Episode Details

Today we’re chatting with Julie Hawkins, the Next Steps Pastor at Chapel Hill Church in Washington state.

So many churches had to quickly develop an online presence at the beginning of 2020 and it made the area of helping people take their next steps more challenging. Listen in as Julie shares how Chapel Hill Church took advantage of opportunities to pioneer new methods of building deeper relationships and increasing connection and engagement, and how they are using what they’ve learned moving forward.

• Try new things. // It can be hard for larger churches to make sudden changes. However, the early days of COVID gave Chapel Hill Church the opportunity to try new things quickly and see what worked or what needed to be changed. With these pioneering efforts came more exploration of what could be done online and this actually led to deepening of relationships and increased engagement.
• Virtual mission trips. // One of the things the church did was organize some virtual Go teams with their global outreach partners across the world. What they discovered was doing an online mission trip allowed the church to engage a segment of their congregation that would never be able to actually visit countries like Cambodia or Thailand. Similarly, the church was able to engage with their ministry partners in a deeper way by listening to their needs over Zoom and praying for them. Chapel Hill also included cultural aspects to the online experiences, such as sharing a recipe or music from the country, or providing fair trade gift boxes.
• Build local outreach relationships. // Similarly, with local outreach partners people at the church learned that while showing up to serve is a great opportunity to build relationship, you can continue to build that relationship outside of the actual experience. Take time to pray for various ministry partners and connect with them online.
• Online evangelism. // Chapel Hill was surprised by how well groups like Alpha did when moved online during the pandemic. People were still willing to dig into the deep questions of life. In fact, they saw more people come to faith through their online Alpha groups via Zoom than they’d seen in person.
• Online life groups. // During the initial phase of the pandemic, life groups were also moved online to Zoom, and more people joined those groups than ever before. Having the meetings on Zoom moving forward allows people to stay connected even when they’re out of town or unable to get together. People love these little communities that have been developed.
• Training online. // Chapel Hill adapted much of their training to be online too, and hope to continue with this method moving forward. Online training allows people to watch the videos at their own speed when it fits into their schedule, and then build a relationship in person.
• Connecting via text. // When it comes to connecting with people and reengaging new people, or those who haven’t returned to in-person services yet, Julie uses the tool Focus Growth. Focus Growth helps with first-time guest follow-up by reminding the staff to begin a conversation with guests via text message. Text messages are a primary way we communicate and so it allows the church staff to reach out without overwhelming new people or being too pushy. The response from guests has been overwhelmingly positive.
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