That may be the longest title for a post on my blog ever, and it probably needs a bit of explaining. Every week on Tuesday (plus or minus a day most weeks) I write a little blog post called “From Me to The G” and it’s basically my thoughts about the weekend worship experience that we just had at the church we’re planting in Albemarle, North Carolina, called The Gathering. If you get bored with this post, feel free to check out the church site to get a feel for what we’re all about.
Anyway, the point of the title is that I ran a little experiment over the week-end here that made me a bit of a blogging rock star for a couple of days and it reminded me of how important it is that we never over-promise and under-deliver as a church. On Friday, as I was scrolling through my wall on Facebook, I noticed a couple of my friends liked a link entitled “Look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people” that was accompanied with a picture of – you guessed it – a girl on the beach in a bikini. “Busted!” was the first thing that went through my mind (since I knew my friends had followed a link just to see more), and then I thought that a quick Google search might reveal the truth behind this obvious scam.
I clicked the first result and found a page saying it probably wasn’t a harmful scam or virus, but that it wasn’t wise to click the link on Facebook. The author made a comment about how his blog had blown up lately with people searching for answers about the lady on the beach, and suddenly I had an idea.
I would write a blog post basically saying nothing and title it “Look what this girl is wearing at the beach in front of thousands of people” and see what my blog stats would do. I posted it halfway through Friday and ended that day with 584 visitors (up from the 200/day I typically see).
Saturday was 1,250, Sunday was 1,143, Monday was 555 and today is trending back down to the 350 range.
The point? It’s not that hard to draw a crowd, but you better have something to give them or they won’t stay around.
What does this mean for The Gathering and any other church plant (or existing churches for that matter)? It means we need to have more invested in this thing than just great marketing and events to get people in the doors. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (thanks, Seinfeld!), but growth is better if it’s more than just a high water mark on a couple of Sundays in the calendar year.
Like “We Want Justin Shirtless Tour” on Twitter, the goal is for our attendance to trend upwards over time, not bounce up and down like a bobber in the water as fish nibble and leave.
At The Gathering, I’m thrilled to say that while we aren’t ashamed to count the numbers, we’re more than just about the numbers. We are committed to being good stewards of the people those number s represent.
