June 19, 2007
What is the Path to Commitment?
How does a person move from having never heard of your congregation to have a deep commitment? The Path to Commitment is an easy way to understand how people become members and what you can do to make it easier for people to become members. The Path to Commitment allows you to evaluate your process and identify your strengths and areas that need improvement.
Each of us has traveled a Path to Commitment. Have you ever visited a congregation and not returned? What happened that made you decide to return or not return.
Below is a diagram of a path to commitment. Each of the arrows in the diagram are interactions (or, in marketing lingo, impressions). Each subsequent interaction represents an increasing commitment on the part of the visitor. It takes upwards of 6-10 impressions for someone to become committed. And each subsequent 
impression requires more personal interaction on the part of someone in the congregation.
You can use the Path to Commitment to visualize how your congregation works.
- At the very top, how does someone become aware that your congregation even exists?
- Do people greet visitors or ignore them? (See below…)
- What are your strong points along the Path?
- Are there gaps or impediments in your Path to Commitment?
- Why do people exit the Path? Why do people stay?
- Are there events that you promote in the community?
Each one of these point is a long discussion. We tend to focus on the biggest, easiest chunks like a website. But why spend the money on advertising if you only lose them after their first visit.
My wife & I had moved into the area and were visiting congregations. On our first visit to one in particular, they had a great service that we enjoyed very much. After the service, we stayed for coffee and stood around, a bit nervous as we did not know anyone. No one talked to us so we looked about and found someone who had just gotten a cup of coffee and was not in a big group. After chatting with her for a few minutes, I asked her “How long have you been coming to this congregation?” Her reply, “Oh, this is my first time! It’s nice to meet people like you.”
People make their decisions quickly at each point, within seconds. It is important to take an integrated approach because what is the point of doing good advertising if they get turned off at the website or at the door? It is easier to think about point solutions such as direct mail or fix the website or get more greeters. But if you don’t have the whole plan together, you are wasting a lot of time and effort and losing many visitors who might have become committed members!
1 Comment on What is the Path to Commitment? »
June 24, 2007
Rob Molek @ 9:32 am:
Dean…
You really are correct with the first service impact, but it can be made very early, even before the service starts and certainly after the service. A few weeks ago we went to a UU congregation out of state to see what it would be like. It was a much larger church than ours, with more than 500 members. When we came in WE had to go to a table in the lobby to get neame tags. No one was at the door to catch us as new visitors.
We were given name tags and they did not even take down our names because we were visitors from another church. The person at the desk was very nice, but made one critical mistake. She did not introduce us to anyone else, and there were quite a few people around. She just suggested we go into the church and sit…30 minutes before the service!
We talked to a few people during the greeting time of the service for all of one minute. The service was very nice and when it was over we went into the large common room through glass doors for the social hour. It turned out the social hour for us was about ten minutes!
We wandered around and literally more than 100 people walked past us, many noticing our hand-written name tags. Not one person said anything to us. We did have one person who I had talked to during the greeting time in the service, who suggested we have coffee and then walked away. For more than ten minutes we were not greeted by anyone. I decided I would try to get something going myself by introducing ourswelves to the minister. We looked around for him and saw that he was still at the lecturn in the church talking to someone more tehn ten minutes after teh service. He never stood anywhere ner the exits after teh service.
We soon felt uncomfortable and left.
So what wa the missed opportunity here? Our son lives less than a mile away and we were going to encourage him to start attending simply because he needs to connect to some people int he area. We certainly never even mentioned it to him.
Every UU church must have well-trianed greeters! They need to know how to introduce themselves and the church. By the way, they should not say “You are new to our church?” when they first meet a visitor. Carol and I had been visiting every week for four months and were still getting asked that question. Instead, the best line is “I don’t think I have met you before. I have been with Chalice for two years. How long have you been coming?”
We also have developed a system for recognizing first-timers. We simply make sure that a formal nametag without the church logo is made during the week after their first visit. When the new person returns, they have a nametag without the logo. That way people know they have been there before.
We have many other ideas, but the most important is to get them talking to someone as soon as possible.
Rob