8 Tips to Overcome Low Attendance Blues
It can be pretty discouraging to prepare for your Group or Team—communication, prayer, study—and when the time comes you look around and see only half the people have bothered to show up.
Especially if this has happened for a few weeks in a row. Or worse yet, maybe you launched a Group or Team and that is all you have ever experienced. You started or took over a group and it just never gained momentum. Since Group and Team leaders happen to be my favorite people in the world, I want to give you some words of encouragement and helpful tips in overcoming the low attendance blues:
1. Don’t take it personal (unless of course you should). That second part might not seem like a great encouragement…but we need to be honest first. Personally there has been a direct correlation between my excitement for leading my Team and attendance. Let this be the word of encouragement: Don’t fake it. If your heart is not in leading, take a break. Step back. Be honest with your Group. On the other side, if your heart is in it and attendance is down, it is not a reflection on who you are as a person. You may need to make some adjustments, but the ‘performance’ of your Group or Team is not related to who you are as a person—justified through Jesus Christ!
2. Celebrate the people there. The people who showed up for group time do not want to hear about the disappointment concerning who is absent when they took the time to be present. It is amazing what God will do with people that actually want to be there. Don’t minimize them, maximize them! Celebrate anyone and everyone who shows up.
3. Long-Term investment over Short-Term panic. Some leaders get so discouraged about attendance; they fold up shop a month or two in. While I understand it, that move is regrettably short-sided. Healthy things grow, but they rarely grow overnight. Christian community isn’t easy, but it’s worth it, so take the long view.
4. Consistently ask not only “Who?” but “How”. It’s easy to say you need to add people to your group. It’s even fairly easy to name who might be interested in your team. The hard part is figuring out how to get them there. Regularly take time to discuss together how you can get real people to your real group. Don’t be afraid to shake up your time together to accommodate new people.
5. Don’t be afraid to hit reset. One of the values of One Life Church is authentegrity. Just because your group may be going through a season of low attendance doesn’t mean you have to stop being a leader. Just be real and honest and say to the people that are showing up, “Hey, this is got me down. Let’s hit reset and figure this thing out.” Then you can reshape the group, change the group time, any number of things. Work with your site director and Campus Pastor to re-launch or refocus your efforts.
6. Leverage Connection Events. Often we fail to use Connection Events to their full potential. It does take some work to connect with people. Here’s three sub-tips: (1) Make personal contact with those who signed-up (2) Utilize the people in your group to help connect (3) Spend 2-3 group times following a connection event to focus on relationship building.
7. Always pull from existing relationships. Let’s be honest, people that sign up for your Group or Team at a Connection Event are most likely strangers. The initial excitement that accompanied putting their name on the line understandably wanes following every day. However, each and every person is a ‘Connection Event’ waiting to happen. They have hundreds of potential members they interact with every day, and probably a good 5-10 that are close enough that if they asked them to come, they would at least think seriously about it.
8. Introduce yourself to the Guest Services Team // Co-lead a Kick Start. This is a pretty easy one, but one we often overlook. People that come to the Connections Kiosk or join Kick Start are saying “I want to get connected!” If you really want a boost in attendance through new people, this is a perfect place to meet potential group members.
What other words of encouragement or helpful tips have you experienced that have helped overcome the low attendance blues?