It's a common practice for churches to have a regular place in their lobby to promote small groups. What's less common is making excellent use of those spaces.
Often they feature a mish-mash of plain 8.5" x 11" printouts, stacks of cards, a few curriculum examples, and interest forms. Stunning, well organized small group kiosks are much more rare.
One way to improve your lobby presence is to use full-color cards for each small group. When people can see groups represented in a consistent, quality, visually-pleasing way, they will be more naturally drawn to the small-group kiosk. The problem with this is that making these cards can be an administrative nightmare. Managing/resizing photos, checking for typos, printing cards, cutting cards, and keeping them stocked is extremely challenging.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could have those cards without the administrative headaches? You can.
At New Life Bible Church, we've created an interactive group invite card (in PDF form) that you can email to your group leaders to fill out and print. By shifting your focus from administering cards to leading groups to make their own cards, you free up much of your own valuable time. Simultaneously, you empower group leaders to take ownership of marketing their own groups.
At our church we ask all of our leaders to fill out, print, and cut their own cards. Then we ask them to place the cards on the lobby kiosk blow the day of the week their group meets. Group leaders who have "full" groups don't print cards, but group leaders who are actively searching for new people take advantage of the system. This guarantees that only groups wanting more people are the ones being marketed, and that people looking for groups find nice looking information that is completely up-to-date.
Is this the perfect system? Of course not. Every system has its flaws. That's why it's important to remember that it's never a matter of picking the perfect system, it's a matter of picking your problems.
Go ahead and download the invite cards and give them a try. If these aren't for you, see about making ones that fit your needs. We used Adobe Designer to create these. The links below are for the invite cards in four different colors and the instructions that we send to our leaders.
If you don't use these, that's okay. The point is to find an organized, visually attractive system that allows you to make an impact for small-group ministry in your church lobby.
Alan Danielson is the Senior Pastor of New Life Bible Church in Norman, Oklahoma. Alan is a popular conference speaker and consults regularly with ministries and leaders on topics relating to small groups and leadership.
—This article has been excerpted with permission from www.3Threat.net.
