Too many church hospitality committee or ministry of welcome leaders are volunteers that may not know where to start. Get a free white paper here on how to improve your welcome.
Your hospitality ministry 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.
Think of church hospitality this way:
- Marketing and personal invitations get people to be first time visitors.
- Your hospitality ministry prepares the way for people to enter the worship service.
- People experience your worship service and hopefully encounter Jesus.
- Your hospitality ministry leaves a lasting impression as they leave.
- Your assimilation ministry helps returning visitors find ways to start building friendships.
Yet depending on what study you read, up to 70% – 90% of those visitors don’t come back for a second visit.
How can you lower that number for your congregation and improve the rate at which visitors to return?
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.
You might need further Church Hospitality Training.
I sell church hospitality training materials, and provide personalized coaching to your team, to help you improve the welcome process in your church.
But before you buy any training materials in church hospitality, consider this free list of articles as a starting point after you get your whitepaper.
9 Key Church Hospitality Articles
If you’d prefer to get started with the free articles on church hospitality, this page is designed to get you up and running towards the basics of improving your ministry of hospitality at your church.
10 Practices to Welcome Church Visitors
According to a Barna Research survey of people looking for a church, “Friendliness to Visitors” is Extremely important: 71%Somewhat important: 21% Based on a national telephone survey of 1,015 people 18 or older; sampling error of plus/minus 3 percent. Citation: Moody (Jan/ Feb 2002); For 9 out of 10 visitors, the friendliness of your congregation …
Do a Quarterly Review Of Hospitality Ministries
Many wise leaders of church hospitality teams know that a regular review of your systems is a good way to make sure things flow smoothly.
Inertia and inefficiency always creep in, and churches are no different.
20 Blunders in Welcoming Church visitors
The last two posts (part I and part II) shared common practices on welcoming visitors to church. Here are 20 blunders I’ve seen churches make in greeting visitors to church. Feel free to add your own in the mix (use the comments below). No One Said Hello. Bad breath. 20 question doctrinal exam to make …
8 Steps to Relaunching A Church Hospitality Committee
Churches form new church hospitality committees or relaunch a tired committee with new people.
They want to update or infuse their church hospitality program with new ideas.
10 Tips for Church Greeters
Greeting visitors at church is such an important part of the hospitality ministry of the church. Church Greeters are part of the ministry team and form part of the first impression that a visitor receives. Here are 10 tips for greeters. You might like to read . . . How to Prepare the Welcome Greeting …
Church Hospitality Survey Assessment or Audit
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.
Evaluate Your Hospitality Program for the Price of a Cup of Coffee
Many churches have special events with the idea of “invite a friend” or to open up their church to the neighborhood. As a church leader, here is a tip to getting a free or nearly free hospitality assessment.
10 Most Important Minutes to Church Visitors
Church growth books on first impressions often stress the first 7 minutes of a visitor’s experience. But this surprise result indicates that the something else is more important than first impressions. Charles Arn has surveyed thousands of people: (Source: 3 Questions for Charles Arn) We also asked the focus groups when they decided that the church …
How to Get Church Visitor Contact Information
Getting Visitor Contact information is the first step towards your visitor followup, yet many churches fail at it. Listen to this expert on the subject describe different ways and what is the best way.
Prayer is the most important Church Hospitality Practice
Church hospitality training often focuses on “the right thing to do,” as if technique are the key to results.
What get’s lost is the spiritual ministry of hospitality.
As a leader (or perhaps a new leader) of hospitality ministry training, your role is to constantly remind people that their role is ministry:
Showing the love of Jesus to the members and guests who are visiting your church.
Prayer is more important than technique.
Prayer prepares the way for effective welcome of first time church visitors.
Learn how to pray for your church hospitality ministry.
The First Step To Improving Church Hospitality?
Too many church hospitality committee or ministry of welcome leaders are volunteers that may not know where to start.
They search the internet looking for ideas, looking for help. There is so much out there to process and sort through. So where is a tired and uncertain new volunteer to start?
If that is you, start with this list of 10 areas to fix your hospitality ministry and then map out some action steps in each area an you’ll have nearly a year’s worth of action steps to implement.