This is a discussion starter for a vestry meeting. It is not meant to be exhaustive. It is just meant to get the discussion going. I will add to the list from the comments section.

Possible Strategies For Evangelism And Church Growth
Prepared For St. John’s Vestry, December 2004.

1. Move the church plant to a location where visibility, accessibility and demographics are more favorable to church growth (Fish Church, Methodist Church, Baptist Church. Suburban or edge city would be best).
2. Find more on street parking.
3. Clarify and redundantly communicate the parishes’ distinctive vision, mission goals and values.
4. Improve Signage
5. Install an elevator
6. Invest in a user friendly, multi-media website that gives an experience of parish life (music, preaching, worship, teaching, outreach) and develop a word of mouth campaign to publicize the website.
7. Develop a high quality, spiritually profound, cutting edge Christian Education Program for children and develop a promotional campaign for that program.
8. Develop a high quality, spiritually profound, cutting edge Christian Education program for Adults and develop a promotional campaign for that program.
9. Change the Sunday Morning schedule to accommodate 7 and 8.
10. Emphasize high quality liturgy, preaching and music on Sunday morning.
11. Record the Sunday Morning sermons and make them available on CD and our website. Include recordings of the choir and worship music.
12. Start a children’s choir that recruits from outside current members of the church.
13. Include a variety of musical moods and musical genres in the music on Sunday morning.
14. Develop a teen ministry that targets non-members.
15. Schedule “Front Door Events” that draw people toward the church. (Concerts, Special Speakers, Plays).
16. Develop a New Members Class that can be run at times of the year when new people are showing up in church.
17. Develop hands on outreach activities that can be joined at times of the year when people are joining the church.
18. Have a designated New Member Ministry Coordinator who is responsible for helping people move from attendance to membership and from membership to ministry.
19. Persistently and consistently over many years lay the spiritual foundations necessary to sustain a focus on evangelism and church growth as a core value.
20. Create a critical mass of lay leaders who are who are passionate and articulate about sharing their faith in Jesus Christ and growing their church.
21. Teach and practice faith sharing in all aspects of parish life.
22. Create offsite and side door events that make a point of connection other than Sunday Morning.
23. Develop specialized women’s ministries.
24. Develop specialized men’s ministries.
25. Emphasize healing prayer.
26. Develop a system of small lay led, Christian growth groups that have a commitment to multiplication built in. These groups can focus on Bible Study, outreach ministry, stage of life, or life issues.
27. Deal with the dislocation and discomfort that growth produces by starting a parish fight.
28. Streamline committee work and emphasize lay participation in hands on ministry.
29. Develop a system for identifying the talents, passions and interests of members and effectively training them and deploying them in ministry.
30. Start a new contemporary service.
31. Schedule an overseas mission trip.
32. Identify potential constituencies and develop and fund a multi-year campaign for communicating with them.
33. Do not worry very much about church growth but concentrate on quality control and excellence and let growth take care of itself.
34. Concentrate on maintenance of the plant that communicates “first impressions.”
35. Appoint a small working group to choose action items from this list and be responsible for putting them in place and reporting regularly to the parish leadership.
36. Partner with civic arts groups to create people to reach out to the community and create people flow toward the church.