Transcript for "An Intentional Easter: Planning with Purpose":
Alright. We are live. Hey, everybody. Welcome. We're so glad you're here. It's Ash Wednesday. We know that it is a big day, so we appreciate your time. We're gonna get started here in just a minute. But while we are waiting, if you would we've had a few of you have said hello in the chat. But if you haven't already, let us know where you're tuning in from today and your role if you could. And then, I don't know, maybe we should do another fun little icebreaker. Maybe tell us your favorite Easter candy even, though it's not guess of this. I love that. Yeah. It's like the it's it peeps or jelly beans. Well, those Reese's, eggs, girl. Don't you forget the Reese's egg. goodness. they're the best. Yeah. Katie likes the peeps. I love it. Jelly beans are good too. Oh, the Starburst jelly beans. Yes. It's gotta be the Starburst ones. Those are so good. Awesome. So glad you're here, friends. We were notified through a social media post that, like, hey. Why would you have this webinar on Ash Wednesday? And I we honestly, at that point, it was too late to move it. So, again, we appreciate y'all being here, and we are officially forty days to Easter. Right? Yeah. Exciting. So yes. It's crazy. I know. Chocolate eggs, Reese's eggs. Yeah. Come on with it. Now everyone's craving Reese's. Now there's also the whole debacle around fresh peeps or stale peeps. Right? Oh, what? That's a thing. Did you know a small peach? No. That's gross. CVS puts them on the back on the back aisle? Like way. yes. You can buy them stale from CVS. What? Yeah. Okay. That's outrageous. It's a whole thing. Dang. That sounds horrible. It does sound horrible. Yeah. It with you. Like, way better. like I don't love a regular I mean, I maybe I should give them a try. I don't know. But, anyway okay. Y'all, thank you again for letting us know where you're from and and who you are. We truly appreciate you taking time out of your day to always join us for webinars. It is encouraging to us that the information that we provide to you is hopefully valuable. We have a lot of wonderful content prepared for you today, and I am so grateful for our cohosts. There's not often three of us, so, hopefully, we won't go long on time because we're all passionate about this and excited to share information with y'all. But just a couple of housekeeping things before we get started. You all have all have found the chat, obviously. There's also another tab right next to the chat that says q and a. That is where we would like for you to put your questions. I'm gonna repeat that again. We would like you to put your questions in the q and a, and here's why is because my friend Philip is working behind the scenes. He will be answering your questions, and it's a lot easier for him technically on the backside of this platform to answer those questions if they're put in the q and a tab. If you put it in the chat, there's a chance we won't see it, and there's a chance we won't get it answered for you. So please do that, and John or Philip will get those questions answered as quickly as possible. Also, we're going to be doing a poll at some point, two polls during this presentation. That will also the poll will also be within that same chat Q and A. You'll have a new tab at that time that says poll. So we'll remind you of that once the time comes. The other thing that I wanna make sure to call out because this is always the number one question we get, yes, this webinar is being recorded, and you will receive the recording tomorrow. Your post webinar email will have lots of wonderful resources for you, including the recording. You can forward that along to other team members who missed today. That'll get to your inbox twenty four hours after this event today. So you should get it, depending on your time zone, like, four minutes ago tomorrow. So yeah. And if you forget and you ask us again, that's okay. We still love you. But, yes, this is being recorded. So with that, let me also, I I'm driving slides a little differently today, so I appreciate your patience. I'm gonna be jumping from one screen to another. So if I'm a little slow to to change the slides, that is why. Belinda, glad you found the chat, girl. Welcome. Okay. So quick introductions. My name is Jess Moore. I have been at Ministry Brands for seven years, and I have done a few webinars. So, hopefully, if you've been on a webinar before, we have met. I am super excited today to introduce two people that work here at Ministry Brands. They're wonderful human beings, both at work and outside of work. They are pouring into the church, and I love that. And that's why I asked them to be on this webinar with me today, because they're gonna bring product knowledge to you all and and just efficiencies and ways you can leverage tools to make Easter weekend and beyond easier for you. But, also, they understand intimately the needs of what it what it takes to put together a big long weekend like Easter with additional visitors, guests, kids activities, all the things. And so I'm very welcome or I'm very excited to have them here. Keira, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself first? Sure, thank you. And Jess is also a wonderful person both inside work and outside work as well. So we appreciate you Jess. My name is Kiera Brown. I am the senior director of product management here at Ministry Brands. I oversee quite a few products both in our core space, which is where our people platform lives as well as our protection side of the house. But outside of work, I'm also very involved in church. I am the children's director at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Florence, South Carolina where I live. I've been the director for my church for a number of years now. And before that served very regularly across across the organization as well. So I kind of hold a lot of hats. Right? I I oversee about 200 children on on on a Sunday. So I hope that all of the information we'll talk about today will be enlightening both from a product perspective as well as from a children's ministry perspective and church as a whole as well. Let us know in the chat if you're the children's minister at your church or or wear that hat in addition to other hats. Let us know, and we'll show you a little bit of love. So, Jonathan, tell us about you. Yeah. For sure. Super excited to be here. Thanks for having me as well. Yeah. Jonathan, I'm a manager of our product management team. So I oversee, a couple areas of product, specifically around digital engagement and AI and accounting. So super excited to be able to bring that knowledge to this webinar as well. In addition, my wife and I started a church about five years ago, and so we served as the lead pastors of a church that man, it's really hard to start a church plant. It's it's kinda weird to say. It's not a church plant anymore, but we started as a church plant, and it's been five years strong. So, yeah, I kind of get to blend both areas of my career into this, and I'm super excited about that. You're, Awesome. like, considered an old church now, Jonathan. Yeah. I get I guess so. That's it might as well be. Five. years and counting, you're a whole hand, so you're you're considered old at this point. That's right. That's right. a big deal these days? I feel like. So congratulations, Jonathan. I love that. Okay. Let's quickly talk about why Easter planning matters maybe more than other weekends. So, obviously, this is not this is very known fact that Easter is often the highest attended weekend of the year, Right there neck and neck with Christmas. Many guests attend church once a year. Yes. Most many guests attend this service only once a year out of obligation or tradition. Right? Like, grandma told me to be here, or, you know, maybe I we did a podcast on this recently, Kendall and I, and and maybe maybe these are families that have a special needs kiddo that otherwise would just tune in from home, and they're attending for the first time. Maybe someone is, you know, just unable to walk, it's just easier. So you're getting a lot of first, not maybe not, you know, first time visitors, but even like, I guess they'd be first time visitors even if they're online members or whatever. But this is a big deal. For those folks that don't normally ever go to church and they're coming to church literally just once a year, this may be their once a year exposure to Jesus, and that's obviously the most important thing. And so planning well will just remove those distractions. Your church and their experience there, the smiles they see when they walk in, the ease of being able to find things like kids ministry or the restroom, not having to ask a million questions to know where they're going or what they're doing. Those things matter, because, you know, people usually decide whether they're gonna come back to a church or not pretty dang quickly. So you want to be very thoughtful in your preparation. It does matter. It matters every single weekend. So a lot of these things, you can actually take back and use throughout the year anyway. But thinking through logistics at Easter, we just have to up the ante a little bit because we got a lot more people usually. Okay. So we're using something called the Easter planning framework. In full disclosure, this comes out of an ebook that we've released, and it's fantastic. It is a lot more detailed than what we're gonna cover today. We just don't have enough time to go through everything in as much detail, obviously. You will receive the complete ebook in your post webinar email tomorrow. So if you're interested in diving in to the whole thing or even parts of this framework, you will be able to do that. But for today, we're just gonna cover the six top things, which is vision and goals, promotion and communication, volunteers and logistic logistics. Can I get an amen on volunteers? Worship experience, generosity, and new guest follow-up. So Kira and Jonathan and I are gonna kinda tag team talking through these things, but I'm really here to listen and learn from them based on their experience in not only their role at Ministry Brands, but almost more importantly, in their roles at the church. I volunteered in kids ministry. That is the extent of my church leadership involvement, and I loved it. We had four and five year olds, and they're hilarious and completely unfiltered. But I'm no longer serving in that role right now. We're kinda transitioning into a new role. So, really, they're the ones that can speak from expertise, on the planning side of the house. Philip too also is super involved in his church. He's he's answering your questions behind the scenes. And so, Philip, if you've got anything, you just throw it into the chat. Okay. So Jonathan, take us take take it take it away with this first slide. Yeah. For sure. So as Jessica said, Easter isn't just, like, another big Sunday. It truly is a moment where many people are gonna walk into the doors of your church for the very first time, or maybe the only time all year. And so we what we call people at our church is CEOs. They're Christmas and Easter only. Right? They're only gonna come to church on those days. So we we have to start with vision. If we don't start with a vision for our Easter event, we're just gonna do that. We're going to manage an event instead instead of leading people. And. so what I ask our team and what I ask myself every year is, what is God leading us or what is God inviting our church to focus on this Easter? Maybe maybe it's outreach. Maybe maybe it's hope. Maybe it's it's healing. Maybe it's community. But what burdens do you really feel for your city right now? And take those to God and kind of ask God to give you a theme or direction for this particular Easter Easter Sunday. And so vision's super important. Yeah. No. I was just I was agreeing with you. That's so great. I. think too I mean, we're getting to this, but one of the action items is prayer and clarity, and that's a very. specific thing to be praying for instead of just like, dear Lord, we pray that Easter weekend goes well. Like, that that. prayer, Jonathan, that you just mentioned is is really cool and really specific. I love that. It is. And and so it's not just creative. Right? So, like, I think oftentimes, we can get stuck in this, like, creative mindset. How creative can our Easter services be? How creative can we get that weekend? But this is very directional. And so our theme is incorporated in everything we do that Sunday. Right? So it's not just the messaging that we have online, but it's also incorporated throughout our kids' ministry. It's incorporated through our our first impression experience. It's incorporated through the worship set and and the message. And so we really try to have a clear theme that that prevents a scattered experience Mhmm. for our guests. And, yeah, I mean, like I said, first first impressions matter. You said this, Jessica. Guests are really deciding very quickly if they're going to come back or not. Something that we share with our team is that guests choose within seven minutes of pulling into your parking lot if they're gonna come back to your church or not. So think about what happens in the first seven minutes. That's before the preaching. Right? Oftentimes, if they're early, unless they're late every Sunday, but they decide, you know, before the worship experience. And that's why first impressions are so so important. And what I like to ask our team is, who's the one person that you've been inviting to church for a very long time, or who's the one person that maybe is in your family that hasn't met Jesus yet? Right? What if this was the one Sunday that they decided to come to church? What would you want them to hear? What would you want them to experience? What would it look like for them? How friendly is your first impressions team? Yeah. And then exactly exactly that is success is more than just attendance. It's taking that a step deeper. How many salvations were there? Were next steps clear? Were there conversions on next steps? How many volunteer touch points did you have? What was the impact of our Easter Sunday? As opposed to as pastors, we can do this. We get stuck in the, oh, we had the the highest attended Sunday ever, right, Right. and it's easy to to get excited about numbers, but what is the impact that those numbers had in our church? That requires a different level of reporting and a different level of preparation to understand those things. Right? So, like, how would you know how many salvations they are? I'm asking theoretically. I know how you would know. But, theoretically. speaking, are you prepared to collect that information in a way that you can then turn around and say, okay. Now we can define collective success for the weekend, not just attendance is an easy one to track. Right? Like, that. it's a obvious. one. It's something that's usually already built in. So in addition to attendance, what else should you be preparing to report on in advance? Right? You can define success after flippantly and just like, it was great weekend. Everyone sang on key, and we had lots of people ask Jesus into their heart. But if you're if you're not prepared to actually collect numbers on that, then, yeah, you're just kinda, yeah, just kinda shooting from from the hip there. So, yeah, that's great. So we talked about action items starting with prayer and clarity and then align staff volunteers and messaging around one vision. Jonathan, any I any suggestions on how to align your staff volunteers and messaging? Yeah. That's I I think you gotta start early. Right? And so, like, we're at a perfect time frame right now to start having these conversations. Right? And not doing them all by yourself, but having conversations on how we're gonna define success, how are we gonna define the the vision and the theme for for our Sunday. What we do at our church is we we have this big creative planning meeting right around this time. In fact, we'll be doing it next week at our church and just deciding what is the direction and theme for this for this year. So I've been praying about it. I've been asking God about it for our church, and I believe he's led us in a certain direction. So the first thing I'm gonna do is create buy in with with our our team, our staff, our leaders, and and go from there. Love it. Perfect. Yeah. So so, we yeah. Go ahead. nope, that's okay. I was just gonna tag team off of what Jonathan was saying around establishing that vision. Right? So in order to establish that vision and and I'm glad you said what you said, Jonathan, around your church is doing this next week because I I was feeling a little behind. Like, I haven't done all of the prep needed for Easter for myself or or in our church, but I come to find out our church is also just beginning that process. Right? So in order to in order to establish that vision, you have to first take a step back. Right? Prayerfully consider what what is it that we want this to to look like for this year? Where is God leading us, etcetera, like you said. But then you have to plan based on what you know. Right? So you have to create that overarching kind of framework for yourself based on, hopefully, as little guesswork as possible. So one of the things that's really important, I think, are metrics. As you know, from a children's perspective, from a non children's perspective, it's really important to be able to back up and say, what did Easter service look like last year? What did Easter service look like the year before that? How well did we plan last year? What were our, you know, here in software development, we do retros all the time. Right? What went well? What didn't go well? What are we gonna stop? What are we gonna start? You know, those sorts of things. And I take that into my everyday life. Right? What went well with this children's event? What didn't go well? How would we improve this for next year? And I think that's the same for Easter. Because every year, as we're listening and approaching what we would think or, you know, what God would have us to do. Right? We also have to discernment. How are we going to make this the best Easter event that we can for for the church, for the children, etcetera? So metrics help you plan with intention with as. little as possible. That's kind of my mentality on it. And the example would be attendance. Right? How many how many people attended your Easter service last year and the year before that, and how can you that allows you to better prepare for this year. So I think the image on the screen here is a is a great example of how our people, platform gives you visibility into that reporting. Right? It it helps you to make those confident decisions. So looking at things like attendance from last year or the year before that, it's not just, okay. Well, we need to plan for attendance for this year. It's so many more things than that. Right? It's Yes. how many staff do we need to have on hand for the day? What is our seating need to look like? What is our kids' environment need to look like? How many volunteers do I need to recruit for for children's ministry for for Easter Sunday? Mhmm. What is check need to look like? If if Easter is one of those events that's typically a a really big boom for your church, the flow might need to look different for that Sunday. Right. Yeah. And then, you know, all sorts of things. Attendance is just an example. Right? But it it helps to looking at those trends, looking at those metrics, using the software to help you make those informed decisions will. help you create that vision that that will last you through the season. Right? Yeah. Yeah. We do we did have a question, Michael. You asked what product is being displayed currently, and this is our people software, CHMS. And, again, we just captured one screenshot here to give you just a quick view. This is one of the reporting it's kinda like a dashboard, I guess, but you can just see over time. It's a it's a easy visual report, if you will. But you can within the people software, you can record how many salvations you had, baptisms, if you're tracking that. Like, you can track very specific metrics all year round so that you can go back and look. So, like, for example, understanding how many people, were baptized last year or salvation. Right? Let's go with salvation. That might be it. Well, both are important. Right? That allows you to prepare. Our church, when people do accept Christ, we have something for them as they're leaving. We have some resources to make sure that they can start their journey with Jesus, understand what that looks like. And so if you have some indication of the number of salvations you had last year, you at least have some sort of baseline of how many of these takeaway kits, Jesus kits, you need to have prepared for people this weekend. Same thing with baptism. Baptisms take a minute. You wanna be respectful with those and make sure people have a moment to cry, celebrate. However, you know, wanna feel in that moment, you wanna give time and freedom for families to experience that too. You don't wanna rush through. If you have some sort of idea, if you plan on doing baptisms, if you have some sort of idea on how many people did that last year, participated last year, you know, act well, that's not a good example. You'll know how many people are getting baptized that day, but you guys know what I'm trying to say. Understanding those metrics, what happened last year, gives you a baseline for what's gonna happen this year. Hopefully, you're expectant for even more, and you will prepare accordingly. So, yeah, anything else on this before we move on, guys? I will also say, I use a metric in our children's ministry for any special occasion that is not I don't just look at the children's ministry headcount, so the check-in number. for that for that Sunday compared to previous years. I. also look at the the metric that our church records for, like, the number of people that were present. Our church is kind of big, so they use a couple of things, right, if they gave, if they checked in, etcetera, Sure. to to come up with we had, you know, 700 people present. Yes. They also count empty seats and things like that. So I take that ratio because there might be more adults in attendance one year and more and less children, you know, Uh-huh. etcetera. I kind of look at a ratio year year over year, and it really helps me to I'm I'm gonna be honest, not over prepare. Wanna. I don't you never wanna be underprepared and not have. enough. Also, never. wanna have 300 kits left over that you have to. then figure out what to do with. Right? Because then. that's not a good. steward of your resources. So I struggle. with that balance, and I have found that using using that ratio of children to adults and comparing that over special occasions really helps. Yeah. That's so smart, Kira. Yeah. I'm an overprepare when it comes to, like, meals, Yeah. Thank, you. everybody's gonna need three helpings. It'll be fine. Drive my husband crazy. Okay. We're gonna do our first poll, y'all. I'm gonna go ahead and launch this. You'll see it in the tab over to the far right. You should also have a little notification bubble at the bottom of your screen. So jump in there and engage with that. Let us know how would you describe your church's current approach to managing Easter planning, people, and communication. So this is kinda talking overall. What are how are you actually facilitating this? And, obviously, we have talked about metrics and the importance of that. And maybe you're on here and you're like, we literally have people sign in on a piece of paper, and that's fine too. As long as you're tracking something, you go. If you would like to up your game a little bit and have something a little bit more technical to be able to look at those metrics and you don't already have a wonderful option, hopefully, today, you can kinda see some of the functionality in our platform and you feel encouraged and curious. If so, let us know. Otherwise, just whatever what takeaway from this webinar, what you'd like, what you need, and leave what you don't. But we are here really mostly to help you with kind of some thought leadership ideas, but, obviously, our product does facilitate a lot of what we're talking about today. So, looks like we have using multiple tools that don't connect as the highest vote count, And that is another benefit here at Ministry Brands is our products all talk to each other, and so giving will automatically push into the CHMS. You can set up some workflows and all sorts of fun stuff to be able to to have all of those systems working together. We're gonna talk through multiple platforms, and they all already connect. So, if you're interested in hearing more about that, let us know. But, otherwise, we do have some folks still manual, and I love that for you. But I think that it might be helpful to your staff if you would consider doing some of that in, a platform. But, yeah, guys, this is this is a a great opportunity to kinda learn a little bit more about that if you're interested. We still have a little bit of time we can help you out before Easter hits. But thank you so much for giving us that information. This is super helpful for us to know kinda who we're talking to and and how we can support you even more specifically in our messaging today. So I'm gonna go ahead and close that out. It looks like the votes have kinda slowed down. We'll have another poll here in just a minute, but we are gonna move on. Okay. So communication. Alright. So I want I'm gonna talk about this first if that's okay. Getting the word out is so important. And I've like I said, I was a little panicked that maybe my church had not started Easter planning when I when I was prepping for this webinar. So to hear Jonathan say, we start next week makes me feel so much better. So if you haven't started promoting for Easter, if you don't have your plan, your vision, etcetera, don't panic. We're all in the same boat. And, you know, you're in the right place and can still create that momentum very quickly. Right? The. the goal is consistency. As long as you plan and communicate consistently, you know, you'll be fine. Yeah. But for me, wanna talk about promotion from my perspective as a children's director. Right? For me, it's about removing friction. So let's be real. I I did this kind of internal survey with parents and and visitors and things that came through my children's ministry space at church a few years back. One of the most asked questions when someone is going to visit a church is what is the dress code? They'll find. a place to park. They'll find where they need to go. You know, obviously, all of those things need to be thought through. But people fret about what to wear to church more than they do anything else because. they don't wanna show up and be underdressed. They don't wanna. show up and be overdressed. They wanna fit in and they don't wanna stand out. Yeah. And so for me, people wanna come, but they need to know what to expect. Right? They need to know what's happening. They wanna know when it's happening, etcetera. So visuals matter because if you're new, if you're visiting, unless you're a Kira who's super extroverted, you're probably not gonna just stop the first person in the atrium or the foyer, you know, etcetera. Right? So I always prepare in two lanes. I prepare digitally and I prepare physically. So digitally, I prepare social media posts. I do website banners for our our church website. We we push text messages to our, or push notifications to our parents. We do email to our parents. You can never over communicate. I know that people say, oh my gosh, I can't stand the fact that I get an email and a text message, but I promise you that if you didn't send those things, they would complain more. So we we there's no such thing as over communication to people. So from a digital perspective, I try to cover all of those avenues. And then from a physical perspective, it's what people can see and touch. Right? One of the things that reaches people the most in our community is the physical postcard, like, not the one that you put in a in the snail mail, but, like, the one that goes home with the kid on Sunday morning. Right? So I print postcards for everything because they typically have a space on their on their refrigerator where things. are going. And when that date passes, I'm I'm handing out some for something for the next event that's happening, and they just replace it on their refrigerator, and there it sits. Right? This fun advertisement, hey. Easter is coming up. Right? So we do pull up banners. We post those throughout our church. I say posters or flyers, what have you. Right? And then the take home pieces. That's really our physical kind of reminder that this is coming. Mhmm. I'll I think one of the most important ways to promote anything, but let's call it Easter for this, you know, for for this sake, is through kids. Kids get excited about things. They want to participate when there's something fun and inviting that's gonna be happening. And so when you create that invitation through kids, you you tend to to draw in. Right? Like, you draw in their friends. You draw in their their parents' friends, etcetera, because, hey. Can so and so come and spend the night and go to church with us? That sort of thing. Right? that's great. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that. I'll also say that I I start on I start for Palm Sunday. So I promote Easter through Palm Sunday. So Palm Sunday is your promotion opportunity. Easter. is setting the tone. Right? Like, Easter is what you're what you're trying to get people to participate in, and you have those weeks leading up to Palm Sunday where you have the opportunity for invitation. So that's that's kind of where I I start. I consider. Palm Sunday an opportunity to to invite, if you will. For example, our kids this year will be painting rocks, like Jesus has risen, you know, whatever the message will be on the rocks that they will choose. And then we will have a join us for Easter sticker that goes on the bottom of those rocks that they can then place wherever they choose that week Oh, as. a part as a part of holy week. Right? Yeah. So That's cute. Like, publicly, yeah. like like, Yeah. Yeah. somewhere it's just one. way. Right? How one physical. creative way to, Yeah. you know, to to promote, but also to teach kids about the importance of Easter, why we celebrate, who you know, Yeah. all of those. So With it. going back just one second to people wanna understand. Right? Mhmm. Questions that people ask. I I live in a small town here in Florence, South Carolina. We have a Facebook group called the Florence Moms Network. There are thousands upon thousands of moms in this Facebook group, and these are the types of questions that I see all the time. They post these types of questions. We're looking for a church. We we want we want a place that is easy to park, easy to navigate. Yeah. Help me understand what to wear. What what should I expect? When are the services? They don't wanna be surprised. People. want to blend in. Right? They don't wanna show up and stand out or be called out on the front row. Right? So when you're creating your vision, when you're creating your promotion, when you're deciding how you're going to bring those people into Easter, those are things that you wanna cover in that consistency. Right? You wanna cover where to park, what to wear, what time, you know, etcetera. And you wanna be consistent in your promotion. So consistency is key. Like Jonathan said earlier, in our church, it's one image. We don't change the image for children's ministry. One image, whether we post that on social media, whether we post that on the bottom of a sticker on a sticker on the bottom of a rock, whether that's you know, whatever it is, it's a single image that they can recognize that gives the time, gives the the oh, I'm drawing a blank. The the website, right, website for the church. Mhmm. And then when you click on those images, those banners, it's what to expect. Right? It's. casual no landing page. or it's this. or it's this. Right? Like, park here, you know, etcetera, etcetera. So. as you're thinking about getting the word out, so, you know, you've you've prayed about it, you're you're creating your vision, you're establishing what you want that message to look like, and then you're deciding how you're gonna get it out. Make sure that it's consistent and make sure that you're you overcommunicate. Right? You want people to feel like they can walk in the door, sit on the back row, and be fed without standing out in the crowd. Yeah. That's that's the last thing on here. Make it easy for people to say yes to attending. yes. And kind of on this slide here, you can see there's a graphic. We have a a media platform within Ministry Brands that would allow you there's a full kit that you can use. So it's got the same imagery, the same font across all the different channels that you'd want to communicate. And so the work some of that work is done for you. You can kinda customize some pieces of it, but that really reduces the load on maybe having to create multiple things. Right? All of that's kind of together in in one place. So I don't know. Jonathan, are you covering the product function here? Yeah. Absolutely. This is probably like my most exciting thing about Easter because I I I just absolutely love this process, having just materials across all of these different platforms that that are consistent and help first time guests. And so website landing pages are, like, the most important thing that I think a church can do to promote their their Easter services coming up. Just think about how many people are searching on Google churches near me. Right? And Easter services near me. What's happening near me? And so exactly what Kieran was saying is having a page on your website where people can get answers to those questions that they're wondering, just like in that Facebook group. I see those same exact questions in our Facebook groups, and people do have these questions. And so having an Easter landing page gives you the ability to tell them all the important information, what's happening, when it's happening, where it's happening, but also remove the barrier to make it super easy for them to know what to expect when when showing up. Right? And so answering those questions, what should I wear? What about my kids? You know, all the things that that they're asking about, you can have a sing a single place to answer all of those questions. But also taking it, like, a step further, making it super easy. As you know, like, I have five children, so going anywhere for the first time can be, like, hectic crazy, especially a church. I can remember going to churches for the first time and taking, like, thirty minutes just to, like, sign our children in for the first time. Right? Because they're asking all the questions. What's our emergency contacts? What allergies do they have? And it just it's such a lengthy process your first time somewhere. So giving them the ability to, like, prefill that information by, like, preregistering to come is. a great opportunity on this site. Yeah. We call that plan your visit and allowing them to to input all their children's information. So when they show up on Sunday, they just type in their phone number and check right in. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, on top of that, like you said, Jessica, the the Easter graphics, I love that our media module gives just a huge opportunity here for churches that aren't so creative or graphically inclined. Maybe we don't have anybody on staff for, like, graphic ability. We create so many free graphics as well as others to to help promote your Easter services, Palm Sunday service, Good Friday services. And those are a great resource to start because, again, it's helping create that consistent theme across all the different communication channels. So whether it's website, whether it's postcards that you're mailing out or sending out or handing out to to friends or family, whatever it is, it helps create a consistent look across all of them. Yeah. Jonathan, you kinda spoke to, you know, at least getting kids checked in. Let me take one minute to to talk about forms real quick. Yeah. We have some functionality, and a lot of honestly, a lot of church management platforms have this functionality as well. But we have a super robust forms builder, so you can use those forms for all sorts of things. Checking in kiddos early is, at its core, it is a form that those parents would complete. We have a screenshot here for Easter Fest. That is an event registration form. All of those forms have different ways that they can be shared. You can share through a text, keyword. Say, you know, text the word Easter to this our text giving number or our text number or whatever. You can do a QR code that you can throw up on slides like those preservice slides. Scan here to sign up for our next week, I don't know, spring cookout or something. So you. can use. those forms to capture information, and not only does that help your metrics that we talked about at the very beginning, but it just. gives you more detail on the people that are attending or wanting to attend so that you can serve them super, super well. And we'll talk about workflows a little bit later, but you can kind of automate some intentionality if you are in a larger church where it's just not realistic for, you know, pastors, even kids directors to be able to meet every single new family. It's if you want. intentional obviously, Kira is a super intentional person. So to be able to spend the time that Kira would desire with each of those new families. unrealistic on that Sunday morning. So you. can kind of capture information that allows you to then follow-up with people after in a super intentional way depending on how much information you're capturing. So helpful for before, right, giving them a chance to fill out a contact us form or the kids registration form. And then during the service, maybe, like, you've accepted Christ today. Fill out this form with two fields. Like, I've accepted Jesus. My email address is this. Whatever. Keep it, you know, super concise, but you're. capturing information there. And then even after the fact, you know, how are you leveraging that information? So, just a quick quick note on forms there. And then, you know, Kira talked about push notifications or text messages to inform your church. You can also send these like, your landing page that you've created. Hey. We can't wait to see y'all for Easter. Send this to anyone who hopes to visit with us so they can get an idea, you know, get all their questions answered. I think that would be a great way to, one, promote Easter again. Right? This is another little nudge. right. We're having Easter. Here's the times reminder. Also, invite a guest and have them check out this page to know what they can expect. Absolutely. So two birds with one one thing to that. Yeah. This is something that we do, like, every year. We we typically have a huge outreach, like an Easter egg kind of outreach. Right? And so last year, we tried something new. We advertised the heck out of it on Facebook, right? So ran paid advertisements to Easter egg hunt landing page where we collected people's information to RSVP for the event. It was free to enter, but you had to RSVP to come, right? And the only purpose we did that was to collect phone numbers and email addresses. And then right after that Easter egg hunt, we invited everybody to Easter services, and we saw our largest Easter Sunday ever. simply because we hosted this amazing outreach event, collected their information, and then was able to do something with their information. Okay. Kira and Jonathan, guys, we got a lot to cover, and we're moving too slow. So gonna I'm gonna push this along a little bit more about. we'll try to get through some of this a little bit more quickly. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I can be quick on this slide, around planning a minute a meaningful worship experience. So especially for Easter. Right? But let's let's be clear. There is nothing worse than, one, not understanding what to expect from a worship service. Right? Or two, going into a worship service and there being kids that are talking or and you can't concentrate or chatter going on behind you and you're missing what's going on in front of you because you can't concentrate. Right? And so those are types of things that you want to eliminate when you're, you know, trying to create this very meaningful atmosphere, especially for a special service like Easter. Right? So you're you're you're planning for both members and guests on that day. And so one of the biggest pieces that helps with that is volunteer coverage. Right? And then I'm gonna get there on how I'm connecting those dots. But at our church, we have a a very simple culture expectation. We ask our volunteers to sit one and serve one every single Sunday. So, you know, a lot of our many, many, many, many of our volunteers serve every single Sunday. Some of them serve on a rotation and but regardless, they are expected to sit one and that meaning sit in service for for one of the services and then serve the other service. So because of that, on special, you know, special occasions like Palm Sunday or Easter, it's gonna matter more. Right? Because we're gonna ask more volunteers to be present, No. and that is gonna be amplified. Right? And the and and hopefully, your guest experience is amplified. Hopefully, you have more people coming in the door to attend your worship service. So what what we do from a children's ministry perspective for any special occasion in our church, whether it's a worship night, Easter, Palm Sunday, Christmas, it doesn't matter. You should always expect with an increased flow of people, there are going to be people who don't feel comfortable sending their children into a children's ministry space for the first time. Right? Whether that's the child is nervous, the parent doesn't know the people, etcetera. Right? They're visiting for the first time. Hey. We're just gonna sit together today. Right? So we prepare special content for kids. Primarily, it is used for our volunteers' kids who are not staying for both services and children's ministry. We encourage our children to go to service so they can begin learning to sit in corporate worship, but we create special content. So we put together coloring pages, gospel story, take home, you know, packets, you know, what have you. Right? Our pastor always gives me the content that not necessarily the sermon, but maybe the the the Bible reference, the the title of the of the sermon, etcetera, that he's gonna be preaching on for those services. And then I use that to create word searches, coloring pages, you know, etcetera, etcetera, that go with the sermon, fill in the blanks, that are easy for kids to upload, etcetera. That gives them the opportunity to be able to sit in corporate worship, learn how to do that if they're gonna not going to attend children's ministry. So So practical. meaningful worship service experience is not only about letting them know what to expect, but that atmosphere while they're there. Right? And so sometimes that can involve rowdy kids. So just. That's brilliant. Because that's definitely an issue at every church. Guarantee it. And you're right. Maybe it's a first time family, and they're like, I don't know these people. I'm not dropping my kids off in here. Right. And so. bringing them with them, having, you know, that's that's just such a great idea. Carrier full of great ideas. Okay. We're gonna move on here. Jonathan. Yeah. For sure. And I'll I'll quickly go through this, but probably one of the things I'm most passionate about at our church and I was told I'm looking in the wrong camera, so I'm sorry. But service planning and planning out the service for for everything that you're expecting. Right? So volunteers, the production team, the worship team, every of the service, and making sure that you have coverage for all of those areas on a Sunday where you probably have increased attendance, which means increased volunteer accounts needed, especially in kids ministry, right, increased amount of volunteers that you need for greeters, etcetera. And so our service planning module does exactly that. It allows you to not stress about all the different things that you need to plan for, but, specifically, make sure that you have coverage across all of those areas. But something else that we've kind of been talking about as well is, we we're talking about a lot of guests coming to your church, but there's also still a significant amount of guests that won't physically be able to come to your church for whatever reason. Maybe they're, in a hospital or maybe they're homesick or or maybe there's some other reason, but that's where our streaming platform comes in handy because there will still be an increased amount of people that will wanna check you out online. Right. They'll probably never come into your building, and this gives you the ability to extend your Easter services outside of your building. And so being able to take what's happening in the building and stream it to multiple places we we know people are on Facebook. They're they're on YouTube, taking the message wherever they are, maybe on your website, from one place. And that's exactly what our streaming module does is allows you to have one place where it's pushing it to everything. Yeah. Click once, and then it shows all over. So, yeah, Exactly. great call out. Yeah. There will be people watching online probably more than usual. So, and there's ways to make that intentional too. There's a chat functionality. You are able to write from there too, have people fill out those same dang forms and then be put into. workflows for, follow-up and engagement after. So, tools like these help you be automatically intentional. Right? You it it you wanna be intentional. I know that's your heart. That's why you're in ministry. And so this just allows you to do it in a way that's a little bit more automated so it's not on you to remember everything that needs to be, thought of for that day. I'm gonna, Jonathan, would if you don't mind just kinda giving us a little bit of your perspective on a pastor who has to talk about giving on a regular basis. I know that's not. generally the favorite. So tell us your thoughts here. For sure. Especially on Easter Sunday. Right? I I personally, I feel awkward oftentimes, talking about giving. It can especially feel awkward on Easter Sunday because there's a lot of guests. You you have the thoughts that you're battling with. Should we even mention giving? Should we talk about it? We don't wanna feel like anybody just walked into a fundraising event for your church that Sunday. Right. But I realized something very, very important over time is that talking about generosity isn't unpastoral. It's actually very deeply pastoral, because generosity is is discipleship, and Easter. is one of the greatest, stories of all time. Right? It's the greatest act of generosity in in human history that God gave his son for us. So it's not it shouldn't be whether we talk about it or not, but really how do we talk about it on. such a a specific Sunday. And so at our church, I usually say something along the lines of like, hey. If this is your first Sunday with us, you know, there's no there's no ask here. Don't feel any obligation to give. This service is our gift to you. But for those of you that that call our church home, we're gonna, we're gonna continue in worship through generosity now. And. so what we do is we're very intentional on how we talk about generosity. We we flow from gratitude, not not guilt. So we talk about what God's doing in our church, what stories are are inside of our church, when somebody has encountered hope or when somebody experienced life change, Right. when someone sees impact. When these things are talked about from the stage, giving becomes a response and wanting to support what God is doing as. opposed to feeling guilted into into. giving. Yes. And so we talk about it all the time about informs of life change, so stories, you know, impact, baptisms, families that were restored, kids hearing the gospel for the first time, outreach how they're making a difference, not just in the people in our church, but also in the community. Yeah. And so when when we talk about it like that, I feel like it begins to feel more natural, Yeah. and, Easter generosity should feel hopeful, not not heavy. Yeah. And so it's wanna a. lot easier. Good. I'm glad to hear that. I wanna piggyback off that a little bit too and say that a lot of times people are coming to a church for the first time. It is a no brainer. This is, like, tale as old as that time. Churches are in communities to help those communities. So a lot of times, if someone. is a first guest, I would I would I would just say, if I were a pastor, I would say, hey. You're probably curious how our church serves this community. Scan. this QR code if you wanna find out more. If you feel called to help us support our community, here's how you can give. That would allow a first time guest the option to say, so, good. this is kinda cool, and I know exactly what that soup kitchen is because I support them separately as a volunteer, but I didn't know that this church does it financially. So sometimes there'll be that natural connectivity and that natural, like, my heart is compelled because I resonate with this mission that's not giving to a church, but the church being. kind of a a a way a pass through on that generosity. And so I'm gonna speak to a little bit more of the technical side of this. This is a Sunday where you want to make giving giving as frictionless as possible. You're trying to get through a lot in your service just like we're trying to get through a lot in this webinar. And so you wanna make this super easy for folks. So there is, you know, the option for a QR code. Most giving platforms have this. You also probably have the option to do text giving. But one one key important thing that I wanna call out is on a weekend where you have a lot of first time guests, what they don't wanna do is pull out their credit card and punch in the numbers on a tiny screen with their thumbs. Okay? Digital wallets are great here. They can just log in real quick to their Apple Pay, their Google Pay, their Venmo, and they can give that way. And, again, it's removing that piece of friction. It makes them feel more comfortable. It's something that they already know, and so it feels even more secure. So if you haven't enabled digital wallets, if you're part of Ministry Brands Giving and you already have this platform, yay. We love you. If you haven't turned on digital wallets, we really encourage you to consider doing this for Easter and just see what happens with those first time guests. If they take you up on the invitation to give, there's a good chance they will use those platforms. Even if they're already an existing giver, this may be the option they choose because it's comfortable, and it's probably the most, up to date place where they house their payment methods. It's a little easier to swap out your payment methods within those platforms those applications. So just some food for thought on there. Again, like Jonathan, it's a weird Sunday to ask. Right? But if you do make the ask, then the Holy Spirit does his part and moves on people's hearts. Your responsibility is to make it super easy and frictionless for them to participate in that act of worship. Okay. Moving right along. We've got another poll. I'm gonna go ahead and open this poll up and then also keep talking. So, hopefully, we've got lots of people that can multitask. This poll speaks to, your confidence. Okay. So again, that poll is gonna pop up next to the chat. But this is gonna speak to the confidence that your church has with the ability to follow-up with guests and move them into next steps. So this is a challenge. Let me just say this. For as long as I worked at this company, this is a challenge generally across the board if you're not capturing information. You kinda just lose people. Right? And so this is maybe a way to think through, like, okay. We've talked about these forms. We've talked about this information. This is an opportunity to, really think through that those logistics and say, efficient are we? How how confident are we that we can follow-up with people that make a decision or wanna come back? So looking at votes, and most of y'all are somewhat confident, which is somewhat good. I'm I'm I I appreciate your honesty, and, honestly, that's not surprising at all. So as we kinda talk through some other functionality here, maybe just food for thought on thought leadership pieces on how to do this well, and then maybe some little product help on how to do this well. Let me get to the next slide here. Yeah. For sure. I think it's so important that we reach out to guests within twenty four hours because, again, they're already making the decision after attending your church, am I gonna come back or not? And they're they're talking about those things on the way home from church. Right? And so if you wait too long, you're gonna lose your guests. You're gonna lose their their curiosity about your church. They're gonna be thinking about Monday morning at work. They're gonna be thinking about what they have the rest of the week. And so what I think is super important is responding or reaching out to a guest within twenty four hours of their visit. Speed matters. And if we're silent, it communicates that we really don't have an interest in them to begin with. And so when you communicate with them right away, I always hear this if I communicate with somebody on a Sunday afternoon. Wow. Thank you so much for reaching out. It's so cool that we actually heard from you today. And so follow-up, it's not about a sales pitch, but it's about shepherding people. It's about pastoring people after Sunday experience. So was Easter successful? We can really measure that over the next couple of weeks on whether those people have had an impact on their life. Did they did they come back? And if we delay follow-up, it really lowers the return rates of our first time guests dramatically. Yeah. And I I've talked to so many people where they've said, oh, yeah. We don't we don't reach out to them at all, or we just send a postcard. And it's so unpersonal. It's it it feels like a sales pitch. And so people are looking for community. They're looking for connection, especially in today's world. And this is a awesome opportunity to be personal with them. Use their name, reference something about them, or reference something about the service. Try to avoid, like, generic church lingo, but. be a human with them. And I love that. I know I know Kiera's gonna talk about our system in just a little bit, but there's ways to do that within our system as well and invite them to that one simple next step. Like, what is it for for your church? Is it inviting them back next Sunday, or is there maybe a first time guest experience where they can meet and greet with the pastor? But inviting them to one simple next step instead of, like, just telling them everything about your church on the first phone call is super, That's a. good. one. And. this is definitely everything that Jonathan just covered is is definitely an area where workflows and interactions can make a huge, huge, huge difference. So in the people platform, this is a a just a singular screenshot like Jess mentioned earlier. It's a screenshot of our workflows functionality. So you can create a workflow that automatically triggers when someone takes a next step. Right? When they fill out the guest card, when they scan the QR code, when they mark when they, you know, mark themselves as being a first time visitor, instead of relying on your miss Betty to input that information, make sure she calls them, make sure she puts a reminder to follow-up with them, etcetera, The system creates that follow-up plan for you. They help workflows definitely they help me. I do the same thing in children's ministry. Right? I follow-up with every single child that comes for the first time. They they walk away with something that day, as a thank you, but I also follow-up and send a fun postcard in the mail, and I follow-up with the parents. Usually, from a children's ministry perspective, it's a text message because the church is already operating on a on a workflow system. Right? They're contacting that parent who visited for the first time, but nothing's more fun than receiving a text message that said, we so enjoyed having little Bobby today at church, and thank you for trusting us with him. And it just creates that that kind of invitation over again. So workflows are definitely something that I use to to create that automation and not miss. Children's ministry is a part of the workflow process for an adult, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good call out. Yeah. And two parts to the workflows and then intentions or interaction. Interact. not intentions. But those are actually two different things, and you can work the interaction into the workflow to say, the workflow says this person needs a phone call. The interaction assigns the phone call to someone, as a reminder with all the information they need. So, you know, this is a lot of on the back end, this is, like, amazing for your staff. But for, you know, the on the receiving end, they would never know the difference. They they would be shocked and amazed that you were able to call everybody who was a first time guest. So, And, I think it's fantastic. let me give you a real life example, like an everyday Sunday example to go along with this, not just Easter. Think about the number of times that people have gone missing from your church because no one no one followed them. They had a surgery. They were out for an extended period of time because they had a death in their family or something happened. Right? They lost trust. They that something happened in their life, and they stepped away from church, and they never got followed up with. And what happens is those people eventually tell their friends, well, I was gone for three months, and I never heard a single thing from anybody. Yeah. How cool would it be if that purse you know, somebody in the church knows that somebody's family member passed away or said person is sick. Right? And maybe you knew, but you just it just they slip through the cracks. Right? So in our church, everybody on staff has a responsibility to report those things. If they know something, they should they have to send an email. And once that email is sent, it automatically adds that person, you know, to the workflow of the like a follow-up hospitality type workflow situation where they don't fall through the cracks. Right? Someone follows up and says, hey, we've been missing you. Yeah. Is there anything we can do, etcetera. Right? So and so has been in the hospital. And all of those types of scenarios, workflows and interactions help prevent that crack. They help prevent. people falling through that crack. So. just a real life example because I hear that happen all the time with people. My child was sick, no one followed up, no one came to the hospital to visit, etcetera, Right. etcetera, etcetera. Right? Someone somewhere, you know, probably heard, hey. I haven't seen so and so in a while. Right. Know, the report shows that little Bobby hasn't checked in for six months. Right? Exactly. So you can easily add those people to a workflow and assign an interaction, and then there's no you you don't miss that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It just makes pestering that much easier. It does. Yeah. So oh, Kira, you're you're gonna do this for us, weren't you? yeah. It's okay. So as we wrap up today, we've we have talked a lot. We're probably way over time. As as you can tell, we're all extroverts here. So we love to talk about kind of thing. But I I do we do wanna leave you with the the simple framework, a reminder of it. Right? So first, your vision and goals. Make sure that you decide what you want Easter to accomplish for your church, for your mission, for God. It's not about attendance. It's not just about the impact. You know, it's not just connection. It's about all of those things wrapped up together. Yeah. Second, your promotion and your communication. Right? Get the word out. Get it out early. Get it out often. But most importantly, be very consistent. Be very consistent in your graphics, your wording, what they see on the screen when they click on the banner on the website, etcetera. Be very consistent. Three, your volunteers and logistics. Plan ahead. You will need extra volunteers. It makes life so much easier. If you don't have that, you know, that's okay. Build your sit one, serve one culture, especially for you know, your special Sundays. Right? Prepare so that your worship experience is is is beneficial for both members and guests. Right? Guests can show up, keep it clear, keep it welcoming, centered on the message, provide those, you know, the the kids packets, provide the opportunity for quiet learning. Right? So. that everyone has the same experience. Generosity is the fifth one. So like like Jonathan said earlier, it's it's a unique experience. Hearts are open. People are open in general on special occasions, especially things like Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday, Holy Week, etcetera. So make your giving very simple. Make it clear. Digital wallets, like we talked about, are are so so so, you know, so easy. I know that I do everything via digital wallet. Right? Like, if I can't pay online without my digital wallet, we're we're probably in trouble because I I don't even know where my credit card is. And then lastly, your new guest follow-up. There it well, the credit card is in a back pocket somewhere that's probably being lost is what happened. And then my husband is saying, this is the third credit card you've lost. So you guys get the point. Right? New guest follow-up. Right? So your service is just the beginning and the real opportunity is what's gonna happen next. Right? Did you make an impact in their life? Are they gonna return? Even if they don't return, impact is is the kingdom build there. Right? Maybe they've made a choice. Maybe they were visiting. My my family likes to visit churches every time we travel on vacation. We pick a random church to visit and explore. But what if what if there was an impact on that Sunday and you guys didn't know about it? It's so important to to be able to celebrate those wins for Christ, so follow-up is so key. As you're planning for Easter over the next couple of weeks, keep those things in mind. Mhmm. Yeah. And, Yeah. honestly, ultimately, you know, sharing the Easter story should be your focus. And and we're at this. point, we're repeating ourselves. But truly, use the tools that you have so that your staff and volunteers can just focus on ministry, sharing the gospel, making people feel seen and heard while they're there even before they come and definitely after they come. Yeah. Really, that that's the point here. All of the work that you're doing leading up to this should be just so that Easter does what Easter is supposed to do, and that is bring people the hope of Jesus. Jonathan, right. do you have something? No. I was just gonna say exactly that. It's not about creating a perfect event on Easter Sunday, but pointing people to a perfect savior. And using the tools to help you do that is just gonna make it so much easier. Yes. So good. If you're still around, thank you so much. I do have a quick survey that I'm going to launch, and feel free to participate in that. That would really help us out. We're not gonna see the answers on this until later. But if you are if you're still here and you don't mind doing that for me, that would super help us know what kind of content you would like to learn about next. And then the last thing I wanna share with you is just the resources that we're gonna send. You're going to get this recording, as I mentioned, at the beginning, and you're gonna get the ebook that we based this framework on. Additionally, we actually have so many Easter resources in our healthy church hub right now. So that's ministrybrands.com/healthychurchhub. There are so many things. I think we've got, like, three podcast episodes, multiple blogs. The one that I'm going to send to you in the post webinar email is planning a memorable Easter service. That conversation was with Ben Stapley, and he talks about some free ways, things that do not cost money that make your service more memorable. So, it was a really great conversation. He's super passionate about this. Ben has a ton of experience as a church leader, but also as a conference speaker and a consultant. So so much wisdom that he brought to that conversation. So you will have the link to that podcast in your post webinar email. Pass that along to anyone who didn't get a chance to attend today, and that's really it. So I'm gonna close out this survey, and, yeah, you guys will, again, get this recording tomorrow. And thanks again for being here. Have a wonderful Lenten season. It kicked off today. Yeah. I'm a be fasting sugar, so y'all pray for me. But, hopefully, you guys have a wonderful rest of your week. And, again, thank you for being here. Thanks, Kira and Jonathan, for your time and your passion, and I really appreciate you guys helping me out. So thank. you all. was We will see. you later. Bye, y'all.