This article gives you an overview of the Follow Up module. We highly recommend reading this first and then reading Follow up: Beyond the basics.
Why Follow Up
The following four activities are an important part of a church's Sunday service: 1) first-time visitors attend the church, 2) people commit their lives to the Lord for the first time, 3) people come forward for prayer, and 4) people ask for information about how to join a small group.
Each of these activities places an administrative burden on the church that is difficult to manage well. Traditionally churches have used information cards to capture all the information, but if you have ever worked with such a system you will know that it is less than perfect.
We have designed the Follow Up module in GoDoChurch to help churches meet all of these administrative needs.
How Follow Up is structured
The Follow Up module allows you to add a person's information to your GoDoChurch database, specify why they need to be followed up, assign that person to a leader or pastor for follow up, and then trace the progress of the follow up process. Sound useful? We think so too!
Not only that, but the system also allows you to draw reports based on the information captured in GoDoChurch. Want to see how many people committed their lives this year in the morning service? Not a problem. What about how many first-time visitors you had this year? We have that covered too. Follow up stats are easy to pull using the filters on the Follow up module home screen.
Let's begin by understanding what needs to be in place for follow up to work well.
1. A point person
For follow up to work well it needs a champion! It needs a point person. It needs to be recognised as a crucial ministry in the church. This person can be the church administrator, but in larger churches, we recommend leadership appoint a pastor or staff member to oversee this important ministry.
2. You need a clear follow up strategy
How will follow up in your church work? In small churches, it is enough for the administrator to follow up all first-time visitors, new salvations, or people asking for info about small groups. But in larger churches, with multiple regions and pastors overseeing those regions, it is more complicated. We recommend looking at what features GoDoChurch offers and then structuring your follow up strategy around those features.
3. You need to set up GoDoChurch correctly
When entering a person's info into the Follow Up module the system will ask you for information about location, regions, and age profiles. These are pre-defined settings that you can edit in your database settings. For example, you need to specify how many services you have (locations), the different regions your church reaches out to, and the various age profiles of your congregation (youth, adult, etc.).
You can find detailed instructions on how to set up each of these areas in Setting up GoDoChurch.
4. Get your team trained in GoDoChurch
If different members of the church staff are responsible for follow up then you need to make sure all of them are trained in how to use the Follow Up module in GoDoChurch.
It is suggested that you have a clear documented follow up procedure in place for each reason that you have set in GoDoChurch.
Going forward
Once you have a point person and have set up GoDoChurch correctly we recommend you read Follow up: Beyond the basics.
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