Pastoring, assimilation, retention, and raising leaders.

Pastoring and follow up

As pastors and leaders, our mission is people. Your church is the people. They aren’t the means to the vision, they are the vision. The biggest shift for me was realizing I couldn’t come in with my vision and just push forward. I had to start by hearing people’s stories. I learned so much by taking the time to listen, to know names, backgrounds, hurts, triumphs, what people were believing for. Georgie and I focused deeply on one-on-ones from the start.

There are so many to-dos in planting. The list of actionable items feels like progress when you cross them off, venue, team, equipment, invite cards. But the greatest of all of them is building relationships. You build so much heart, equity, and trust when you want to hear a person’s story.

The challenges of building a church in New York can feel huge in comparison to the people. Many planters fixate on building the church and forget the church is the people, it isn’t the service or the ministries, it’s the stories. That’s how you weave together a community strong enough to last, and that’s how you attract a city. Through relationships that are seen, heard, valued, and appreciated.

The beauty is that people connect to the vision a lot quicker when the relationship comes first. That wasn’t the goal, the person has to be the goal, but God knits together what’s founded in him. Relationships founded in love, grace, and truth connect to vision naturally. People want to build alongside real friends.

A decade later, our culture of one-on-ones continues. Our pastors and leaders know the focus. Your congregation then is really a room full of friends. God showed me early in a vision that we would one day fill Barclays Center, the basketball arena in Brooklyn. We’re not there yet, but I believe we will be. And the vision wasn’t just thousands gathered. It was a stadium full of friends. How we pastor with five people has to be how we pastor with a stadium. It’s about friendship.

Assimilation systems

As you’re building, the clarity of your new-person system is critical for retaining and sustaining new people. The impact is in the sticking around. You don’t want your church to be a place people walk in and out of without getting connected. Most new people want to. Especially if they sign up, they’ve already taken the step. It takes courage to walk into a new place alone and more to fill in a form.

So as leaders we have to put priority on that form. They went through two steps of courage to make it happen. Care for that form knowing it represents a soul. A life that can be transformed in Christ. A life that can impact the city. A life that can change generations. You never know what’s behind the number.

The new-person signup form can be the greatest vehicle for getting connected or the greatest hindrance. A few things we’ve learned:

• Design matters. Don’t make it look like a hospital or insurance form. Make it inviting, exciting, welcoming.
• Enough but not too much. Name, email, phone, zip. Keep it simple so it feels quick, not a chore.
• Keep evolving. We used a physical card for years, then a QR code, now a newer system. Don’t be married to one way. Stay a step ahead. Set up the lattice for the vine to grow.

Our follow-up process

Once the form is filled, the system is what matters. Here’s what we do:

• Sunday signups go into our database on Sunday, no delay.
• Monday, each new person gets a call. A personal reach-out the day after they visited. People are usually surprised and thankful. They feel cared for, seen, valued. If there’s no answer, leave a voicemail and send a follow-up text.
• This is scalable. As we’ve grown, more leaders are involved in follow-up, but the principle hasn’t changed. Every new person still gets a Monday call. Ever. That’s non-negotiable.

Growth and retention

The shepherd works hard all day to shepherd the sheep. What gets lost in the story is that Jesus wasn’t against the 99. He’s the Good Shepherd. He cared for the whole 100. But how did he shepherd them so he could leave the 99? How did he know one was missing? He must have counted. Details matter to the Shepherd. It isn’t good enough to see a large crowd. We must know the details of who is missing. It’s all about the lost.

We must have momentum in two directions. Chasing the one, and attending to the 99 in the detail of their care. You can leave the 99 because you brought them to pastures and still waters. That’s what Sundays, good teaching, and discipleship do. They free you up to go after the one because the 99 are healthy.

New people always come to church. One or two at first, maybe. People are curious. People want to learn. People want to be part of something bigger. Your heart as a pastor isn’t just to create a great environment for a new person to attend. It’s to create the environment that a new person wants to come back to. A second, third, fourth time. Someone who plants.

Retention is how a church grows. Not just in seeing new people every Sunday, but in the second time. That’s when people decide to stick. True growth in a community isn’t the new numbers every Sunday, it’s the returning people. The new people attending a small group. Going back a second time.

As a pastor, retention was one of the main stats I watched, and still is. Tracking retention matters. Every new signup gets added to the database and assigned for follow-up. Within that follow-up, someone has an eye on the person’s next step. Once they’re in a small group or a team, they’re tracked in attendance. Tracking attendance is a detail that shows you care for the one, just like the shepherd who went after the one and left the 99. Numbers matter. Numbers are souls.

Our retention report is monthly. We gather all new people added in the past three months, then cross-reference against the full small group attendance list from the same period. What comes out is a list of new people who have taken a next step, and a list of those who haven’t. The second list becomes the focus. The goal is above 50% as a rolling minimum. The gap becomes the care.

Not every member of your church will attend a group. This isn’t a verdict on membership health. It’s an indicator. It helps you see who is stepping into community, who needs more relational connection, who might be drifting. It helps you pastor your group leaders too, because you can see who has new people attending their groups and disciple them well in caring for them.

Empowering and releasing leaders

In every church, however big or small, there is the five-fold ministry. If you can empower and release it, things grow and things multiply. If cells reproduce healthily in your body, your whole body is healthy. So often we try to multiply the big parts of the body, the church, the ministry, rather than making sure each cell is healthy.

There’s a whole teaching on raising leaders that we run in our Dinner Parties training, including the eight keys we use to develop and release leaders in a group setting. That material is relevant here too, since the Dinner Party is the engine behind how we multiply leadership throughout the whole church.

Read the Eight Keys to Raising Leaders in our Dinner Parties library →

The core principles translate straight across. See the individual as Christ sees them, not in their brokenness but as a new creation. Never assume someone understands the vision or has caught the culture, keep re-emphasizing the why. Use love to dig up the grace in their life. Give opportunity without title. Character over gift. Leadership is serving others. Remind people they’re valued for who they are, not just what they do. People over task, but use tasks to love more people.

You do it, you watch, they do it

Once a leader is identified, equip them. Equipping involves training, feedback, and relationships. A simple progression we use:

• You do it. You fulfill the role until the Lord reveals someone else.
• You do it, they watch. Invite a potential leader to shadow you. Explain the role clearly. Establish standards of excellence. Communicate vision and next steps. Make it interactive.
• They do it, you watch. Serve alongside them. Provide feedback and encouragement. People develop at different speeds, so be mindful.
• They do it. Release them. Delegate not just responsibility but authority. Authority lets them grow and bring their unique gifting to the role.

When you release a leader, they’ll do it differently than you would. Hold your tongue sometimes. See the bigger picture, it’s fine, it’s just different. Don’t release a leader and then never check on them. Keep the relational equity strong so feedback can continue and you can see them thriving.

Build your initial teams this way and teach them to do the same. How you train your leaders is how they will train theirs. Getting this right at the beginning is how it continues, layer after layer of leaders, for years to come.