Following up on visitors
Hopefully your youth group has visitors. Whether they stumbled in off the streets or were invited by a friend, you need to have a plan in place on how to follow up with these visitors. If you do not follow up, you stand a good chance of not getting them to come back. By showing up, they show that they are interested in your ministry. Your follow up ensures that these students at least know what is going on and that you care about them.
INITIAL WELCOME
The follow up starts before a student ever comes through your doors. If you are not ready for new students, you make it a lot less likely that they will return in the future. So, be ready by having people to greet students, both old and new, as soon as they enter the door. Train your students to welcome visitors and make them feel at home. Make it easy for a student to feel comfortable. This includes making sure that every step, from the parking lot, to their seat is easy to take and does not make them uncomfortable.
Also, be sure to have a welcome card or some sort of sign in so you can get their basic information. You don’t need to find out who their 3rd grade teacher was or their deepest darkest sin, but you do need their name, address, phone number, parents name, school, grade, and who they came with.
When you meet the student, be sure to remember everything you can about them. Find a point of commonality – maybe you like the same sports team or have the same phone, whatever. That connection could be huge to bringing them back.
THE FIRST DAY
In the first 24 hours following a visit, you want to make contact. A handwritten letter (or at least a personal letter, not a form letter) goes a long way to impact a student because they rarely get mail. If you don’t want to do a letter, you can also send an email or a facebook message (assuming they have either one). Although, In a world of cheap connections like email or facebook a personal touch goes a long way so really consider writing that letter.
THE FIRST WEEK
During the next week, you have a more leisurely opportunity to make a second connection. I recommend making a simple phone call a few days before your next youth group night. This phone call will only last for a few minutes. Introduce yourself (maybe bringing up that point of commonality), thank them for coming, ask them how they are doing, and then invite them to the next meeting. Thats it. Don’t feel like you need to engage them in a deep conversation, just make another connection.
Also in the first week I’d encourage you to write a letter to the student’s parents. Let the parents know about your ministry, about yourself, and invite the parents to church as well. If you are able to get parents involved in church, then that greatly increases the chances the student will stay involved as well.
Over the next few weeks, you want to continue to follow up with a visitor. If they come back for a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time, have additional follow up methods (such as a post card, text, or facebook message) that are less time intensive but still let the student know you care. If a student does not come back, still send them a follow up to say you missed them and hope they visit, but don’t suddenly add them to your mailing list and send them everything. Its tempting to do, but spamming them will not put you in their good graces.
Also, I encourage you to develop a welcome packet to send sometime in that first month. What you put in your welcome packet is all up to you. It should accomplish several purposes though -
- Thank the student for coming
- Introduce the student ministry and what its about
- Introduce yourself and your leaders
- Give them incentives to come back
For our welcome packet, I included a letter, our “brochure” describing our ministry, a DVD, a coupon for our “snack shack” for a free candy bar or coke on their next visit, and a small pocket sized gospel of John. The DVD had a welcome from me and a picture slide show of our group from the past year. Whatever you include, it should give the visiting student a clear picture of your ministry and reasons to come back.
How you package your packet says a lot about your ministry and how you value visitors. If you give them a form letter filled with Christianese and confusing insider jargon, it won’t inspire students to come back. So be creative in the packaging. I’ve seen so many creative ways to package a welcome packet. In our ministry, since I had a DVD, I put it all in a DVD case and had a sweet cover on it. Then I put all our stuff inside the box. I’ve seen a church get one of the popcorn boxes and put all their info in. plus a bag of popcorn (with the tagline, “Thanks for popping by!” [groan] ). You can always go with the standard coffee mug (after all, coffee is making a comeback with teens). Be creative. Go wild. If its good and helpful, it will be memorable for the visitor. If its bad, it will still be memorable but for the wrong reasons.
CONCLUSION
You need to have a plan to make sure visitors want to come back. But always remember your motivation for wanting these students to return. If it is for any other reason than for these students to know Christ, then don’t bother. Let the desire to introduce them to Jesus fuel your passion to pursue them.
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