[0:01]
all right well uh so yes in the second session a little bit more practical um but we're going to be focusing on pathways integration and hospitality so starting with pathways as tim mentioned uh one of the key inputs for building a biblical church community is some basic systems and structures so we believe that the most foundational structure that your church needs is some kind of discipleship or integration pathway that is you really need a way of moving

[0:32]
people from non-christians through to mature believers there are plenty of options out there for pathways some examples are you could go connect grow serve and go you can go engage evangelize establish and equip or community crowd congregation committed and core these are the only pathways that are out there and each of these examples definitely have strengths and weaknesses but at the end of the day

[1:02]
whichever pathway you choose whichever pathway you go with it's more important that you actually have one that's because the power of a pathway is that it will help you break down where people are on their discipleship journey and it will help you reflect on what you can do to help them move to their next step because if you don't know where people are in the pathway you won't know their next step and you won't know how to love them best so at grace city we use the version of the five c's and that

[1:32]
should come up uh as a slide for you for the sake of time i won't go through it all but you can see i'll just there we go you can see from the direction of the arrow that the goal is to move people so from the outer circle maybe unhelpful it's called community and to reference to the community outside of the church at moving through to the inner circles by walking them through a series of next steps in the form of explore on board and ministry interview which you can see off the top there so you might be

[2:04]
wondering well how does this pathway contribute to the building of a biblical community what each step along the pathway is seeking to further clarify what it looks like to belong and be a member of a biblical church so for example you have explore and explore is a series of courses introducing people to jesus and encouraging them to become followers of christ you've then got on board so on board is a two-hour course in which we're trying to give christians a biblical understanding of church membership

[2:34]
before connecting them into a small group and then hopefully they're in a small group serving next up is the interview so it's a one-on-one chat with members where we talk to them about the importance of pursuing greatness by serving others and we give them an opportunity to do that by joining a ministry team in other words each step along the pathway it's really trying to connect people into and to facilitate their engagement in an ever-growing community of forgiven sinners

[3:05]
characterized by loving attitudes and loving actions again you don't need to use this same pathway or the next steps that we do but we think building some kind of clear integration pathway is really critical if you want a biblical community as opposed to a big crowd and it will help you know who you're responsible for what their next step is and how you can love them best secondly we're going to talk about a warm and welcoming community

[3:36]
so tim mentioned before that we want to create communities that live out the one another commands in scripture and so one of these one another commands is found in romans 15 verse 7 and paul writes welcome one another as christ has welcomed you for the glory of god and i think we all know that we follow a welcoming god and our churches need to reflect that if our communities are constantly welcoming others they will inevitably grow and that's why

[4:07]
we've said throughout today that the outcome we're aiming for is an ever-growing community of forgiven sinners but welcoming is tricky so how can we do it well and that's what we're going to talk about now so firstly it's understanding bridges one of the most important steps to welcoming people into your church is to recognize that there are typically three many bridges that someone will need to cross in order to join your church and you can see that on the slide

[4:38]
even if you don't have an official membership course these three bridges will still be true for you in your church so as you can see someone crosses bridge one when they come to your church for a second time they cross bridge two when they come back to your church for a third or a fourth time and they cross bridge three when they go from being a regular attender to a member of your church now if you're wondering what practical benefit this has the key to appreciate is the power of simply recognizing these three bridges

[5:11]
knowledge is power and once you know that these three steps exist you can start to think about practical ways in which you can help people to cross a bridge for example you might start asking questions like is there anything we can do to make a first time guest more likely to come back for a second time so grace city a first-time guest will get a welcome pack they'll get a coffee card and if they go to the night service they'll also get like a card for dinner so they can get it for free um and now we're thinking

[5:41]
all right for a first time guest well maybe we give them two coffee vouchers so that they come they they have their free coffee one sunday and then the next week they're like should i come back to church yeah i'm gonna go and use my second coffee voucher which for a uni student will probably work um just to sign up on the card as well we give them we used to say uh every first time i gets a free coffee but now we give them a card because we want to remove any awkwardness

[6:11]
and uncomfortable feelings we can because if i'm a new person i go to the cafe team and i say can i get a cappuccino and they say yeah it's two dollars i'm gonna have to tell them i'm new don't i get it for free that i want to remove that completely i want to give them a card they hand it in and the cafe person knows that person's new what's your name welcome to grace city so great to have you thinking about the detail and how you can make it comfortable for a first timer all right what about second time guests so presumably they've come back for a

[6:43]
reason how are their needs different from a first first-timer and they're not quite a regular attender yet they've just come back a second time what can you do that will help them come back a third or fourth time and what about those who are regular attenders but they're not members yet they haven't crossed that final bridge so you can start asking well what's stopping them from taking the next step into church life and what do they need to do to be willing to call this church home ah thanks that's good with the slide

[7:15]
simply recognizing the reality of these steps will help you to love and care for each of the people who are coming to your church according to their needs as opposed to treating everyone in the same generic way one brief example is uh there's a girl uh coming to 6pm a lady we're chatting over dinner it's one of her first weeks uh i started to hear a bit of a story i realized that she's a solid christian the last church she was at after attending that church for three months she realized it was a

[7:45]
cult it was quite a shocking experience for her she really thought it was a bible-believing church and they're unclear about some things anyway so we're having dinner i hear about it okay i get her number we meet up for coffee debrief a little bit more but then i hear a month later she's going to on board and on board we talk a lot about membership which is important but for someone who's their last church they were at was a cult talking about membership might make her concerned she might have a lot of questions so i just want to see oh is on board

[8:18]
going to be talking about membership is that going to freak her out maybe keep her a regular attender not necessarily across that last bridge and being a member we just kind of want to the more you can know people the more your welcomers can know people bit of their story where they've come from you can help prevent anyone slipping through the cracks and not crossing over those bridges finally oozing hospitality so once you recognize the importance of helping people to cross those three bridges it's time to think about all the things

[8:49]
in your sunday service ecosystem that might help influence how warm and welcoming someone's experience of your community might be so great city we really want to do everything we can to ooze hospitality on a sunday because we want our guests to feel welcomed and we want them to have a desire to come back to help us consider how to do this well we have a triangle which you'll be able to see and we've pulled together some of the key things that we really want to be paying attention to before during and

[9:21]
after the sunday service so there you go thanks so in terms of understanding how to read this triangle um there's a few exceptions for your guests but overall this is kind of how they'll experience things so from top to bottom um sorry they'll experience it from top to bottom which also means that you have the least control over the things at the the bottom of the triangle um you'll also notice that the left hand side so that highlights the people that your guests will encounter but the

[9:52]
right hand side highlights the programs the non-people side of things that your guests will encounter this is probably not revolutionary for you but we found that separating all these elements these different aspects out and then individually going through each section being able to think through okay how can each area ooze hospitality what is everything humanly possible we can do to ooze hospitality so that people feel welcomed loved so that they want to come back

[10:42]
you