6 Ways to Get Your Congregation Engaged on Sunday Morning

There’s a lot of discussion about church engagement, but it can sound a little vague. What does engagement mean in reference to a church service? For the sake of this post, let’s define a highly engaged church as one with a lot of participation for Sunday morning and less passive observation.

This means that instead of just showing up and going through the motions, attendees are taking an active role in community, worship, ministries, giving, and the sermon.

It makes sense that a church’s mobile app can keep a church engaged outside of a Sunday morning, but here are some fun ways that an app can keep people engaged during a Sunday morning service.

Geofencing

A geofence uses a GPS satellite to create an invisible “fence” around a specific location. This feature can be used by your Pushpay app to send welcome messages to app users who cross that line (i.e., step onto the church property).

But here are a couple ways to use geofencing messages to get people more engaged:

1. Issue community-building challenges

Let everyone know that, for the next quarter, you’re challenging them to visit with three people before they find their seats on Sunday mornings. These should be people that they don’t normally gravitate towards.

On the following Sunday morning, begin using your church app’s geofence messaging to remind people of the challenge.

2. Suggest ways to volunteer

Do you have ministries that need volunteers? How about service projects? Use geofence messaging to send an alert to people as they arrive. Let them know they can visit a booth or kiosk for more information.

3. Send event reminders

Have a special event coming up that you need people to register for? You can be reminding people to take care of that the minute they pull into the parking lot.

Maybe you have a special element of the service you want to get them excited about like baptisms, communion, or a special speaker. You can use geofence messaging to build the anticipation.

4. Prepare people for worship

You can prepare people for the service by using this feature to message them the day’s scripture readings, a snippet of lyrics from a song you’ll be using in worship, or an intriguing quote from the message.

Prayer Requests

A list for prayer requests can be a valuable tool for a church who uses them strategically. If your church app features a prayer list, it can be a powerful tool to strengthen community.

5. Make prayer lists part of the service

Depending on the size of your church, you can use the prayer list in different ways. If you’re a smaller church you can actually spend time on Sunday morning praying for people on the prayer list.

If your congregation is too large for that, you can remind people on the pre-service slides or during announcements to add requests to the list and to regularly be praying for the list. Praying through the list can be something small groups or weekly prayer groups take time to do.

Lastly, no matter what size your church, you should occasionally take time to share testimonies and answers to prayer. Above all else, this encouragement will keep people involved and praying for each other.

Mobile Giving

Getting your church to embrace mobile giving can generate more engagement. By the sheer fact that mobile giving will increase your offering, people will feel more invested and a part of the life of the church.

6. Encourage spontaneous and recurring giving

If you use the Pushpay app, you know that we already help you with an adoption strategy to get everyone on board and using the app. But encouragement and training from the pulpit, along with testimonies from users, can help you increase your church’s generosity.

Getting them to sign up for recurring giving is another helpful way to increase buy-in and engagement from the congregation while growing your church budget. The nice thing about the Pushpay app is how it partners with you to move people toward recurring giving.