Entry Point Events: Connecting with New People in Your Community

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As we approach one of the biggest Sundays of the year, I am reminded that on Easter church participation and engagement nearly everywhere will triple the weekly norm. We are three times more likely to receive first-time guests, as people who’ve never walked through the doors of our churches will choose to visit us. I rejoice, knowing that Easter still has the power to draw people together and into the church! However, for an overwhelming majority of churches, the rest of the year tells a much different story.

Overall participation and engagement in church have been in steady decline for decades. It has become increasingly challenging to draw people (particularly new people) into an experience of God through the church. The days of “if you build it, they will come” are long gone. Therefore, as church leaders, we must create new spaces, gatherings and events that meet people where they are, in ways that connect with them.

In recent years, we have increasingly focused our content and programming on the felt needs of our surrounding community. We’ve spent considerable time collecting data through surveys, interviews and connections, all with the hope of understanding the most pressing needs facing our community. Then we aimed to design content, gatherings, events and programs that speak directly to those felt needs. We call these “Entry Point Events” – outward facing events, focused on the needs of the community. Our aim is to meet a whole bunch of new people by extending an invitation they are more inclined to accept, simply because it is something to which they can relate and speaks directly to their most pressing need.

Here are some Entry Point Events we’ve hosted:

• A Screen Sanity Summit – an evening gathering at the beginning of a new school year, designed specifically for parents and students, centered on our relationships with technology, social media, and one another. 37% of the people who attended were first time guests.
• Reset – a one-day event during the first full week of January that focused solely on the power of living with renewed purpose and how to make the next year the best year yet.
• Determined – a two-day event designed for men, led by a pastor and businessmen, centered on leadership, friendship and resilience during what is the loneliest month for many men (after the Superbowl and before March Madness). More than 25% of the men were first time guests.
• Finding Your Purpose – a one-day gathering in September for people over a certain age, focused specifically on how to make the second half of life more purpose-filled. We chose this time because Fall is when most people in this demographic are eyeing retirement or a career transition. We invited professionals, advisors and other speakers to share their experience of finding meaning and purpose through both work and life outside of work.

Each of these events was:

• Created with our community’s felt needs in mind.
• Practical, without any barriers to entry; no pre-requirements.
• Primarily marketed externally, throughout the broader community (not simply inside the walls of the church through church communications).
• Designed with immediate next steps for everyone in attendance to consider.
• Built with a plan for specific, intentional follow-up, in the hope that we might lead new people into a discipleship journey of knowing, loving, and serving God.

Though these events are created to meet and connect with as many new people as possible, we soon found our “church members” are just as interested in them and are more likely to grow in their faith by inviting their friends and neighbors (many of whom are non-religious or nominally religious).

We view Entry Point Events as the wide end of a funnel, giving more people their first Resurrection experience. They have been so effective both in drawing new people into our church spaces for the first time and in boosting overall participation and engagement in our traditional programs (meaning, they are drawing existing members deeper in their discipleship journey), we have begun to re-think how we look at programming across all our ministry areas. Yet, whether we’re talking about missions, student ministry, kids or worship, it always starts with listening, seeking to understand our neighbors and the pressing needs facing others in our community.

I wonder what your community needs. How might God be calling you to meet your community where they are in ways they can better relate? And how might you begin to create entry point events around their needs and connect them to your ministry? Most importantly, what are the hoped-for next steps coming out of each one of those entry points that could lead new people into a journey of faith with your church?

After the excitement of Easter fades, what new spaces, gatherings or events will your church create to meet new people in your community where they are and connect with them?

Scott Chrostek is Executive Director of Ministries and Programs across all Resurrection locations. He is active as a coach and mentor to church planters across the country and spends a lot of time hanging out in coffee shops writing sermons, building relationships and connecting in the community. He and his wife, Wendy, live in Prairie Village, Kansas with their two children, Freddy and Poppy.