What Does a Church Hospitality Committee do?

Church hospitality, or guests services, is not just the work of a committee in your church. Giving a great welcome has to become part of your culture.

But in many churches, the church hospitality committee or team is the one that makes sure you develop a great culture of welcome, building your volunteer team, and setting heights of a great welcome.

When there is a great culture of welcome, you’ll make it an easy for your guests to decide to return.

Read: Church Hospitality Well Done: It was a no brainer to return

But before you get to that awesome outcome, it takes great leadership from a team or hospitality committee.

Yet, I encounter many teams that are starting over after a pastor transition, or starting anew due to re-opening their church during the 2020 pandemic.

The first question is often

What does the church hospitality committee do?

Define your sphere of church hospitality

I’ve spoken with several welcome teams and hospitality committees over the last few years in my coaching phone calls about their programs or lack of programs.

A common thread in these conversations is

Where do we start with our church hospitality program?

You’ve started studying and looking and it seems like a super huge area to cover, ranging from parking lot teams to church visitor follow-up, from quality print publications to a clean building.

But at this point, you do not want to re-create the wheel. You just want some direction.

It is really easy to lose focus as your hospitality committee gets going, no matter if it is for the first time, or the first time in a long time.

In my reasoning, the purpose of the hospitality committee in church is

to take responsibility for the welcome and receiving
of your church visitors coming for the first time,
as well as your current church members.

I’ve seen other churches include the following areas of work under their hospitality committee:

• Assimilation processes
• New Member Classes
• Church Database Maintenance
• Special Event Hospitality for events like funerals, weddings, receptions, etc.

This may make your committee’s work too big.

You’ll need to decide the scope of the the work for committee, but these are general areas.

For my purposes, I usually recommend the following area of committee responsibilities:

• Marketing Presence: focus on your web page and social networking areas, plus promotional pieces like mailing cards, flyers, programming publicity.  Goal: drive visitor attendance to the church.
• Hospitality Experience: focus on the welcome and hospitality experience of your visitors and members.  Goal: create a great impression and remove unnecessary barriers to a repeat visit.
• Follow up Team: focus on regularly returning church visitors to step into your membership or connection processes. Goal: help a newcomer become a regular participant in congregational life.

Areas of work for the church hospitality committee:

On the assumption that the church hospitality committee focuses on the welcome and hospitality experience, the team should be involved in developing the working parts of the hospitality ministry.

• Church Greeters
• Church Ushers
• Church Welcome Center
• Post-service receptions
• Visual presentation of the campus facilities
• Communication pieces for church visitors
• Welcome Packets for your church visitors
• Small thank you gifts for your first-time visitors
• Advocating for great welcome throughout the life of the church.

Read more: Duties of Church Hospitality Committee or Team

First steps for your church hospitality committee

I have coached several church hospitality teams that are in this same arena.

You can start in any of the above areas or pick one of these areas:

• Develop your greeters
• Determine your connection process
• Do an audit of your facilities for adequate signage and lighting
• Start an after service reception
• Develop a welcome packet for church visitors
• Determine how you get church visitor contact information.
• Read books such as the one on this site: How to Welcome Church Visitors

Reignite Your First Impressions Ministry

We all want our church visitors to come back. But to get that to happen you need to improve your first impression ministries.

But where do you start?

Get these 7 Secrets to Effective Church Hospitality to give you starting points and ideas that you can implement this weekend.

Download it now

Next steps I can help with

I offer several items to help you with developing your church hospitality committee

Start with this tutorial on church hospitality.

Over at the EvangelismCoach.org store, I have several products for immediate download or on DVD that you might find helpful:

• How to Welcome Church Visitors (ebook)
• Cast the Vision for Hospitality (Download MP3)
• Church Hospitality Review (Download MP3)
• Break the Barriers DVD set (4 DVD set aimed at helping you identify and remove barriers).
• You may want to do a coaching appointment with me.

More Greeter Training Resources

• You can get the 2 DVD Combo Set of Greeter Training DVDs from the store
• See this tutorial on fixing your greeter ministry.
• Church Greeters 101 in Paperback
• Church Greeters 101 for Kindle

I have a simple training package of six phone calls with you as the leader of your church hospitality program.

It’s called the “Get Started Coaching Program for Hospitality Leaders.”

If you

• Were recently appointed as leader of your hospitality ministry
• Want to reorganize a stale welcome ministry
• Relaunch your hospitality ministry for the next season of growth.

then click here to consider this hospitality coaching program.

Let me ask you this?

What are the primary areas of focus for your church hospitality committee?