The essential tool for your team hosting evangelistic events.
The AttendanceTracker module seamlessly integrates into InterestTracker, building on the software’s most popular features like tags and interactions. Plus, it offers access to customizable reports, making it an essential tool for your team hosting events.
We understand new technology can feel uncomfortable, and this might sound like a lot. But we’re here to walk you through it. In this webinar, SermonView founder and president, Larry Witzel, covers the basics of the AttendanceTracker system and how your team can utilize the key features of this robust add-on module. You’ll see how pre-registrations automagically flow into your account, how session check-ins work for in-person meetings, and how to create your own precise, easy-to-access custom reports to track the engagement of your guests. Then find out how to use these reports to develop a follow-up strategy to connect with your guests and cultivate every relationship made during your event.
You can learn more about InterestTracker or AttendanceTracker by clicking here.
Why even track attendance?
Why use software like AttendanceTracker? Why do we even track attendance at evangelistic events? To answer that, we need to answer a much more fundamental question: What is the purpose of evangelism? More specifically, what is the purpose of Adventist evangelism?
Membership is really important to Seventh-day Adventists, and it has a very specific definition and process. It requires extensive Bible study leading to an understanding of the 28 fundamental beliefs. Traditionally, specific behavioral changes were also required prior to official membership, such as abstaining from tobacco and alcohol use. Once these prerequisites are met, an individual becomes a member when they are baptized or through profession of faith.
As you know, there are several of these fundamental beliefs that require a significant shift in belief. You can’t just walk up to someone on the street and say, hey, I’d like you to join my church. You just need to change the day you worship on, give 10% of your money to the church, and give up meat for textured vegetable protein. Oh, and by the way, your grandma is not actually in heaven. Right? It takes time to help someone work through these shifts in thinking.
So I’m not going to argue whether we should be making members as part of the discipleship process. We believe that as someone grows closer to Jesus, and better understands what He Himself taught about Scripture, that person will want to identify with this Remnant Church. In our denomination, at a practical level, active membership is our goal for evangelism.
Now, Seventh-day Adventists put an emphasis on Bible truth in our evangelistic efforts, but that’s not everything. If our goal is active membership in a local Seventh-day Adventist church, then it’s not just about belief. It’s also about relationships.
Something that we as Seventh-day Adventists often forget is that church is fundamentally a social experience. Yes, there’s theology and biblical knowledge, and there’s a vertical component, a relationship with God Himself. But if you have those 2 things, but nobody around you, that’s not church. Jesus said, “There two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Church exists when there are both vertical and horizontal relationships. Church is fundamentally a social experience.
God created humans with the innate need to belong to community, and one fundamental reason people come to a church event, whether it’s a worship service, a Bible study, or a community event, is because they are seeking to fulfill this fundamental need to belong. We are social creatures. We have this innate need to belong, and at its best, church fulfills that need. Church is fundamentally a social experience.
If that’s true, then your evangelism strategy must address this. And that’s part of what makes public evangelistic meetings so powerful. It’s not just an effective way to teach people Bible truth. It’s also a really effective way to build relationships with guests. It’s both doctrine AND relationship. To be effective in your evangelism, you have to address both.
And how are relationships built? Through communication. The conversations you have with people before and after each meeting are just as a important as the meeting itself. More than that, you’ll want to be communicating with your guests in a systematic manner based on where they are at in their spiritual journey.
I’ll address this more at the end of the webinar today, offering some tactics you can use to communicate systematically with guests. But for now, just understand that the purpose of InterestTracker, the fundamental purpose of AttendanceTracker, is to give you the information you need to be more effective in how you communicate with each interest. Your goal is to draw them into an authentic relationship with you and others at your church. That’s why you use AttendanceTracker.
We have received a lot of interest in registration cards with barcodes. The production team has been working on a solution and hopes to have a product ready for release in the spring of 2023. An announcement for that product will be made as soon as it is ready for churches.
At SermonView, we have a passion for ministry, and we’re nerds for marketing. We believe that church exists for those who are not yet part of it, so our passion is helping churches like yours reach people in your community who are ready to connect with you. We do that by helping you market your evangelistic events, and by finding people in your community ready to study the Bible with you. And we can also help you turn your church website into an evangelism engine.
The SermonView crew would love to help you market your next evangelistic event. Let us know if you have an evangelistic series coming up, call us today at 800-525-5791.