By now, you will agree that the church is different from any other organization.
Its peculiarity makes managing a large audience a lot different from other establishments. One of the responsibilities of the church is to reach as many people as possible with the gospel.
Because of this responsibility, congregation management is an essential aspect of church management. Do you have a large audience and you are struggling with crowd management? We will discuss 5 ways to help you manage your large audience efficiently in this post.
Tips for managing a large church audience
Managing a large audience anywhere is a tricky business. So you don’t expect it to be easier in the church. Despite being a herculean task, managing a large church audience is very possible. Check out a few ways to do this below.
Manage your church facility
Before you even think of managing the crowd, you must first prepare your facility. You need to get the facility ready for the large crowd that is coming. There are several things you can do to get the facility ready.
From your attendance figures, you can guess how many individuals you expect in every service. If you don’t already take attendance, you can avail yourself of the ChurchPad app to do this. Ensure that you have sufficient chairs and supplies for each service. If your main auditorium is not large enough for your audience, you may need to rent or construct an overflow.
Another thing you can do to prepare your church facility for your large audience is to use signages. This makes each individual’s journey easier since they can figure out where to go without help. The signs should be simple, straightforward, easy to read, and consistent. You should have a map at the entrance as well.
Establish efficient communication channels
Church communication is a very important aspect of audience management. How do you reach out to members of your congregation? With a large congregation, communication channels need to be as efficient as possible. You can make use of a church management app like ChurchPad to improve communication.
With efficient communication channels, people don’t have to look for ways to reach leadership all the time. You can split the audience into small groups and have a volunteer as the group leader. This way, they can always reach the volunteer when there is an emergency.
What about sending out important messages to your congregation? There are several channels you can employ to communicate with your large audience. Examples include social media, a church app, emails, and text messages. Efficient communication channels will ease the burden of managing a large crowd as you can reach everyone easily.
Queue management
Dealing with queues is probably one of the most difficult issues you have to face when you have a large audience. Queues in the church can be very stressful and tedious when your congregation is large. These queues come up mostly when people are getting into the church or leaving.
One efficient queue management method is the single line method. This will work wonders if you have a check-in and check-out policy at your church. Rather than have multiple lines, you can have everyone on a single line. This way, once they get to the front, there is a beep to lead them to the next check-in station. You can employ this for your kid check-in stations as well.
The good thing with the single line method is that it makes it possible to enforce social distancing. It will also reduce clashes and confusion in the queues. You can also consider using mobile or virtual queues to eliminate physical queues in church.
Encourage follow-up
Congregation management goes beyond dealing with individuals within the four walls of the church. What efforts do you make to reach out to them after services? Your congregants need you to reach out to them for support.
You don’t only follow-up with new converts or first-timers. It is also important to reach out to old members, those who come to church consistently, and the inconsistent ones. Follow-up is a culture that every church must cultivate if it will manage its audience efficiently.
There are several ways to reach out to your congregants if you have a large audience. We have listed a few below:
- Make phone calls.
- Send emails.
- Contact them via social media.
- Send text messages.
- Make use of a church app like ChurchPad.
- Physical visits to the needy.
To achieve proper follow-up of members, you need to have volunteers. This way, you can split the audience into groups and assign volunteers to each group. When you do this, less of the follow-up burden is on leadership.
Support volunteers
These guys work without pay and are ready to give themselves to ensure that the ministry keeps running. The truth is that the way you treat your volunteers will determine if you will have more volunteers.
The church must be ready to cater to the needs of volunteers. What this means is that each church must develop a fantastic volunteer program. This should involve everything from recruitment to training and providing support.
The church leadership must provide all that its volunteers need to function optimally. When you support your volunteers, they will be more than willing to help manage your large audience.
Bonus point – Encourage registration ahead of services
Having a large audience in these days of social distancing needs a lot of planning. One easy way to deal with your large audience is to encourage registration ahead of each service. This way, you can define who can be in service or not on a first come first serve basis.
People can register on your church app or website. Once you hit the required number, registration stops. However, make sure that you communicate this clearly to your congregation before you begin.
Conclusion
You don’t have to go through the stress of dealing with large audiences anymore. We have shown you a couple of ways in this post. What other methods do you know? Share them in the comments section.
By the way, avail yourself of the ChurchPad app to improve your large audience management.
