“The business world has a new Golden Rule. It is the one statistic that increasingly is taken most seriously by investors, and it may be the one mark of success in the future that all companies will be required by law to report. When it was first developed by Fred Reichheld, loyalty expert and author, he called it the Net Promoter Score or NPS. It could also be called the Customer Evangelism Score. It’s not an eternal question: it has to do with temporal matters, yet it reveals everything about the future of a company, or a church, on earth. So what is the measure of success? Every church, every Christian, and every business should seek the answer to this question: would you recommend us to a friend?
I'm very excited that on May 4th we'll be welcoming some new members into our church family, because some people in our congregation answered "YES!" to that question. I'm sure there are many different ways of growing a church. We have a long way to go at Bethany, but one thing that has definitely worked for us is having people invite their friends and others, telling them that this is a place where people can get to know God through Jesus Christ. Still, there are way too many people in our church who are way too comfortable NOT recommending us to their friends. It's not that they don't want to share about Jesus, or that they are unhappy in the church. They just aren't motivated enough to share, or they're not sure how to. That's an area we're working on. Next up, we'll be looking at how to improve our discipleship system, and how to help people get connected and involved in ministry. This is definitely an area where we lack anything concrete, and yet it is so important. Once we're recommended to a friend, we want to make sure that friend has a way to connect and grow in their faith (or find faith) once they get here!
