Video:Your Sermon Starts in the Parking Lot

Danny Franks, Connections Pastor at The Summit Church in North Carolina, considers the importance of preparing for guests who are visiting your church.  Your sermon starts in the parking lot and he offers 5 principles to effective church hospitality and first impressions.

Pastor Danny makes five fantastic points about church hospitality that all of us should consider when working with your hospitality team about improving your church hospitality.

Your guests are judging you not only for the music and sermon, but also on how they are welcomed.

Are you ready to receive your guests?

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.  Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. – Colossians 4:5-6

Five Principles on Church Hospitality

Frank lays out and develops the following five principles.

1. The Gospel is offensive, but nothing else should be.
2. The Why is always more important than the What.
3. Everything speaks.  (my note: this is the best point of the whole).
4. Seek to make outsiders insiders.
5. The first visit should setup the second visit.

Each of the five principles are laid out in further detail.

Upgrade Your Hospitality

You can offer your hospitality team a class that I offer, “Upgrade Your Hospitality.”

As long as you have a high speed internet connection, you can offer this class to your team.

It is a live and interactive training (not recorded) and we can troubleshoot some of these areas.

In this 90 minute online teleclass, among other equip your team on:

• How welcoming guests helps your church fulfill or fail the great commission.
• 8 characteristics to know about your guests BEFORE they arrive so you can serve them well.
• No manuals necessary – how to have awesome hospitality ministry in unforeseen moments.
• 8 necessary traits of a church hospitality volunteer who blesses your guests.

Read more and order your hospitality class here.