Watching the Flow
Nobody Stays Where You Put Them
Up to this point, we've talked about the five audiences as if they're fixed categories — five boxes, five distinct groups. In reality, they're not boxes. They're a current. People are always moving through these five tiers, in both directions, whether your church is paying attention or not. A Community member becomes a First-Time Visitor. A First-Time Visitor becomes a Sometimer. A Sometimer either settles into Regular Attendance or drifts into the Lost. And — this is the part churches forget most often — a Regular Attender can move backward through every one of those same stages, sometimes so gradually that no one notices until they're gone.
This lesson isn't about the five audiences themselves. It's about the movement between them — and about training yourself to notice that movement while it's still happening, instead of only noticing the destination after someone's arrived there.
Two Forces, Working at All Times
At every point along this flow, two forces are acting on a person simultaneously: something pulling them in, and something pushing them out. Neither force ever fully stops. Even your most committed Regular Attender has something quietly pulling at their attention elsewhere, and even someone newly returned from the Lost has some residual reason still pushing them toward the door. Your job isn't to eliminate one of these forces — that's not realistic. Your job is to know which one is currently stronger for any given person, and to understand why.
Pull factors are the things that draw someone further in — a sense of being known, a role or responsibility that gives them ownership, a relationship that would be missed if they left, a moment where they felt truly seen, a need that got met at exactly the right time.
Push factors are the things that move someone further out — feeling anonymous in a crowd, an unresolved conflict, a schedule or life change that makes attendance harder, a message that made them feel judged or overlooked, or simply the absence of anything strong enough to pull them back in when life got busy.
Most churches are far better at noticing push factors after the fact — in an exit interview, in a conversation that starts with "I just haven't felt connected lately" — than they are at noticing pull and push factors while they're still in motion.
What Flow Looks Like at Each Transition
Community to First-Time Visitor. This transition is often the most visible one, because it usually requires a specific action — showing up, physically, for the first time. The pull is almost always relational or situational: an invitation from someone they trust, a life event that opens them up (a birth, a loss, a move), a moment of genuine curiosity. The push that keeps someone in Community and never crossing this line is usually about perceived barriers — not knowing what to expect, assuming they wouldn't fit, or simply never having a reason placed in front of them.
First-Time Visitor to Sometimer or Regular Attender. This is the narrowest and most fragile window in the entire flow. The pull here is almost entirely about whether they felt like a person or a statistic during that first visit — did someone remember their name, was there a next step that felt natural rather than pushy, did anything happen that made them think "I could belong here"? The push in the opposite direction is usually silence — no follow-up, no invitation to anything specific, nothing that gave them a reason to think about the church again before the next Sunday arrived and life moved on.
Regular Attender toward Sometimer. This is the transition churches are slowest to notice, because it doesn't happen all at once. It's a missed Sunday that becomes two, a role they quietly step back from, a small hurt they never mentioned. The push factors here are rarely dramatic — more often it's a slow erosion of feeling essential, a sense that their absence wouldn't be noticed, or an unaddressed friction with another person or a decision the church made. The pull that would have kept them steady is usually something specific: a role that made them feel needed, a relationship that would have checked in, a leader who noticed the first missed Sunday instead of the fifth.
Sometimer toward the Lost. This is the transition with the highest stakes and the least attention. Remember the two types from Lesson One — for the Competing Priorities Sometimer, the push is usually that nothing pulled hard enough to compete with whatever else had taken priority. For the Genuine Obstruction Sometimer, the push is different and more painful: it's the accumulated feeling of being forgotten by a place they wanted to be part of but structurally couldn't access. Left unaddressed, both types eventually stop identifying as "someone who goes to that church" at all — and that's the moment they've crossed into the Lost.
The Flow Nobody Talks About: Coming Back
Flow doesn't only move outward. People return — from the Lost back to Sometimer, from Sometimer back to Regular Attender. This direction gets far less attention in most churches, but it deserves just as much. The pull that brings someone back is almost never generic outreach; it's usually one specific person, one specific gesture, one moment of acknowledgment that told them the door was actually open, not just theoretically. Churches that pay attention to this reverse flow — and actively try to create pull in that direction — see return far more often than churches that simply wait and hope.
Why This Matters for Communication
Everything in this course so far has been about tailoring your message to where someone currently is. This lesson adds a layer: you also need to communicate based on which direction they're currently moving. A Regular Attender who's begun drifting needs something different from a Regular Attender who's fully rooted, even though today they'd both check the same box on an attendance sheet. Watching the flow means your communication responds to trajectory, not just position.
Exercise:
Map one real transition. Think of one specific person who moved between tiers in the last year — in either direction — and write down what you believe pulled or pushed them.
Identify your church's biggest silent leak. Which transition point (Community to Visitor, Visitor to Sometimer, Attender to Sometimer, Sometimer to Lost) does your church currently lose the most people at, and why?
List three pull factors you currently offer at that leak point, and be honest about whether they're strong enough to compete with the push factors present.
Find one person currently drifting — not gone, just slipping — and reach out this week before they cross further out.
Name one return story. Think of someone who came back from further out to further in, and write down specifically what pulled them back. Keep that story; you'll want it later in the course.
