Elevation Church is a multi-site church. Prior to launching our second campus, we went on a tour visiting three pioneers in the multi-site movement. Seacoast, Northpoint, and Lifechurch.tv were the obvious choices for us to gain some insight and wisdom into harnessing technology to reach more people in the Charlotte area.
Here are a few of the highlights from our trips:

1.      Don’t overcomplicate it- Don’t restructure the church when you start a second campus. It’s much simpler than that. Treat the second campus like a service across town. Sure you have to staff it appropriate for its size but the true confusion and restructuring doesn’t have to come until the third and fourth campuses.

2.      Go where the density is- It sounds simple but it’s not always the first factor in locating a second campus site. Unless God is calling you to a particular area, if you plan on seeing growth, you better go where the population density is high.

3.      Cannibalize the original campus- Starting a second campus is often due to a lack of seats at the original campus. By having a core group move to launch the new site (cannibalizing the original campus) you open seats at optimal service times there along with added potential to reach people at the new site.

4.      Is it reproducible?- This is a question that you must ask about everything done at the original campus (programming, creative elements, etc.). Of course this also assumes that you are truly trying to create an identical experience at both campuses.

These are just a few takeaways we had from some of the sharpest multi-site minds in the country. They are simple but have really shaped our multi-site approach.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor
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My Pastor just put a post on his blog urging everyone in our church to thank someone in their “entourage� who has pushed them forward in their faith. It was a follow-up assignment and practical application to our last sermon series.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to thank him publicly and let him know how much he has meant to me and “pushed me forward in my faith�. I hope it will encourage everyone (especially church staff members) to thank their spiritual leaders. I also want Pastor to know what his investment in me has produced.

Pastor,
I just wanted to thank you for not letting me miss what God wanted to do in my life. I really mean that. Just 3 years ago, I was living a comfortable life. I had a boat, dog, a pregnant wife, and was well on my way to an early retirement.

I wasn’t fulfilled with my life but I had accepted that path. I had a previous call in my life that I thought was a college pipedream. I didn’t understand church and I didn’t have a gift to communicate so I didn’t feel God could use me.

But you saw more than that in me. You saw the administrative ability that I didn’t know existed. And you didn’t let me waste it. You pushed me forward and asked me to take a risk and go for broke. You confirmed a call in my life that I had let the world beat down with the reality of mortgages, 401K’s, insurance, and college funds. You were not willing to just let me get by and knew I would never be truly satisfied with the direction I was headed.

And now, 3 years and almost 2500 church attendees later, I meet church planters who say they need someone like me to help them run their church. I want to say to them, “So what you’re really saying is you need a Physical Therapist who doesn’t know how to use Microsoft excel, doesn’t understand the first thing about leadership or the local church, and has been so confused about what to do in life that he even looked into joining the military�. If that’s what they want they had better be ready to invest the long hours, nights, and road trips for development that you spent with me.

I was on track to live a life that would have been good and for some a true calling but you knew that God wanted more for me. Thank you for using your gift of pulling potential out of people that they didn’t know existed. Thank you for pushing me to achieve everything God has for me. And thank you for not just identifying that in my life but also continuing to develop my gifts through your leadership. Thanks for pushing me to live a life that is not just good but great.

Chunks Corbett, Executive Pastor Â

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An effective way to get your name into the community and reinforce personal invitations is through the use of direct mail. At Elevation we do not count on a single person showing up for a worship experience because they receive a good looking print piece in the mail box. 85% of people visit because someone asked them. We use direct mail as a supplemental invitation. Our hope is that by they time they receive the third or fourth post card in their mail box they have already had several personal invitations.Â

We do not claim to be direct mail experts, but we do effectively utilize this type of marketing. There are two basic types of mailers, targeted mailers and saturation mailers. Targeted mailers are generated from a list that you purchase based upon a certain criteria; new homeowners, age, etc… Saturation mailers are much less expensive as they do not require an address. They are simply distributed by an individual postal carrier to each stop on their route. We opt for saturation mailers as it is a much more cost effective way to distribute 40,000 postcards.

1. Here’s our process for sending a saturation mailer:
    Go to your local post office and purchase a bulk mail permit. Such permits can only be purchased at a post office that is a “drop off center”? for bulk mail and make sure you are purchasing a “non-profit”? bulk mail permit. I would also recommend that you pick up all the appropriate bulk mail paperwork in advance and ask your local bulk mail expert exactly how to complete the forms.
   
2. Determine the areas of your community you want to blitz. We started with a list of housing developments we wanted to target. They were primarily new developments high in percentage of transplant growth with a likelihood of new young families that had moved to the city.
   
3. Figure out which post office delivers to each development. You may need to call the local post office to get some help. After determining the post office, you will need to find out which specific postal carrier (route number) delivers to that development. In addition you will need to know the number of stops and mailers needed for that particular route. (Example: A new development in our area is Crismark. Their mail comes out of the Indian Trail Post Office. Postal route #5 is the specific route for Crismark and requires 763 pieces, or stops on that route.)
   
4. The hard work in doing a saturation mailer is determining which postal routes to use and the number of pieces on each route. We use a great online service, Melissa Data, which allows you to type in the specific zip code and lists each of the postal routes coming out of that particular post office. Through this unique feature, you click on an individual route number and it shows you on a map each individual stop.  If you know the location of a development, search until you find the route or routes that deliver to that particular area and you’re on your way. It is well worth the couple hours necessary to complete the task, but once completed you don’t need to do it again. Develop a simple excel spreadsheet and plug in your info for future reference and you’re set. As a side note, we generally do a 20,000-40,000 piece mailer every other series and deliver to the same postal routes each time. We want them to see Elevation Church over and over again.
   
5. Develop your print piece. We usually mail a 6×9 two sided post card, which is the largest size mailer you can send at the lowest bulk mail price of .069 cents per piece. Our staff graphic designer develops the layout and design. The only bulk mail requirements necessary are a printed indicia and the bulk mail stamp printed in the place where a stamp would go. This stamp needs to have “ERC”? in the stamp indicating “Enhanced Carrier Route”?. Since it’s a saturation mailer you do not need an address, you simply put “Current Resident”? where the address would be placed.
   
6. We mainly use online print services. www.printplace.com is one that we frequently utilize. They are extremely cost effective and have great turn around times Â
   
7. When your mailers arrive in your office it’s time to sort. Take your list of individual postal routes and start with the first one on your list. Build a stack of mailers with that number of pieces for that route. Label that stack with the post office, zip code, postal route, and number of pieces (example: Indian Trail 28079, route #5, 763 pieces). Rubber band your label to the top of the stack and repeat the same process for each of your routes.
   
8. After you have all the routes ready to roll, take the stacks of mailers to the post office where you purchased the bulk mail permit along with the completed paperwork. To aid in the process, place your mailers in the corrugated plastic postal flats that you can obtain from the post office. You’ll need to either bring a check or have set-up an account as they do not take credit cards to pay for bulk mail, I found that out the hard way.

Make sure you plan plenty of lead time as bulk mail is not treated like regular mail. If you are in a high volume season for mail, Christmas or tax season, the bulk mail is the last thing placed on the mail trucks. If we want a mailer in people’s hands on Friday, we take it to the post office Monday morning and allow 3-4 days for it to end up in a mail box. If it is in a high volume season we will allow a week for it to end up the mail box.

This cost effective marketing tool is a great way to get your name out in the community. Too often churches make the fatal mistake thinking a cool mailer will grow the church. That’s not the case; direct mail reinforces the personal invitations of the people in your church.

Larry Brey, Assimilation Pastor

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A follow-up to my previous entry…
Ever since I posted the entry about GroupLink in May people have been contacting me wanting to know all about GroupLink. The first thing I do is send them to the professionals for better advice (North Point Community Church), but when I they persist it seems like they’re all asking the same question “is it worth it�?
We don’t ever do anything just for the sake of doing it, and GroupLink certainly takes a lot of time so if it isn’t worth it, then we should eliminate it immediately and save ourselves a lot of hastle.Â
Well – as you would expect – I am fully convinced that it is worth it!
Three reasons we spend time and money on GroupLink are:
1)     It creates momentum…
2)     It is an effective way to get people connected…
3)     It provides opportunities for relationships…
Momentum…
           GroupLink creates a needed pivot point in the Small Groups ministry. If all that ever happened in the Small Groups ministry was behind the scenes then there would never be a rallying point for Leader Recruitment or motivation for our groups to multiply. In January, we saw twice as much interest in small groups as we had anticipated. This surge of momentum gave us a lot of fuel to recruit leaders. Right before GroupLink in January I had exhausted every last contact and looked under every rock, but within a week of the event I had a whole crop of new leaders emerge. They saw the need and responded!
Effective…
The reason we do GroupLink is that it provides an environment in which people can meet their future group. I have a beautiful process set up to handle small group inquirers in non-GroupLink seasons, but I have found that no matter how hard we try to get people plugged into groups they are less likely to drive across town without that personal contact.
Relationships…
GroupLink stands alone as a great opportunity for people to meet each other. After every group had been filled, and all the decorations had been tossed there were still crowds of people standing around. I believe, as I’m sure you do too, that people are craving relationships. The beauty of GroupLink is that people stumble into relationships where they weren’t expecting them; they cross that awkward barrier by simply coming to an event.
John Bishop, Small Groups Pastor
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