Pizza on Sunday

Chris Thixton has created four classes since 1999. He is a poster teacher for the Double Your Class philosophy. His adaptation of the plan is Pizza on Sunday

He grew his class, the first time I met him, from 4 to 40 in nine months. How did he do it? Pizza on Sunday. Then, I came back a second time. He had just started a new class–he and his wife and two other couples. I asked him to check in with me, "When you get this group doubled, send me an email." Six months later, he sent me an email. "Just checking in. Next month we will send out 25 people to start a new class. We will have 35 in our class." He went from 6 to 60 in 6 months. How did he do it? Pizza on Sunday.

He called me summer before last. "I am back up to 40 again. I want to divide my class, but here is the deal. We are having a hard time finding preschool and children’s workers." (Sound familiar?) "So, here is what I want to do. Instead of sending ten people out to start a new class, I am sending ten people out to help in the preschool and children’s area to teach. Do you think that is a good idea? Do you think it is OK that I delay starting a class to do this?" I think it is a great idea. How did Chris do it? What was his plan? Pizza on Sunday.

What is working for Chris is doing what a lot of pastors do. He wanders around the auditorium and glad-hands with people. Doing this week by week he knows who the visitors are, and who the members are. He shakes hands, connects, says "hi" and is just generally friendly. When he finds a visitor that might be a prospect for his class, he pauses. He talks a little longer. He asks about the kids. Then he says these magic words, "Say, listen, a bunch of us are going to go get pizza after church. If you would like, we would love to have you come along. I am buying the pizza! Do you think you might could join us?"

If you would like to get on the phone with Chris and ask him any questions you might have, join us for a conference call this Tuesday, November 28, 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time

1. Dial-In to your Conference Number 1-712-432-3000

2. Enter your Conference Bridge Number: 837072

If you would like to be made aware of future opportunities like this, sign up for our distance learning list at http://www.joshhunt.com/learning.htm

If you or someone you know has had similar success in doubling groups, I'd love to hear your/their story. email me at josh@joshhunt.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to keep the next generation in church.

Image
The latest research indicates that 70% of the kids who grow up in our youth groups are not staying in church. Project that out for about ten years and we have disaster. Based on data from Essential Church, the trend looks like this: For a free sample of the book, see http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/files/lwcF_PDF_Rainers_Essential_Church_Sample.pdf Another good book on the subject is Ed Stetzer's Lost and Found. Let's look at it more personally. My oldest son graduated from High School in 2004. He walked across the stage at church at the recognition ceremony along with 20 or so of his classmates. Most of them had been very active in youth group. Very few of them are active in church today. In fact, my son may be the only one. If you are in the mood for a good depression, do the math at your church. Dig up the list of the kids that graduated five years ago. See if you can figure out how many of them are in church ...
Read more

Sunday School revival

It is amazing what happens when you listen to people. Everyone should be slow to speak and quick to listen. Somebody smart wrote that! For the last several months I have been listening to the people who attend my conferences. I have been using a very simple evaluation form -- one with two questions: What did you like? What could I improve? People always said kind things. I think that has more to do with them being kind than anything I did. I was not surprised at all by two of the suggestions. I was shocked by the third. I didn't actually track it, but it was probably the most common suggestion for change. First, here are the two I was not surprised by. Slow down. I work on that, but unsuccessfully. You just get me talking about doubling groups and I get all fired up. Provide a fill-in-the-blanks note-taking piece. I actually used to do this. Occasionally hosts would drop the ball and not make copies. I always did better when that was the case. I just speak better w...
Read more

The Gospel that doubles, part 1

I work full time promoting church growth in a world where church growth is a multi-million dollar industry and the church is not growing. Millions are spend every year on books, CDs, conferences, DVDs, web pages, research and consulting and the church is not growing. I don't want to be too hard on those of us in the church growth industry/ministry. (I often feel I wear two hats: business man and minister.) The church might be doing even worse without us. But, I can't help but contrast this world with the world of the early church where, best I can tell, there was no church growth industry. They didn't have any church growth seminars or church growth books or church growth consultants, and the church was growing and growing rapidly. Not just one church. Not just a few churches. Overall, there was a movement of church growth that was rapidly advancing. (As it is in much of the world, outside of the USA, today.) Not only did t...
Read more