You don’t want your ministry to grow anyway! There isn’t the budget for it, there aren’t enough volunteers, and frankly – yours is a traditional church that likes things the way they are. So be sure and do the following things this fall as your youth ministry starts up again. This way, your first-time visitors won’t come back for sloppy seconds:
1) Be sure to make your youth room hard to find. Don’t mark what door to come in and heaven forbid – don’t have signage!
2) Forget (or never learn) their name. Dude and bro will work for a long time, even on the girls.
3) Change an event’s time or location without telling them. Showing up to an empty room says, “We don’t care about you.”
4) Pick on them in front of the rest of the group. Oh, and make them stand up to introduce themselves.
5) Miss the signals when they’re not fitting in with the other kids.
6) Don’t have them sign in and don’t get follow up contact info.
7) Create your own “inner circle” and leave them standing on the outside looking in.
8) Assume they know the “inside jokes” or stories.
9) Don’t add them to your event mailing list, ESPECIALLY the fun stuff.
10) Continue planning boring youth meetings using out-of-date technology and stale teaching methods.
That should do the trick.
Stephanie
PS: OR if you’re a rebel and want to have a positive “visitor flow process,” check out this chart:http://ymarchitects.com/137/samples