Have you considered being a first time guest? Here a three ideas to help you as you look to improve the process of welcoming guests to your church.
Consider this - Go to a different church some Saturday or Sunday. Be unassuming. Go in as if you were simply checking out the church. Simply go to church and make a note of everything they do well or don’t do well. What made you feel really warm and comfortable? What made you feel not so comfortable? Did you know where to go and what to do? Then, compare that to your current process. How does what you experienced translate to your church.?
Consider this - Go to your own church, but don’t do anything. Take the entire Sunday off and come in like most of the other people do, at the same time they do. Go through the same experiences everyone else does. Normally, you are at church before everyone else and you are inside the building and doing your thing. By doing this, you will experience traffic when everyone else does. You will experience the parking lot and the front door and the ushers and the flow of service just like everyone else. So having this different perspective helps you to see what you may not normally see and experience what you may not normally experience.
Consider this - Ask one of your next first time guests to give you seriously honest and open feedback on what they experienced. This will give you truly raw information.
The point of this exercise is not to help you change the DNA of your church. Rather, it is to help create an environment that won’t prohibit someone from discovering that DNA because of a bad initial experience. Hope it helps.
Do you have some other “Have you considered” ideas? Shoot them to us!
Photo By: romulusnr
March 12th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Sometimes it's hard to see what your own church looks like just because of your own familiarity. while taking a Sunday off and coming in at a different time is certainly of enormous value, there is another method that should also be considered.
Invite one of your friends, a secular friend or a friend who attends church elsewhere, and have them attend church as a visitor. Have them pay attention to all the things that a visitor would notice and pick their brain about it over lunch. After all, even if you come in at a different time, everyone already knows you. You'll be greeted by friends but how will a stranger be received. Even more interesting, in some cases, is how a stranger of a different race would be received.
March 12th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
John. Great insight. For me, I just hate to have anything keep people from getting to the point of discovering the great things happening in and around our church. And if the parking lot is a mess or if the greeting at the front door is not quite right, people might dismiss the church before they discover the good stuff. So it takes a bit more work to objectively see the church in action and how it can improve. And your added insights are excellent suggestions. Thanks for the comment.