Assimilating Church Visitors: Beyond the First Visit

What kind of impression do visitors get when they come into your church for the first time? Every church thinks it’s friendly.

But I and many others have experienced the fear factor of walking into an unknown place and knowing immediately that we don’t fit and are not really welcome to remain. (Download: Avoiding First Time Visitor Nightmares.)

During my last book buying binge (to add to the six overloaded bookshelves on evangelism), I picked up two specifically on assimilating visitors, or how to welcome and help visitors join your church community.

The first one I have already finished. Gary McIntosh’s Beyond the First Visit: The Complete Guide to Connecting Guests to Your Church. (Click image or link to order yours direct from Amazon).

The cover promises to offer the reader a complete guide to church hospitality, and is written by well know church growth scholar Gary McIntosh.

Get Visitors To Church

If you have NEVER picked up a book on welcoming visitors, this can be a helpful introduction.

This book does have some strengths in looking at the visitor flow of your church.

Attracting Visitors — Getting them to come.
Welcoming Visitors — The art of Hospitality, dealing with first impressions and service.

But there are better books on the market (a preview of what I’m reading now — I’m really jazzed about it).

How do YOU welcome a visitor

McIntosth begins with reminder of how important it is for churches to welcome the visitors that come.

He asks: How do you react differently between a guest and a visitor?

A guest is invited, expected, and thus you make sure the house is clean and in order.

A visitor shows up unexpectedly, uninvited, and typically when you’re doing laundry or dressed in your painting clothes.

McIntosh encourages the church to think through how it welcomes guests, to review what it thinks about guests, and to encourage churches to see themselves through the eyes of a guest.

In the 2nd chapter, he reminds of how to be a great host. Welcoming guests doesn’t happen accidentally, but on purpose with some careful planning and attention to the process (which is where a consultant can help you).

He cites research from the 80s that churches need to keep 25 to 30 percent of their first time visitors to grow rapidly, while churches that only keep 5 to 8 percent will decline.

Assuming those numbers are still current, let’s settle on a average of 16%. How many visitors does your church need to grow?

See what the visitor sees

What is the first impression of your parking lot, your building.

Signage? Check out these church signs I found of churches — what do they communicate?

Upkeep of the Building? What does this communicate?

First impressions — Do visitors have a positive interaction with the people in the church?

Disappointments

Though McIntosh offers some excellent advice, most of it is clearly dated, and most of the supporting research is from the early 1990s. Most all the footnotes cite citations before the year 1995, the majority of which stretch all the way back to the 70s. I kept feeling like I was reading late 1980s church growth stuff all over again.

Our society may have changed, but this book doesn’t have any current research to make sure those conclusions are still valid.

I’ve read widely on assimilating visitors, and if you have as well, you’ll find this book disappointing.

It has a throw away chapter about the emergent church that feels like an attempt at being current and not really relevant to the book. A few times I had to persevere through rabbit trails that had very little to do with welcoming visitors (for example, a whole chapter on launching new ministries).