The Family Ministry Funnel

A few months ago at our annual gathering of all of the North Point Strategic Partnerships (church plants), called “n*rich”, we had a discussion about how the NP service program team intentionally thinks about how it creates/ designs a worship service.

The analogy we used was of a funnel. The top part of the funnel being broad represents the start of the service and tries to engage everyone and draw them in. The bottom of the funnel is narrower and represents the end of the service where the hope is to move people to a concentrated focus on Jesus.

I thought the principle was transferable. So our Family Ministry staff has been having a series of discussions on the “Family Ministry Funnel”. The image to the left is our working document at this time. We are taking about a month to work through this as a team.

Here is what the process for our discussion looks like…

1. Work with the end in mind- We asked what we want someone at each stage in our ministry to look like, be, or do when they transition to the next stage of ministry.
2. Think steps, not programs- We drew up our own funnel to look at how we move families and children through our three facets of our family ministry.
3. Being Missional- How do we engage someone who has not even entered our “family ministry funnel”? How do we go to people and not just ask them to come to us?
4. Transitions- where are the transitions that have the potential to lose people?
5. Systems- what do we need to formalize, document, lead, and implement into action to make sure we grace-fully and effectively “lead families into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ”.

You can take a look and see that we have identified that we want all of our family ministry departments’ “steps” (not “programs”) to align with the church’s strategy (Foyer, Living Room, Kitchen). We have discussed parts 1-3. We now are each working on designing systems to put into place to reduce the potential for losing people in between those steps. Finally we are brainstorming what those individual steps look like for the next year (creative meetings, calendaring, dividing responsibilities, casting vision to the church, and communication).

Feel free to take the image up there and use it yourself if it is helpful. You can also email me directly or leave a comment if you want a file that you can edit to work for your context.