“Onboarding milestones should be measurable events, outcomes, or behaviors.”

Step 3: Establish Milestones

Effective onboarding incorporates specific objectives that the functional leaders should achieve. These objectives should align with the core reasons for adopting our solutions, and they should be achievable and measurable. To ensure a successful onboarding phase we have broken down the process of achieving these objectives into “milestones.” Using milestones, we can monitor onboarding progress and make sure that there are results within specific timeframes. Below is an outline of the milestones divided by key functional areas;

Membership Management Milestones

During onboarding, the main milestone for the Membership Management function is to ensure that at least 40% of the church adult membership has been registered. Before kickstarting the onboarding process, your account manager will ask the Branch Representative and the functional leader to provide an estimate for the number of adults in your church. Once this estimate is established the 40% registration will be tracked throughout the 10 week period. 

The first people to go through the registration process should be the church leaders and their immediate family members like spouses and children. It absolutely critical that leaders are putting their weight behind the success of the onboarding process, that is why they have to be the first ones to register. If we can’t convince the leaders to register how do we expect to get the members to participate. This exercise should cover all leaders and their committees for all the different stakeholder groups you have in your church like the pastoral team, main church board, leaders of all your departments, groups like men, ladies, youth etc. Each leader will collect a form to register their details as well as all of their family members who are part of the church family. The completed forms should be returned to the church for capturing.

Once the leaders and their families have been registered, the focus is moved to other church members. The registration of church members should be done until the 40% target has been reached or surpassed. 

In preparation for this exercise, the functional leader must make sure that enough member registration forms have been printed for the 40% member registration.

Summary of Milestones for Membership Management

1. Estimate the number of adults in the church and use the 40% as the registration target during onboarding 
2. Print registration forms enough for the target number of registrations
3. Phase 1 registration to focus on leaders and their immediate families who are church members
4. Phase 2 registration to focus on other church members until the 40% target has been reached

NB: Ask your account manager for soft copies of the registration form for you to print.

Visitor Follow-Up and Integration Milestones

The basic milestone for Visitor and Converts Follow-up during onboarding is the collection of Visitor information at every meeting. Visitors follow up and convert integration can only begin when as a church you develop a culture of capturing visitor information at any meeting, no visitor should leave without their basic information being captured.

Visitors in any church meeting be it a cell group meeting, departmental meeting, mid-week service or the main service, their basic details need to be collected and captured. The capturing of the information has been simplified as it can be done using either Pulse Mobile App or DiscipleSoft Web.

The functional leader is responsible for making sure that there are Visitors’ cards available at every church meeting so that every visitor’s information is captured.

Summary of Milestones for Visitor and Converts Follow Up

1. Print enough visitors cards for your various stakeholders
2. Distribute visitors cards to all stakeholders 
3. Weekly monitor the capturing of visitors during Sunday Service
4. Weekly monitor the capturing of visitors during Cell Group Meetings
5. Weekly monitor the capturing of visitors during Church Group Meetings

NB: Ask your account manager for soft copies of the visitor’s cards for you to print.

Groups and Attendance Tracking Milestones

The milestone for this function is to ensure that every week attendance information has been captured. Tracking attendance statistics is an important part of any growing and healthy church. As a church why is tracking attendance important? Many believe it’s because it’s “all about the numbers,” comparing our weekend attendance to other churches. Right? Wrong! Having a good handle on your attendance and what it’s doing overtime (growing, staying flat, or declining) is an important part of leading the church. Many critical church decisions are based on attendance. Tracking attendance of individuals allows the Pastors and Elders to see the trends and reach out to members who have been missing services through alternative means, such as home visits or recordings of the worship service.

The real reason to track attendance in the church is as a measure of each individual’s involvement in the life of the church. It has everything to do with the mission of the church to Go, Baptize, and Teach. It’s about individual life change. In order to do this, a church must measure attendance one person at a time.

Summary of Milestones for Groups and Attendance Tracking

1. Weekly Sunday Service Attendance
2. Weekly Cell Group Attendance
3. Weekly Groups Attendance (Men, Ladies, Youth and Sunday School)

Finance Management Milestones

Every church needs to have accurate record tracking of tithes and offerings, but it can be a real headache doing that manually. With DiscipleSoft, you will be able to electronically track tithes and offerings. We believe that sound financial systems and reporting are critical for any growing church. During onboarding, the milestones for this function is the capture of offerings and expenses from all the key aspects of the church. 

Summary of Milestones for Finance Management

1. Capture Sunday Offerings
2. Capture Group Offerings
3. Capture Cell Group Offerings
4. Capture Weekly Expenses