Hyper Growth is hard (a look at Fellowship Church history)

When I joined the Fellowship Church (FC) staff in 1999, they were right in the thick of some serious hyper-growth.  In just a few years FC had ballooned from 8,000 in typical weekend attendance to 16,000; which mirrored the growth rate of the previous 10 year history.  The building campaign, once completed, was a huge relief but simply put us right back where we were due to the increased numbers.

Adult Sunday school options were removed to gain a few precious rooms.  We were faced with adding one more service after another just to quell demand.  We did not have the option to remain status quo and we could not spend an hour “flipping” services; we needed to address some of the basic problems with the current attendance processes that slowed the whole thing down.

One attendance process that had the most room for improvement was Children’s church.  Attendance consisted of a greeter that would scan through a freshly printed 3 inch book of member names and highlight the person in attendance (actually entering this data into the system afterwards must have been a huge effort).  After highlighting the name, the infamous “token trade” would take place; I trade you my kid for a token, to get my kid back I present the token you gave me when I checked in.  The idea is sound; there is only one matching token per kid so someone with ill-intent couldn’t run off with my children.  Overall, I believe that this could be a simple and effective strategy for a small church, but the weaknesses for Fellowship included:

• Attendance – plowing through a pre-printed book of names was a time killer that backed up lines quickly
• Multiple Lines – each kid needed their own check-in process.  I have 4 kids, that would mean that I would have to wait in 4 lines which meant we would need to show up for service 30-45 minutes early just to tuck our kids away in “age appropriate Bible study”
• Token Confusion – one token per kid; now I have 4 tokens to keep up with.  Which token was BrieAnn?  3279 or 12253?  Ugghh… it is very hard for my wife and I to “divide and conquer”.  If we can’t divvy up this chore, the overall time to get out of church has increased substantially
• Processing Errors – I guess the process wasn’t flawless because I ended up with a spare token in my pocket at least once a month

FC was forced to provide childcare staff much earlier than they should have just to cover the time it would take parents to check in all of their children.  With the amount of time it took to check-out, the church had to delay the next service until they were able to re-capture the parking spot, childcare, and clear up general hallway congestion.  The experience for the church guest had to come into question.  A family like mine couldn’t socialize with others after service, they must pick up their children; once the kids were gathered, the social opportunity is limited or gone.  At what point does someone say that the process is too burdensome?  I’m sure it is different for each “third” (see my previous post Should you track attendance?), the hell bound is doubtful to enjoy the experience when they must pack up 4 kids, get to church 45 minutes prior to service just to wait in 8 lines (4 at drop off, 4 at pick up), feel rushed, and walk out with half of their Sunday gone before they can take a breath.

My next post will provide the solution we came up with…