said. “I used to be either intimidated or
angry about that church. In fact, I had
a hopeless feeling whenever I thought
about it. Not anymore. There are plenty
of people who need a church in our
community. We may not ever be as large
as the other church, but that’s okay.
God has both of our congregations
here for a reason.” • “Two of our lower months are March
and November. A week in March is
spring break for most our schools. Our
families take advantage of the break
to go out of town. November is both
fall break and Thanksgiving holidays.
We have a lot of young people in our
church, and they go visit family out of
town for Thanksgiving.”
Do you get the picture of one of the
major facets of the Outward Deluge?
The scrappy churches have a sustained
effort in reaching and inviting the
community. Let’s look at the second
of the two components, the seasonal
outward focus. • “It’s June and July. Those two
consecutive months stink. I think most
of our church members take one or two
weeks of vacation in those months. I
have just come to expect it.”
Seasonal Outward Focus in Scrappy
Churches
THE
Go get your attendance records.
Do you have them? Are you able to
see month-by-month averages for the
past couple of years? Maybe you have
records for three or more years. That’s
even better.
If you are looking at monthly worship
attendance averages, you will probably
notice something right away. There
are certain months when attendance
dips. There are other months when
attendance spikes.
Okay, if you aren’t a numbers nerd like
me, you might not have the precise
statistics available, but you know
intuitively when attendance will be
higher or lower than normal. For
example, church leaders shared with
me some of their lower attendance
months:
• “We actually have the entire summer
as our low months. We have a lot of
snow birds who have returned north,
and we have many of our year-round
church members who take vacations
in the summer to go to cooler climates.
Those two factors combined hit our
attendance hard.”
• “I can tell you the low attendance
weeks ahead of time when the NFL
schedule comes out. I look at the home
games for our team and know a lot of
folks will miss church because they
are headed to the game. And we have
several of our games with a kickoff
time around noon.”
Okay, you get the point. Now do the
opposite exercise. Determine what
your natural high attendance days are.
The three most common in churches
are:
• Easter. It’s the family reunion time
when all of the members show up on the
same Sunday. You even get the once-
or-twice-a-year attendees on Easter. I
Solutions • 7