Ideas for Practicing the 3 by 5 Rule

The 3 by 5 rule is simple:  A leader seeks to find 5 contacts a day or 35 a week until they get 3 meetings or sit downs to either share the gospel or the vision of the church.  A contact is securing a person's name and contact information (a business card, phone number or email.)  A sit down is a follow up appointment with one of the contacts you have generated.

The primary question generated by this rule is "How do you find 35 contacts a week?" There are three sources of contacts we will look at today. 1) Follow-up Contacts 2) Networking Contacts and 3) Cold Calling Contacts.  Here are a number of ideas around each of these sources:

Follow-up Contacts

Your Church Mailing List - If your church has any age to it, it should have a list of everyone who has come in contact with the church.  This list can be generated through your worship services, special events, children's events and small groups.  One thing every good church planter does is collect contact information.  Farming your list to look for opportunities to have a sit down with people is a good place to start.  there is some level of receptivity here already along with a connection to build on.  A number of years ago I coached a church planter to simply work the list of people he generated in a two year old church.  Over the following sixty days he saw thirty people come to Christ!  There are opportunities right in front of us that we never take.

Now a days I would use the church phone to make these calls because of the caller ID feature people have on their phones.  They will probably recognize the church name more easily than in individual's name.  Typically the best time to call is between 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.  In the early days of our church plant I made between 25-50 calls every Monday night, usually with a 50% pick up rate.  Within the call you'll want to offer them friendliness, spiritual assistance and an opportunity to meet them personally by setting up an appointment.

As our church list expanded I recruited and trained volunteers to call through the list every 3 to 6 months.

How many names do you have in your church data base?  When is the last time you made any personal contact with them?

Networking Contacts

Sponsoring Churches Mailing Lists  - Sit down with your sponsoring churches and their data base.  Look for anyone who visited their church from your area.  Communicate with those pastors that you are only looking for fringe people and not key leaders.  You will be amazed at how many contacts this can generate.

Local Chamber of Commerce or Local Club Member Lists - Make a courtesy contact, hear their story, learn their business and share your story of starting this new church.

Referrals - As a church planter, I never had a conversation without asking this question:  Do you know anyone in the greater Oconomowoc area that might be interested in our new church?  One memorable time I was speaking with a church planter in a community about fifty minutes away.  He said he had a couple visit his church from our area that Sunday (they were visiting a family in his church.)  I called them using that pastor's name and set up an appointment to tell them about our new church.  As I was visiting them, I discovered that the young man had grown up in a pastor's family.  He left the church after high school, married an unbeliever but was very receptive.  Over time, he came back to Christ, his wife came to Christ and was baptized at our first baptism service.

How active are you in getting referrals?

Cold Calling Contacts

New Mover Lists - New Movers Evangelism: www.newmovers.org  Here's how the New Movers Program works:  1)  On a monthly basis they furnish names and addresses of new movers in your zip code(s) on peel and stick labels and a manuscript broken down by zip code.  2)  They guarantee 100% deliverability of the names you receive.  Once you get the newcomers list you will need to develop a "6 touch" strategy.  Here is an example:

• Week 1 - Welcome to the community letter.
• Week 2 - Send a usable gift that newcomers would appreciate.
• Week 3 - Make a phone call to see if they're interested in setting up an appointment to hear more about your new church.
• Week 4 - Write a personal, handwritten note thanking them for the phone conversation or their willingness to meet.
• Week 6-8 - Send an invitation to a special outreach event.
• Week 8 - Add them to your newsletter list.

Phone Book - I know of one church planter who was trying to generate his five contacts a day and out of frustration just grabbed the phone book and called people with a Dutch last name because he was Dutch!  Through that simple connection a conversation was started and he would see if they had a spiritual interest.  On one of these conversations he saw a woman come to Christ and she eventually became the church's treasurer.

Surveys - Door-to-door surveys on a Saturday work well along with college campus surveys.  These can generate a number of contacts. In planting my church I did over three hundred door to door opinion poll surveys and over one hundred church name surveys.  Not only did I gain great information for reaching our community but I also made strong connections with people. Some of those families are leaders in the church today. Here are a few examples:

• Opinion Poll - Download S_2_OPINIONPOLL.pdf
• Church Name Survey - Download S_4_CPNameSurvey.pdf
• College Campus Survey - Download getting_college_contacts.pdf

Would you stretch yourself to do cold calls in your community?

This is just a "quick hit" list of ways to gather more contacts.  Share your ideas with us this week.

Comments

[Pastor Jon Westlund]

Gary,

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate you pulling together ideas on where to come up with names. I assume a part time pastor with 20 hours per week should cut the goal in half minus a few for multi-tasking burdens.

Pastor Jon

P.S. Thank you too for our recent training on the same subject.