Welcome Church Visitors

How Good Hospitality Grows Your Church

What happens if your visitor DOES keep coming back?

Walker family

Our family experienced a temporary life transition that involved us moving to another state in the US for a period of four months.

We left our work, our church that we are planting, our friends and support networks.

During this temporary time, we chose a local church in our community without shopping for a church, since four months not enough time to visit many churches, nor build long lasting relationships.

This put us in a real life experience of being the first time visitor in a church and to experience the challenges of getting connected to a local church.

We chose a large denominational church well established in the community.

Our experience:

We are grateful for the community of friends we made during that time.

We strengthened a relationship with a family we knew already, and made some new friends.

We invested in their ministry, and they invested in us.

While we were not there long enough to “become family,” we do treasure our time there.

Listen in

I’m interviewed by Bill and Kris of Church Talk after I published a recent article our experience in Net Results Magazine.

In this video, I talk about some of the surprising bumps in the road in getting into the social network of the church.

As a teacher on hospitality and welcome issues, I share a few lessons learned first hand that can help churches retain visitors who keep returning.

Listen in:

Key points:

  • Use the connection card to inform your visitor of next steps
  • Don’t assume your visitor knows what the next step is.
  • Visitors need to develop meaningful relationships within 6 months
  • Church visitors that want to get involved need to hear the simple ways to do it.

What next?

On the assumption that you have a church visitor or new family making the effort to come back for a few weeks, my experience raises the question:

How can a church guide a visitor to an easy and low commitment next step?

This is the central question of any visitor connection process.

I’ve talked with pastors during the recent years looking for a foolproof system of assimilation, looking for the system to “set and forget” and watch the membership numbers climb.

We know it doesn’t work that way.

We must be intentional in helping new comers find their way into our church family and make easy pathways for that to occur.  Programmatic expressions might differ, but the question remains the same:

What is a simple and low commitment next step that a repeat church visitor can take to build new relationships?

Discussion questions:

  • What is the simple next step in your congregation?
  • What happens to the data on the church connection card?
  • How does your church visitor learn about that simple next step?

About EvangelismCoach

Chris Walker writes for EvangelismCoach.org and often teaches on areas of Church Hospitality and Welcome

Recent Posts

  • How to A Lose First Time Guest to your Church
  • Follow-up Calls with Church Guests: What to Do and What Not to Do
  • The shortcut to a great welcome
  • Where do you start?
  • Can’t Get Enough Volunteers for Your Hospitality Ministry?

RSS Church Hospitality

  • 7 Ways to Prepare Your Church for Mothers Day
  • Prepare Your Church for Christmas Visitors – Hospitality Review
  • 3 Traits of Church Hospitality Ministry Leader
  • Training On Demand: Step up! First Steps to Running or Restarting Your Welcome Ministries
  • 4 Ways to Pray for Your Church’s Hospitality Ministry
  • 10 Things Every First Time Church Greeter Should Know
  • Quick Survey to Evaluate Your Church Guest Services
  • How to Lead the Introduction of First-timers in Church
  • Your church visitor has a list
  • Church Hospitality Survey Assessment or Audit

RSS Church Greeters

  • 10 Things Every First Time Church Greeter Should Know
  • How to Give Constructive Feedback to Your Church Greeters
  • 6 Goals of a Church Greeter
  • Different Greetings to Welcome Church Visitors
  • Video Discussion Starter for Church Greeters
  • Memo to Church Greeter: Don’t hug a guest!
  • Church Greeter Tips: Show Respect for your Guests
  • We will not forget THAT church greeter
  • 10 Free Church Greeter Training Videos
  • Top 21 Posts on Church Greeter Ministry

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

Recent Posts

  • How to A Lose First Time Guest to your Church
  • Follow-up Calls with Church Guests: What to Do and What Not to Do
  • The shortcut to a great welcome
  • Where do you start?
  • Can’t Get Enough Volunteers for Your Hospitality Ministry?

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Related Products

  • How to Welcome Visitors Ebook
  • Hospitality Coaching Call
  • MP3: Create A Vision for Church Hospitality
  • Break the Barriers DVD Set