To finish my series of posts on ‘What to Do Following a Preview Service’, I’ll be addressing the final component of ‘Correction’.  In case you missed the last few posts, here’s the four-step list:

1. Celebrate
2. Follow-Up
3. Analyze
4. Correct

Once your preview service is complete, you’ve celebrated what God has done, you’ve followed-up with all your supporters, you analyzed the various service components, the final step is fixing, or correcting, the problems you’ve encountered. Correcting problems is one of those things that is always easier in theory than reality, but in this case it is crucial. For this to happen most effectively, here are a few tips:

• You need someone at the top driving excellence. This is usually the senior pastor or a senior leader.  Without this, those on the team will not naturally have the motivation to correct problem areas.
• Have a good idea of what the various components should look like and be willing to probe. Statements like “I don’t know what’s wrong, I just don’t like it” don’t fly.  Dig deeper and identify why something isn’t working.  Temporary fixes are just that, temporary.  You want to establish your church on good processes that work.
• Don’t get discouraged if after a couple preview services things aren’t perfect. Remember, this is why you have multiple preview services.  Also, you’re working with people not robots.  Things will never be completely perfect (sorry to break it to you!).
• As you walk through the process to fix broken processes or problems with your service, do so in love. Don’t use a cannon to kill a fly!  The fact that one of your greeters stood inside the doors instead of outside is not worthy of a 5 minute tirade.  Correct and express the need for correction in moderation.

Well, that’s it!  As you go through your preview service process and do these four steps each time, by the end of this stage of a church plant, you should be ready to launch big!!

If you’re in the middle of this process now as a church planter, I’d love to hear how it’s going!  Also, anything you would add?