The Residual Effect

So as a church planter I've been learning elements of growing people. One of the neccessary actions of those who follow Christ is that we be proclaimers of the Kingdom of God. How that plays out in a different context than first century Judaism is a little different, but the mandate is still there. One thing I have observed over the years is that people need tools at their disposal to do that work. So we've been working on leveraging Big Days. A Big Day is a day of focus on inviting people to SRC. Most often they are Friend Days. On Friend Day our service is very similar to our normal gathering, but certain areas are tweaked to make the morning accessible to a first time guest.

There are other Big Days, for instance Easter is going to be a Big Day. We're inviting friends and especially families with children, and having an Easter egg hunt. It's going to be great. I've already heard of people that are going to be bringing guests to Easter. I'm really looking forward to it.

In addition to learning how to make Big Days special, I am also learning about the timing and pacing of these focuses. We planned our first two (of four) within a month and a half of each other. The reason for that is that we're hoping that the friends we connected through the February friend day will also help us invite for the Easter Big Day giving us a better result. We'll see how that works but that's the theory at least.

And finally the residual effect. I have really enjoyed seeing first time guests almost every week since Friend Day. The reason is what I call the residual effect. When we have a focus of inviting to a certain day we don't always get our friend there that day. But the fact that we invite them usually pays off at some point down the road. I'm sure the family that had guests there yesterday for the first time was glad that they invited them four weeks ago. It's the law of sowing and reaping. When we sow, with God's help it will produce a harvest.

--Ben