24 new groups in one week
This idea is a great idea if:
- your church is growing
- you are out of space
- you are in one Sunday School and one
service.
When I was in First Baptist Church Muscogee,
OK four years ago they were running a little above 600 in Sunday
School. They have had some teachers to get with it. They have a
great new pastor. Things are going well. People are excited.
Recently, they had a high-attendance day and set a a goal of 1000. 1200 people showed up. The
place was electric.
They got a big jump in attendance last March
when they started a whole new Sunday School and a whole new service.
They started 24 new groups in one week--eight adult groups, then
fully graded an entire new Sunday School. Attendance jumped suddenly
and permanently by 150.
In a way, I am not surprised to hear that.
When I was on church staff we grew from one service and one Sunday
School to four services and four Sunday schools. Every time we
started a new service and Sunday school we saw a significant,
immediate and permanent jump in attendance. My first book was about
multiple services and multiple worship services.
If you are in one service and Sunday school,
and you are growing and you are out of space, I would strongly
encourage you to give some thought to starting a new service and
Sunday School. The vast majority of growing churches consider
multiple services and multiple Sunday School an normal and permanent
part of church life.
Another cool thing they do at First Baptist
Muscogee is make a big deal out of the creation of new groups. This
is based on a couple of key leadership principles: 1) You grow a
Sunday School by creating new groups. 2) The role of leadership is
to define the win. At First Baptist, Muscogee, a big part of the win
is to create new groups. 3) Whatever gets rewarded gets done. We
don't get what we ask for; we get what we reward. At First Baptist
Muscogee, they honor groups for giving birth to new groups.
By the way, this would be a great thing to do
on an Association-wide basis. See my article on this at
http://www.joshhunt.com/mail172.htm
If you would like to talk to the staff at
First Baptist, Muskogee, I would like to invite you to join me for a
conference call.
If you would like to get on
the phone with the staff at First Baptist, Muskogee, and ask them any questions you might have, join
us for a conference call this Thursday, December 7, 3.30 Central
Time/ 4.30 Eastern Time.
1. Dial-In to your
Conference Number 1-712-432-3000
2. Enter your
Conference Bridge Number: 837072
If you would like to be made
aware of future opportunities like this, sign up for our distance
learning list at
http://www.joshhunt.com/learning.htm
If you or someone you know
has had similar success in doubling groups, I'd love to hear
your/their story. email me at
josh@joshhunt.com
Three Sunday Schools is not necessarily
better than two
You might be thinking, well, if two is good,
three is better. Maybe you are already in two Sunday Schools and you
are thinking of starting a third. It the reason is to create more
seats, I would think long and hard about that.
My wife has heard me explain this little piece
four or five times to hosts who were considering going to three
Sunday Schools. The last time I started into it, she interrupted me,
"Josh, I have heard you explain this 4 or 5 times and I still don't
get it." Now, lest you think bad thoughts about my wife, she is a
pretty smart cookie. It is just that this is one of those things
that defies logic. It looks like a magic trick of some kind. I was
in multiple Sunday Schools for years before I realized this: Three
Sunday Schools gives you 0 more seats in worship and 0 more seats in
Sunday school as compared with two Sunday Schools.
Now this is based on a few assumptions:
- You have a more or less equal capacity in
worship and Sunday School space
- You have more or less equal demand in
both worship and Sunday School.
- Musical style is a non-issue
- Most everyone who goes to Sunday School
goes to worship.
Now, in the real world most churches have more
people coming to worship than Sunday School Daryl Wilson of the
Kentucky Convention told me last week that it Kentucky it is about
50% more in worship than Sunday School. If this is true of you it
might be more accurate for the assumption above to read something
like this:
- You are running out of worship and Sunday
School space at about the same time. That is, whatever gap there
is in attendance between worship and Sunday School is also
reflected in a gap in available seats.
Let's imagine first that you have thee Sunday
Schools and three worship services. Let's imagine that the
auditorium and the Sunday school space both hold around 500. Let's
start in the middle. Let's suppose the schedule looks like this:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
|
a |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
b |
Let's think about the people
who are worshipping at 9.45. There are 500 of them. There can not be
more than 500. There are only 500 seats. This means that box a + b
cannot be greater than 500. So you might have 200 in the first
Sunday School, and 300 in the second Sunday School, but you cannot
have 300 in each. There is a constraining influence around the
middle hour. So, no matter how many empty seats you have in the
early and late hour in Sunday School, you can never fill them,
because there is no room for the people to go to worship.
so, this works:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
|
200 |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
300 |
Or, this works
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
|
300 |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
200 |
But this can't work:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
|
300 |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
300 |
And this will never happen:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
|
500 |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
500 |
Same thing the other way.
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
c |
|
9:45 |
|
500 |
11:00 |
d |
|
c + d cannot be greater than 500. It won't be
600. It won't be 500 and 500. It won't be 501. The total of the
outside two hours cannot be greater than the capacity of the middle
hour.
So, the most we can have is this:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
8:30 |
200 |
200 |
9:45 |
500 |
500 |
11:00 |
300 |
300 |
Total |
1000 |
1000 |
By going to three services and three Sunday
Schools, our maximum capacity is 1000 in Sunday School and 1000 in
worship.
Let's suppose I stay with 2 and 2
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
9:45 |
|
500 |
11:00 |
500 |
|
|
|
|
I can have 500 people in Sunday school who all
go to worship. I can also have 500 people in worship that all go to
Sunday School:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
9:45 |
500 |
|
11:00 |
|
500 |
|
|
|
Thus the total looks like this:
|
Worship |
Sunday School |
9:45 |
500 |
500 |
11:00 |
500 |
500 |
Total |
1000 |
1000 |
By only having two Sunday Schools, I can have
exactly as many as I can have with three.
A couple of other considerations. In some
cases, the demand or capacity in worship or Sunday School is way out
of kilter with the other. In this case we need three worship
services and two Sunday Schools, or the opposite.
When you run multiple services you can never
get things exactly even. In one Sunday School and one worship, they
speak of the 80% rule. In multiple Sunday Schools, it is more like
the 65% rule, because you can never get the services and Sunday
Schools exactly even. So you have extra seats at the early service,
but that doesn't do you any good because people are standing room
only in the second.
Also, the preschool and parking are going to
doubly crammed in double services. The auditorium is full of people,
some of who have kids in the preschool. At the same time the Sunday
School building is full with people, some of you who have kids in the
preschool. When both halves of the building are full, the preschool
is double-full. The solution to this is to put a limit on how many
children parents can have. It that doesn't work, you will need to
allocate a disproportionate amount of space to preschool. If you
feel like your preschool department keeps demanding more, more,
more, there is a reason. And, at the end of the day, there are
mathematical formulas for this too that have to do with so many kids
need so many square feet per person (40 sq. feet per child comes to
mind, but don't quote me on that, I am sitting on an airplane and it
has been a while since I looked at those numbers.) Point is, this
issue can be settled with an objective standard.
There is a similar problem with parking. When
the auditorium and Sunday School is full, the parking will be extra
full. Most people who come to church bring their cars. Other issues
to consider include hall space and traffic flow. I have been in
churches that actually designate hallways as one-way streets to help
with traffic flow. It would also help to move the 9:45 Service/
Sunday school back to 9:30 to allow lessons and sermons to go over
and still have time for people to get from here to there.
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