During “Revision” held some time ago, the group hosted by the Moon’s suggested a plan to encourage membership in the church. Buried in the “Revision” reports by what, at the time, were more important issues, the report has not been located. This is an attempt to recreate the report and excuse me for any errors I have made. I welcome any comments from those who participated.

Purpose

The purpose of this function is to encourage visitors and new members to feel more welcome and participate in the activities of the church. An organization is suggested to fullfill this function, even though the members of the Undershepherds have informally been carrying out some of the duties.

Organization

Name

The name of the organization “Shepherds In The Field” is suggested to indicate that these members spend much of their time in the field with our new members and visitors.

Responsibilities

  • Identify visitors, hopefully at their first visit, introduce themselves, give them a business card, and generally make them-selves at the service of the visitors.
  • Follow up with visitors after they attend church.
  • Pair-up with members of the “Explorers” class to be responsible to answer questions out of the class and follow up with the class members between and after the class.
  • Pair-up with new church members to assist in getting them envolved with the activities of the church, and establish what level of participation they desire.

Facilities

A number of facilities are already in place to support these activities.

Registration Books

In addition to tracking the attendence of our own members, the Registration Books used at the beginning of the service is useful for collecting information about our visitors. It may be useful to take another look at the books and the forms to make them more useful to our visitors. Maybe a couple of “Shepherds in the Field” business cards to encourage calls from the visitors.

Welcome Baskets

The welcome baskets show that we care. However, followup will reinforce that initial impression.

Sheep-In-Need List

The “Sheep-In-Need” list is also available to provide an on-line mechanism that can be used to report and give us comments about visitors and new members. Because we own the program that runs the list, we can make changes to help “Shepherds” do their job, even to providing a seperate list.