Welcome Church Visitors

How Good Hospitality Grows Your Church

Don’t forget to say hello to your church visitors

In my ebook on church hospitality sold on this website, I tell this story, told to me first hand from a friend.

I had only been a Christian for six months. Six years ago, we moved from Texas to Richmond and began to look for a Spanish language church. I didn’t find any for a few weeks, so my wife and I decided to attend an English language congregation.

We arrived and sat down in the pews, clearly the stranger.

We didn’t speak English at the time, so we really had no clue as to what was happening.

However, after church, all the people left.

We stood around, and guess what?

No one talked to us.

This church hospitality failure still hurt

Six years later, my friend tells me this story.

Tears form in the corner of his eyes as he recalled the pain.

Even though he didn’t speak English, he did know the word “Hello.”

I’m sure the church didn’t mean to cause harm.

I’m sure the church would be aghast that this story was even true.

But reality is, after a while, the church loses it’s sensitivity to the church visitor.

For this man, the pain still lingered.

A good welcome is the responsibility of the church

Part of the responsibility of every church is to welcome the church visitor in their midst.

Most churches say they do it.

Every church thinks it is friendly.

But my friend’s story above reminds me that we are friendly with each other, rather than reaching out to our church visitors.

My friend remembers that church six years later.  Not the message that was preached, not the songs that were sung.

He only remembers no one said hello.

I wasn’t surprised, because I’ve had similar experiences when I visited churches.

Learn more:

Check out How To Welcome Church Visitors, my downloadable ebook for purchase.

This story, plus several others, are included to help you improve your 1st impressions for first time visitors.

Let me ask you this?

When you notice a stranger in your congregation, do you take the imitative to welcome them?

Do you go beyond a handshake and “God bless you” and engage in conversation?

10 Awesome Tips for New Church Greeters

Are you a first time church greeter?

Check out this brief video that gives you ten awesome tips to start your greeter ministry.

I start with giving a few examples of why church greeters need training.

If you like it, give it a share.

Resources mentioned:

Coaching Corner:

  • If you were to add another important tip to this list of 10, what would it be?  Share in the comments.

Two Embarrassing Events Make Visitor Feel Awkard

Too late for ChurchPart of the goal of reviewing your church hospitality systems is to remove potentially awkward events that might cause the church visitor to feel singled out or overlooked.

I was the mystery visitor to a nearby church at the request of the pastor.

I was free to pick any Sunday I chose and not let anyone know of my visit ahead of time.

Embarrassment #1

We visited the church on a bright summer Sunday morning.

We arrived 10 minutes late.

When we opened the sanctuary doors, we discovered it had been darkened like a movie theatre is before the film begins.

The bright light behind us invaded the intentionally darkened space.

It felt like 200 heads turned from the stage to see who the latecomer was.

On top of that, our eyes didn’t not adjust quickly enough.

This meant we stood there for several seconds, waiting to accustom ourselves to the room and find a vacant seat.

There were no greeters, no ushers, or any kind of volunteer to help us.

Embarrassment #2

This church practiced the custom of “passing of the peace,” that brief time in the service where many people try to greet as many people as possible in a limited amount of time.

However, this church took a usual 3-5 minute time and turned it into 10 minutes, so that members of the church could visit with their friends, catch up on the news, etc.

We watched as members

  • caught up with each other,
  • checked in on how the family is doing,
  • discuss the upcoming sporting event
  • planned upcoming meetings.

All of this meant that no one noticed us as visitors to their church

We sat in our seat for what felt like an awkward eternity, waiting for this to be over.

Lessons Learned:

I caught up with the pastor a few weeks later to share my experiences with him.

We brainstormed ways to help make sure these embarrassing moments don’t happen to another church visitor.

It was a great review for the pastor and by the time we finished, he found ways to remove those potential embarrassments from the experience of the visitors to their church.

Want to remove more friction?

Read about the ebook that I sell on this website.  You can read more about How to Welcome Church Visitors  here.

 

Christmas Eve Failures Mean I Wouldn’t Return

closed doorChristmas Eve is a wonderful outreach opportunity!

Church Visitors come through your doors.

  • Some will come for the first time since last Christmas Eve.
  • Others still will be coming for the very first time with some spiritual thirst.
  • Some will be out of towners who are visiting with family.

I visited a church Christmas eve 2010.

My experience could make a great lesson in church hospitality for many churches.

Did I visit your church?

I visited a suburban church on a corner of an busy intersection.

The building was presentable.  In fact, it was clean and it’s interior was well lit.

The parking lot was clearly maintained and the grass/bushes lining the parking lot appeared well maintained.

Finding a parking spot and finding our way to the entrance of the church was no problem at 7.30 on a cold winter night.

It wasn’t easy to visit this church

However, to get this far, the church put up many obstacles.

For me to go back after this experience would be even another challenge.

Here are a few mistakes this church put up in the way.

Mistake Number 1.  No Special Service Times on the Church Website

Before visiting, my question was

“What time is the Christmas Eve Service?”

I checked their website, which was hard to find due to poor optimization for any of the search terms I used.

Once I found their website, I looked at the home page for the special service times.

I found no information about Christmas Eve services.

I called the phone number and got a voice mail that didn’t indicate a Christmas eve service.

I kept searching around their website, only because I had heard from my friend that this church was having a Christmas Eve service.

In my search, I found the pastor’s email on the contact page and sent him an email asking if there was a service. The email address was pastor@[name of church].org, but I didn’t get an answer until 3 days after the Christmas eve service from the church secretary.  The email didn’t even go to the pastor that day.

Eventually, I found the church calender for December in a PDF. It had a little note on the square for 24 December that Christmas Eve service would be 7.30pm.

I FOUND IT!

Solution #1: Use the home page of your website to feature times of special services.  Make it easy for church visitors to get answers on line.

Solution#2: If you have the pastor’s email on there, I suggest it goes to a person who can answer it quickly.  Four days later is not acceptable.

Mistake Number 2.  No one said hello.

I’ve been to large churches where anonymity is important.

This church appeared to fit 100-150 people in the sanctuary, so it has a small church feel.  I’ve pastored churches this size and know who is a visitor or not.

We had arrived about 10 minutes before service, but there were only 40-50 people there.

Even though we were early, no one took the initiative to say hello.

For a congregation this size, this creates awkward uncomfortableness for the visitors.

The pastor wandered about welcoming people he knew, but never bothered to approach us.

I noticed we were not the only 1st time church visitors – there was another clueless family in front of us.

Solution: You are likely to receive church visitors on Christmas Eve, some of whom might be seeking the Lord for the first time.  Don’t neglect them or ignore their presence.

Make all efforts to welcome both members and guests.

Mistake Number 3: Impossible Hymns.

This church promoted a Christmas Eve service with traditional Christmas carols and communion service.

Together with a choir and the organ, we sang traditional hymns for this time of year.

The church did provide printed lyrics in their church bulletin and projected hymn lyrics on the wall to assist those who needed to follow lyrics.

However, two or three of the selected hymns were

  • obscure in their lyrics and
  • cumbersome in melody.

Since lyrics to those Christmas hymns were so unfamiliar even to choir, the singing of those hymns was a musical disaster.

  • People in the church, including vistors, started and finished in different places.
  • Some word syllables were held for 3 beats instead of 4.
  • Some of those beats were in really weird places.
  • One song was missing projected lyrics so only the pastor was singing.
  • At one point, we had to stop and go look for hymnbooks,  but by the time we found it, the lyrics were found and projected.

In that hymn in particular, we and most of the congregation gave up after the first verse.

Solution:  Your Christmas Eve Services isn’t the place to introduce new hymns.  If your eight person choir doesn’t know it to carry the lead, then please don’t do it.

Choose musically simple songs that are easy to sing and have worked their way into the culture.

Mistake Number 4.  No one said hello as we left.

When the Christmas Eve service ended, we filed out of the sanctuary.

No one looked at us, nor engaged us in conversation.  By this point, we really didn’t have an interest to start a conversation.

I expected the pastor to be standing by the back door greeting folks leaving the sanctuary, but he had gone somewhere else and I never had a chance to meet him.

Solution: These precious moments after your Christmas Eve service is over is  THE BEST TIME to demonstrate the friendliness of your congregation.

How?  Take the initiative and greet the first time visitors.  In a church this size, saying hello is a great ice breaker and could possibly overcome those other mistakes above.

Your Christmas Eve Service is a great time to Welcome Visitors

The church did have some things going for it.

A nice building, a great location, and clean bathrooms.

However, the personal friendliness of the congregation fell way short.  Our presence was obvious as first time church visitors.  In a congregation of this size, the lack of greeting made for awkward feelings.

It makes it very hard for me to make a recommendation of this church to anyone else.

 

5 Barriers to Effective Church Hospitality

number5In the registration form on a recent webinar on Improving your Church Hospitality, people were asked

“What is your biggest challenge in your church hospitality ministry?”

Most respondents were people leading or serving in Hospitality ministries, pastors and officers in church leadership, plus a few church planters and church consultants.

The answers fell into 5 common barriers where church’s struggle with their hospitality ministry.

1. Cliques

Respondents described their congregations as having people who

  • don’t notice church visitors,
  • friendly with each other,
  • don’t care about welcoming outsiders,
  • too busy fellowshipping with themselves.

Some examples can be seen

2. No Personal Ownership

Respondents indication concerns about how to share a vision for hospitality ministry

  • So that the members would personally greet church visitors
  • Taking responsibility for some of the systems of hospitality (training, recruiting, etc).
  • To get beyond “Friendly with themselves”and greet visitors

This gets really how to cast Vision for Hospitality Ministries in a Church and increasing the visitor attentiveness of the church in general.

3. Not enough Volunteers

This was a big concern.  Church Hospitality ministries are labor intensive.  Think of all the people involved in

  • Administration level of Hospitality Ministry.
  • Recruiting the Greeter / Usher / Welcome Center Volunteers.
  • Training the Church Greeter
  • Training the Ushers.
  • Training the Welcome Center Volunteers.
  • Scheduling the volunteers
  • Keeping volunteers motivated and so.

Finding, Recruiting, Training, Scheduling and maintaining all those volunteers is a lot of work.  That list doesn’t cover all of those who are tangential to the hospitality ministries like the

  • Children’s workers
  • Audio / Sound technicians
  • Janitors / Custodians who keep the building looking clean and nice.

4. Lack of Adequate Training for Hospitality Ministry Volunteers

Respondents indicated that out on the open market for purchase is there is a lack of resources available for training.  This was two fold

a.  Not enough training materials

I’ve looked at a lot of resources currently available on Amazon.  I would agree.  There are some great books, but not ones that focus on training.

To help fill that need, I’ve created two ebooks that you can download immediately after purchase.

If a visitor leaves your church and says “No one said hello,”  you might need to grow this avenue of ministry

b.  Not enough training

Respondents point out that there is a great need to provide some kind of training, but have a hard time knowing where to start.  Each of my e-books give suggestions on how to do that.

5. Connecting Visitors to the Congregation

Can visitors connect relationally to the congregation?  How easy is it for them to break into the social networks of your congregation?

Respondents indicated that they needed help with ways to

Let me ask you this?

If I were to get to a list of 10 barriers, what would you add?

My name is Chris Walker and I've conducted training on evangelism and church growth internationally … Read More

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