The gospel should be offensive, not your church members or a lackadaisical hospitality ministry.
Your hospitality ministry in the church is one of the most important factors in the experience of first time visitors that will influence their personal decision to come back to your church.
After all, your church won’t grow if your visitors don’t return and make friends.
But you may have unintentional barriers that might hinder that person’s decision to return.
Fix things with a Church Hospitality Audit
Church Hospitality Leaders find it helpful to have a questionnaire to help them spot and fix items that can quickly remove those unecessary rough edges.
Use this church hospitality survey form as part of your regular church hospitality review.
This will to help you evaluate how welcoming or visitor friendly your church is.
- The original version was downloaded over 2100 times since I put it up here over 3 years ago.
- Updated in 2013, it was downloaded over 5,000 more times.
- Updated for 2014, the new version of the Church Hospitality Audit 3.0 is now 20 pages long and helps in more areas.
This free report is now easier to use with more white space for notes of action steps that you’ll discover you’ll need to make. It now has more observation points to correct and notice.
Sample questions from the Church Hospitality Audit
___ Is your church’s name easy to read from the road?
___ Is it easy to tell which entrance to use for the church office?
___ Does the exterior and overall appearance of your church look well maintained and attractive?
___ Are the restrooms all clean?
___ Do you have adequate lighting in hallways, classrooms, and the worship center?
___ Are the rooms for infants and toddlers both attractive and clean?
___ Are large print bulletins available?
___ Do you have greeters positioned at the entrances to the church?
___ Are members of your church prepared to extend brunch or dinner invitations to your guests?
What others are saying
This testimonial came from a small church pastor, 26 members, in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
She followed the steps in the church hosptiality audit that is included in the book and saw ways to apply it to her country church.
We are passing your How to Welcome Church Visitors book around the Session, the Elders are reading it. I encouraged them to make notes in the margin as to their thoughts, ideas, responses, etc.
I, however, found it to be very helpful.
Probably the best overall thing was a sense of encouragement, that there are things we can do.
After you pray and think and pray and think for years, you find yourself going around in the same little circle and it was nice to get out of that circle.
The book helped me to look at our little church (26 active members!) in a fresh way.
Some of the realizations were “duh!” – but still, good to bring to front and center.
Sometimes you just quit noticing things because you see them all the time; they don’t register any more.
For example, somehow the guys in charge of keeping things fixed at the church just didn’t know that the toilet seat in the women’s bathroom was cracked; had been cracked for a long time.
They told me that that’s the kind of thing they definitely needed to be told about, wouldn’t discover it on their own!!
The seat has been replaced!!
L.C. Long
Presbyterian Pastor
There were so many more things this pastor did to spruce up their church. Stuff that would not have been visible had she not made the effort to follow some of the hospitality audit steps that are laid out in the book.
Order and download your copy of How To Welcome Church Visitors
We recently completed a major renovation and would have failed the audit MISERABLY a year ago (hence the reason for the major overhaul), but there were several things that I thought were great that we are not doing (love the mints for church ushers/greeters and lozenges for annoying tickle or cough). — Jeannine
I love your site and the information is already impacting our church. We have done a “Hospitality Audit” and found many issues to address. We do NOT have any training for church greeters and we need to fix this. – Russ
Thanks for the hospitality audit in your last issue! I realize my church has a lot to do to improve it’s hospitality at the church, particularly on the facilities. For example:
1. There no signs to mark offices, toilets, canteen, prayer room etc. We need signs to mark the entrances to each & every room
2. We have a small sign by road side, but I realize the need to put the church name on the church premises.
3. Our road signs are cheaply improvised and unreadable from a distance. We need better ones which are attractive and readable from a far.
Thanks for enlightening the world.
Maureen
Download it here
Don’t stop there
Take the time to review your hospitality systems.
Be sure to review the volunteers and process around your
- Greeter Ministry
- Campus
- Welcome Center
- Post service reception
- Visitor Contact information
The ebook I sell on this website can be one way to review your systems. Check out these additional books available from Amazon that could help.
Your hospitality ministry can also order a personal training from me. It is a virtual seminar I offer that is travel-free. You can offer it on any night or day that you choose. I’ve even had a request on a Thursday for an event on Saturday morning.
Read more about how to get your own church hospitality team training seminar from me.
Photo Credit: LightBulb by Dawn
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