Super Bash.
As great as doing these events are for our ministry, they would be all for not if the follow up is not as effective. The event may be the best activity people have ever experienced before, but if there is no follow up on what happened, then you are missing a huge opportunity. And by following up, I am talking primarily about how you follow up with people at the event.
Before you can even follow up with people effectively, though, you have to first be prepared to follow up effectively. That means you need to have connection cards ready for people to fill out at whatever event you are planning on following up after. Even if someone is a “regular”, I would suggest everyone who comes to your event to fill out their information as you may have incomplete or inaccurate info. Another important aspect of following up with people after is to have info for them. For example, have fliers for what is next and your social media channels so they can connect with you.
So you had a great event and people enjoyed it. Now what? Well, there are 3 groups of people you should be following up with after an event.
- Volunteer Leaders. After an event happens, as the head leader, you need to mobilize leaders to follow up with students. Give them direction on what they can do to connect with students and how they can be praying. Events and gatherings are great opportunities for volunteer leaders to either start new friendships or build upon existing ones with students. Send them an email, text, or even call them up encouraging them with some different ideas now that the event is over. If you don’t give direction, they won’t necessarily know how to proceed, thus ruining a great opportunity to connect with students.
- Parents. When connection cards are filled out, parents email and contact information is included (if yours don’t include this, update your cards ASAP). Having this information provides you with a real opportunity to connect with parents afterwards. Send them an email in the few days after the event introducing yourself and what else is happening in the student ministry. The more information you can get to parents, the more they can know about your program and hopefully get their children connected.
- Students. Hopefully after an event students, especially new ones who have never been to an event with your student ministry, had a great time and are looking forward to something else. Shortly after the event, make sure you connect with them and get information to them. This could be on social media, text or even email. The key is to connect with students afterwards so they know what is going on next. If they don’t, guess what? They won’t be showing up to what is next.
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