In church communications, we are often like Elijah-we expect God to speak through the thunder and storm. But what God often uses is similar to how he ultimately spoke to Elijah—through a still small voice.
The place of connection cards and prayer request cards in your church communication ministry is similar. They appear tiny and unimportant in the great scheme of multi-media communications available, but if you don't use them correctly, your church will probably not connect with visitors as well as you could if you used them.
Yes, there are lots of things churches do and communications churches create that connect with visitors, but helpful as most of them are, they fall short in one area. Churches have visitor centers, visitor pads, friendly people but......
Their short-coming is that all of them require the person to reach out to you.
You can't reach out to many visitors because you won't even know they are there. The ability for people to reach back to you, to share their contact information, their needs and questions is the function of connection cards. The book Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people goes into detail on how to make the most of these essential ministry tool, but this article will give you a good starting overview of their usefulness.
The purpose of these connection and prayer request cards
We don't create these cards to wow people with great graphic design or to give something for kids to scribble on during the church service. They are created to make a connection and connecting people to God and each other is what the church is all about. We must keep this importance in mind, because having people fill out connection cards is often viewed as an unnecessary interruption to the Sunday morning service and recording and dealing with them is often a bother on Monday. In contrast to these attitudes, if used properly, connection cards and prayer request cards can:
- have a HUGE impact on growing your church
- connect people to the life of your church
- care for and address spiritual needs in practical ways
- and help your people grow to spiritual maturity
You must move past looking at these cards as merely ministry routine paperwork and see them as essential tools to grow your church and change lives, if you are to make the most of them.
