By Heather Schnese
What’s Victory Life’s overarching strategy for retention?
About a decade ago, we realized that growth is not our goal—it’s a byproduct. So, we shifted. Our goal became connection. We want to connect with our community so we can introduce them to Christ. It’s not about creating an experience where people come back. It’s really about engaging in our community, introducing them to the one who can change their life, and then inviting them to walk with us in this journey. This shift was transformative for us.
In the New Testament, we see Jesus giving these opportunities where people felt comfortable and welcome to engage with him—the woman at the well, Zacchaeus coming out of the tree to have lunch with Jesus, Mary wiping his feet with her hair. These are moments where personal engagement leads to transformation.
Where does personal engagement start at Victory Life?
Our first-time guest experience went from somebody coming to church and filling out a card [to beginning with] our social media. Our guest engagement begins before they even think about going to church.
Here’s how: We don’t advertise when people type in “looking for a church near me.” Instead, we advertise when people search, “I’m depressed,” “gender confusion,” “struggling with divorce,” “struggling with finances.” When they type in things like that, that’s when our ads pop up. That’s the first place we want to connect with them. That’s the earliest we can engage and invite them into a dialogue.
Once they walk through your doors, how are you inviting them to take another step with you?
For many years, we were giving away coffee mugs and water bottles. Then, at one of our staff meetings, a younger person on our team said, “I have a membership to Planet Fitness, and I don’t go anymore. I signed up, and I just assumed when I signed up, they knew I was giving them permission to teach me how to use all the equipment. They never did. And so I never went back.”
Everybody laughed. Then he said, “I wonder when somebody fills out a guest card at our church, aren’t they giving us permission to help them in their spiritual journey? And if they are, why do we give them a coffee mug?”
The meeting went silent.
So, we asked: If our goal is to help people on their spiritual journey, what does the gift look like? It began with a box, believe it or not. We all have those iPhone boxes in our cupboard that we refuse to throw away because they’re so nice, right? So we found those same kind of boxes—really nice, thick, with a magnetic flap—and we branded them. Inside is a journal, a book about how God wants to renew your soul, a nice gel pen, and a small square card with a QR code for our Growth Track. The box is laser cut with foam inserts so everything fits perfectly, and that’s their gift. When we hand it to people the response is always the same: “Oh, wow!”
How do you follow up with guests who may have received these boxes?
Here’s the tension: We need to make it personal, but it also needs to be scalable. These two things are at odds it seems. So, we found that when we call them, they don’t answer. Nobody answers an unrecognized number. When we email, nobody responds. We send a letter, but hear nothing.
Then we came across this app called Pastor’s Line, and it fit the need. It’s a texting app that pastors download; it has the software to extract the information from Planning Center and allows a pastor to text first-time guests without giving up their personal phone number. People in our area don’t find a text intrusive like a phone call, and the response has been awesome.
So, they turn in their card with a phone number. We give them the box. Then the pastor says, “Thank you for coming. Would you mind if I just shoot you a text later on this week to just check in and see how you’re doing?” It’s so intentional and so soft, we have yet to have a single person say, “No, don’t check on me.”
On the following Wednesday, they receive a text: “How are you doing? Thanks for coming. We’re praying for you and would love to see you again.” Three days later on Saturday, they get another one following up: “Is there anything I can be praying for?” Now the engagement goes up, and about 50% of people will text back with a prayer request. Then they’ll get another text 17 and 24 days out.
How do you know this is working?
About three months in, we were hitting 100% for some type of response during the 24-day text campaign, except for one couple. There had been no response. So that last 24-day text got sent and guess what? They responded. Turns out one of them had been in the hospital so they hadn’t responded, but they said, “Thank you so much. We couldn’t believe you were checking up on us.”
I think we can sometimes make the mistake of relying too much on the system—we get a new app or software, and we rely on it to do everything and take the human element out of it. Or we try to do everything in the human element without discovering the resources and the tools that give us a greater reach. We’ve learned the hard way that the app or system isn’t the solution—it’s the human touch.
