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VBS Follow up

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by JRG39402, Feb 27, 2009.

  1. JRG39402

    JRG39402 New Member

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    Hey, I am a 20 year old college student. My church has never really had an effective follow up process for VBS with all the unchurched families that come so I (hopefully not foolishy) asked if I could head up such an effort. Do any of you have any ideas or wisdom of how to implement this? So far the only idea I've come up with is assigning different familes to Sunday School classes and giving them three weeks to report back. What ideas do you have for this to go well?
     
  2. preachinjesus

    preachinjesus Well-Known Member
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    Intentional, personal follow up is the key for all things.

    More than likely (please forgive me for generalizing) your VBS won't see more than 100 unchurched families. This is actually a pretty easy number to handle for very intentional follow up.

    We usually have the different leaders send a handwritten thank you for attending note to the children in the week following VBS. Then our children's minister calls all the parents personally to see how things went for their children and thank them for sending them.

    Then we take the names and info in our adult division and assign them to appropriate small groups (life stage appropriate that is) and have the leaders follow up with them.

    Finally our senior pastor sends a letter to the families with a $15 gas card to say thanks for visiting our church.

    This is also pretty much how we follow up with visitors for our main services. (With some changes in proceedure of course.)

    Great idea to be thinking this far out!

    For us intentional, personal follow is key. We usually see a comeback (follow up Sunday visit) from at least 65% with little or no church background and have seen a full rentention rate (regular attendance, 2+ times a month for six months) of 25% for them as well. :)
     
  3. JRG39402

    JRG39402 New Member

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    Thanks. I love practical advice and ideas. This is helpful.
     
  4. Scarlett O.

    Scarlett O. Moderator
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    The children whose registration information reveals that they come from an unchurched family or that the child is lost receive a personal visit from members of our church.

    The Saturday after VBS, lots of church members come to church and we divide up the names and go visiting. Follow up visits are made and sometimes follow up phone calls, cards, and such are used.

    We average about 175 in VBS every year. We average about 2 families that join our fellowship whether through salvation or joining the church membership by letter.

    But we get a LOT of repeat children each summer and we get an average of 10 children who join Sunday School and come on a fairly regular basis. But their parents don't come.
     
  5. JRG39402

    JRG39402 New Member

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    I wish my church could get people willing to go visit. Sometimes I'm just mad at my church's unwillingness to go visit. But it is the Bride of Christ...
     
  6. preachinjesus

    preachinjesus Well-Known Member
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    For what it's worth...probably not much from me...visitation is a mixed bag.

    I'm not a fan of visitation in my context. It just doesn't work as well as other forms of appropriate follow up. I've done just about every form of assimilation and seen many different kinds used in a variety of contexts. Our ratios and retention rates are much higher through our system of intentional and personal follow up.

    As always we are happy to visit a family who requests it. But it is not the default place of our visitor follow up process.

    I don't spit on or decry churches who do visitation. If it works for you do it. We have found a route that really works with us.
     
  7. Dr. Timo

    Dr. Timo New Member

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    Our Church had the same problem in a way. We used the month following VBS to do various visitation nights. Any that wasn't visited I as the pastor took my wife and visited in the day if we could. I think timing is the key and the sooner you make that personal contact the better!!!:thumbsup: :wavey: :jesus:
     
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