Just read Peter Corney's little booklet The Welcoming Church in preparation for writing a welcoming manifesto for Tuesday Crossroads. In it, he said there are three times when new people commonly stop coming:
- In the first few weeks, if they weren't welcomed properly.
- After about six months, if they don't make any significant relationships and don't feel valued.
- After about a year, if they don't feel they are involved in the life and ministry of the church in some way.
2 comments:
I guess this comes under the second point, but people can drop out when they are contributing so significantly that they feel too "indispensible".
They seem to have no "way out" of certain ministry that is burning them out except by leaving.
This has been my experience in some churches recently.
Spot on Amy. That's a whole other very important issue. I may post on it sometime soon.
What do you think helps prevent this kind of burnout?
@ Crossroads we do 6 monthly reviews of all people in ministry roles and make the 12 month review an opporunity to 'renew' the role. That way it is 'opt in' rather than 'opt out'.
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