship Ministries.
• Eight Weeks after their initial time in worship every guest is contacted again, whether or not they have been back in worship.  This connection is made by our cultivation visitation team or a telephone team.
• Fourteen Weeks after their initial time in worship every guest is contacted again, whether or not they have been back in worship.  This is done by our cultivation team.  At this point, if a person has not shown any real interest we remove them from the computer and wait for them to make the next move.  This includes removing from the mailing list.
• If at Fourteen Weeks a person has shown interest in the church, they are moved from visitor to prospect in the computer.  These persons are invited to “Exploring Membership,” which is our new member class.  We continue to keep track of their attendance and begin to treat them like members.  If they miss three Sundays a lay caller will check on them.  If they miss five Sundays, either a staff member or cultivation team will check on them.

These are four of the major reasons for the growth of Gardendale-Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church over the last decade.  If you would like to discuss any these ideas, you can contact me at rguess@gmvumc.org.

Rudy Guess, Senior Pastor

Gardendale-Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church – http://www.gmvumc.org