EvangelismCoach

Welcome Church Visitors

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2 Church Website Pages to Help First Time Visitors

I consulted with the Church Hospitality Team leader of a large urban church that is developing a parking lot ministry greeter team.

Over the decades, this church has acquired neighboring parcels of land in the city to expand their campus.  The end result being that there is no contiguous land parcel for one parking lot.

Instead, there are small disconnected parking lots scattered around the campus of multiple buildings.

The question we explored is how to help first time church visitors navigate the complexity of multiple parking lots when certain lots are full.

Together, we discovered two useful ideas for the Church Website: [Read more…] about 2 Church Website Pages to Help First Time Visitors

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Useful Small Talk at the Church Welcome Center

In our family’s current journey of looking for a church, we empathize anew with Christian families that are new movers and have to find a new church on their own.

I am re-discovering is the value of small talk when engaging your first time visitor.  (Read these 20 Crazy Church Greeter Comments).

Our church visit this past Sunday drew my attention to the value of small talk. [Read more…] about Useful Small Talk at the Church Welcome Center

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Is your hospitality ministry disorganized?

Here is one of my favorite church hospitality questions:

Our hospitality ministry is SOOOOO lacking.

What can we do to fix it?

Based on some descriptions that readers like you tell me, I frequently run into these adjectives.

  • Weak,
  • Struggling,
  • Lack of Passion.
  • Not organized well.
  • Whatever happens, happens.
  • People and ministry fall through the cracks.
  • Visitors don’t return after the first or second visit.

Those would be some adjectives describing a disorganized hospitality ministry. [Read more…] about Is your hospitality ministry disorganized?

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Need More Hospitality Ministry Volunteers?

How do I find hospitality ministry volunteers for my church?

Here is a common email I receive (composed from various ones):

I’m having a hard time finding volunteers who believe in the ministry of hospitality.  They think everyone should be doing this automatically.

Our church doesn’t have enough people who are interested in being greeters. We can’t get any volunteers. .

We’ve not ever organized our hospitality ministry before, but want to so do now so that our church will grow.

How do I find volunteers for the hospitality ministry?

Any ideas? We are praying for God to touch people’s heart with the desire to serve.

If you are the leader of your church’s hospitality committee, this is a question on your mind.

You have come to the realization that your church needs to do a better job of greeting and welcoming first time visitors.

But you have a hard time getting volunteers and you run into these three attitudes:

Attitude #1: Greeting: It’s everyone’s job.

People neglect the intentional nature of the hospitality ministry because they think it’s everyone’s responsibility.

You encounter resistance because they believe it’s the role of everyone.

I’ve seen it in smaller churches that have never had a welcome ministry.

I’ve seen it in mid-size churches that used to have a welcome ministry, but it got neglected over time.

Attitude #2: It’s not my gift. . .

I’ve seen people hide behind this one too.

I’ve met people who seem to have few social skills and would rather do something else than say hello to strangers.

But, I’ve also met people who find visitors to be a nuisance:

  • Those visitors sit in my pew and make me sit somewhere else.
  • They dress funny.
  • They might not be here legally.
  • That family might be a bad influence on my kids.

So they give a cold shoulder instead of a warm welcome, and hide behind “It’s not my gift.”

Attitude #3:  I don’t need training

You may already have people doing some kind of welcome ministry.

But you know it’s a mediocre experience for the visitor.

You may have volunteers who have settled into their routine of handing out bulletins, but have no grace, charm, or love for the visitor – it’s their church job vs. a ministry.

They are resistant to improving the hospitality ministry because they believe “I know how to welcome people, I’ve been doing it here for 10 years.”

Where then do I start?

Work at Changing their Minds

question1Part of your work as the hospitality ministry leader will be to change these attitudes.

Don’t let these attitudes deter you from improving your welcome process.

As you personally recruit your volunteers, you’ll have the chance to express how important this ministry is to the growth of your church.

Here are three ways to work at changing minds.

1.  Regularly Cast the Vision for Hospitality Ministry.

There are many ways to cast that vision, but this is a process of time.

Find and share stories of the impact of hospitality ministry.

You should be a hunter of stories of people who experienced a great welcome in your church.

Celebrate it from the front, and celebrate them at moments like baptisms and membership Sundays.

2. Have a Vision Refresher Meeting.

Gather your volunteers for a vision refresher meeting.

Take some time to both recast the vision, and provide some training for your volunteers.

These meetings can also serve as an entry point for recruiting new volunteers to your hospitality ministry that you have been identifying.

3.  Personally Recruit 

If you want to recruit volunteers for this ministry of hospitality, make the effort to

  • pray
  • identify
  • share the vision
  • Ask for the volunteer to serve.

Personal recruitment, particularly in smaller church is the most effective way to start getting new volunteers.

They need to see and hear your passion for this welcoming ministry.

Let me ask you this

What are some of the ways that you have gone about finding volunteers?

What are some of the ways you have overcome some of these attitudes?

Training Tools to help you

I recorded this webinar to help you.  You can stream it or download it after purchase.  Available in the Store.  Click on the image to get there.

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What is the next step?

Our family has experienced a temporary life transition that had us move to another state in the US for a period of four months, away from our church, away from our social networks, and away from our friends.

Four months not enough time

  • to visit many churches
  • to look for a church home.
  • to build long lasting relationships.
  • to really even get to be known by church members.

Our move is only temporary, so we made a decision to pick a church where some friends attend and just stay there. [Read more…] about What is the next step?

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6 Steps to Organize an Invite a Friend Day

These are the six steps we used to run our Invite A Friend Sunday

A reader contacted me via Ask EvangelismCoach:

“Pastor, our small church needs help organizing a Friends and Family day for the end of August to launch our new season.

Can you help us?”

As we talked on the phone, we kicked around a few ideas unique to their church, but developed some ideas that are useful to many churches.

So here are 6 steps to a successful “Invite a Friend Day.”

These are the steps we followed in May when we launched our morning worship service.  Read on to see what happened.

1.  Build a base of prayer.

  • Encourage people to pray for this particular Sunday
  • Have people write down names of potential guests on a card and pray daily.
  • Ask God for opportunities to invite people.
  • Read 10 ways to pray for more invitations.

2.  Build momentum.

  • Make an announcement each week.
  • Pastors: talk about your personal invitations to others.
  • Cast vision for hospitality and welcome.
  • Prepare marketing materials your people can give away.
  • Read Refreshing a Vision for Church Hospitality

3.  Update / Review your hospitality systems.

4.  Give people tools to invite their friends.

  • Distribute invitation cards.
  • Distribute flyers.
  • They can share with their networks like Facebook.
  • Give people online tools to share with their networks.
  • Update your webpage to feature the sermon series.
  • (Read Business Card Outreach Idea for Church Members).

5.  Launch a sermon series that day.

  • Launch a 3-4 week sermon series around a life problem.
  • Use the series to show the Bible is relevant to life.
  • Give opportunity for people to respond to the gospel message.
  • Foreshadow the next installment to increase the possibility of a return visit.
  • Lift up opportunities for people to build new friendships or give themselves away in service.

6.  Have a follow-up “meet the pastor” type event.

  • Prepare a social event within a few weeks of the first Sunday.
  • Invite your guests to that event.
  • Showcase the mission of the church and its involvement in the neighborhood.
  • Invite people to serve in the community.

Our story:

How we used Invite A Friend Sunday to Triple our Attendance
These were the steps we followed in the launch of our day in May 2010.

Our core team of nearly 25 people started with prayer.

We talked about this day for 2-3 months ahead.

We had marketing materials and a relevant theme: “Starting Over.”

We had social tools to share online, and lots of personal invitations to church were made.

We had great success in attracting people to our service.

We only expected 30 people, but had 70 actually attend that day.

What we learned

However, we failed to complete these last two steps mentioned above.

We had a great launch, but lost lots of momentum because we had nothing related the next Sunday we met.

The following Sunday was an unrelated sermon topic that people failed to rally around and invite their friends.

The invitations dropped way off, such that only 40 people came.

As we retool for the next launch this fall, those last two steps will be critical for us in continuing to build our base.

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