I’ve visited a lot of churches. I’m always looking for ways that we at Grace can improve.
It’s amazing what a fresh set of eyes can find.
It’s one thing to get people in the door once. But to get someone to visit again, and begin to call your church their home? Much tougher.
We’re still trying to figure out ways to ensure people stick, but there are a few things we’ve learned that will guarantee someone won’t come back.
10 Ways to Ensure I’ll Never Revisit your Church
1. Offer no easy way to plug in to community.
Don’t tell me about small groups. Make me wait forever to plug in…or make me do extensive work to even figure out what kind of groups you offer.
2. Don’t be welcoming in the parking lot.
Just do your job, don’t speak to me as I walk in, and offer a bit of a “it-is-early-on-a-Sunday-morning” scowl.
3. Don’t acknowledge I’m in the service.
Give no head nod to “first timers,” “visitors,” or “folks just checking us out.” In fact, just speak to the inner core, the “members.”
4. Acknowledge me too much.
Call me out and have me stand up. Ask me to publicly share my name and darkest secrets.
5. Don’t give much thought or care to your kids ministry.
People don’t care if their children are safe, watched after, and learn the Bible. Nope. Let them run amuck.
6. Pass the offering bucket twice.
Or thrice. And shame me into giving you money.
7. Don’t share the Gospel, or challenge me spiritually.
Because that’s not why people come to church is it…to be stretched to grow spiritually, is it? Oh, wait, maybe that’s one of the main reasons they show up…
8. Ask me to give me your email address, then spam me.
Overwhelm me, starting on Monday morning, with news from every single ministry your church has ever offered.
9. Visit me at home.
Show up during dinner time, if you can. Or while I’m trying to put my son to bed. That would be ideal, please. Our generation loves the random church-member pop-in when we aren’t even sure we like your church. Love. It.
10. Pastor: disappear as soon as you finish preaching.
Go back to the greenroom. Or Starbucks. But don’t position yourself in the hallway. You are a diva, after all.
Note: If you want visitors to return, be warm and inviting. Challenge people to grow. Offer various opportunities to plug in and serve. Then get out of the way and give people the chance to explore.
Question:
Ever had a bad experience while visiting a church?
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My husband and I had a couple of bad experiences. We visited a church where all the members stood up and visitors stayed seated to be greeted. Still awkward and unnecessary. People don’t want to be recognized when visiting a church. They want to stay anonymous for a time, but also still be spoken to when coming in. One time we went to a church (Presbyterian) and really liked it. We immediately joined the choir and the pastor actually started a bible study because we expressed interest in doing one. After 3 months, not one person had befriended us and we had never seen nor met the pastors wife even though we were in a weekly study with the pastor. It was disheartening, so we left.
“After 3 months, not one person had befriended us and we had never seen nor met the pastors wife even though we were in a weekly study with the pastor. It was disheartening, so we left”
HOW SAD! You want to be entertained by the Pastor and looking forward for people to entertain you! How really sad to have this attitude and because of this you left? Sounds immature. Do not wait to be entertained. Connect with people and be involved!
Just over a year ago my husband decided to join a new church in our neighborhood. The pastor is wonderful and I feel he provides the right message, but my having a history of a bad experience at my childhood church led me to not being comfortable in church, I don’t always go most Sundays. I also have chronic health problems that prevent me from going, even on days I want to go. It’s been over a year since we started there and I don’t go as much as the few months. I was only welcomed by a few people, and still felt it was mainly superficial politeness. The thing that really put me off though, was a condescending comment by the pastor’s wife when my husband tried to urge us into conversation so we could get to know each other. He made comment that I had made it to church that Sunday, and she replied with a snide, ‘You should try coming every Sunday’, and walked away.
‘You should try coming every Sunday’” Is that condescending? Encouraging you to come..why not?
Honestly, the best church is st. Mary and st. Antonios coptic orthodox church in queens ny. I feel like im surrounded by family that ive known for 50 years. They are a very welcoming bunch and they are very spiritual too. If you ever have the chance you should visit.
Our family left the parish we were at for 8 years, Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, NY, because the pastor was incredibly unfair to us and played favorites. We went around looking at other parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of LI close to where we lived and went to visit the Episcopal Cathedral in Garden City, LI, the seat of the Diocese of LI. Almost every one of the above things occurred. It was a very unfriendly place. On top of everything else, when my wife and I indicated an interest in becoming part of the parish, the pastor, Dean Bean, told us that we were “parish shopping” and was rude and extremely unfriendly towards my wife and I. We were appalled. We finally ended up at a small parish nearby which is welcoming and friendly. What an experience it was trying to find a new parish to worship!
As a Messianic Jew and member of two churches approximately 160 miles apart (and a year apart in my life….another story), I find these ’10 Ways’ right on the money, so to speak. Both of my churches practice methods that defer against each of these principles and it is generally heartwarming to see how it is received.
Yet I have been to facilities that do condone many of these ideologies and it is amazing the emotions that overwhelm an individual when you do not have the feeling of welcomeness or belonging that one tends to ‘expect’ at a church.
Some good insight on these, but I found the exact opposite re: # 9.
Maybe it’s still viable, David. Glad to hear it’s working for you guys.
…because my personal comfort and a positive customer experience are the determining factors of how I should choose a church?
Pastor Ben, if you reject a local church based on these shallow, consumeristic standards, then you have a sadly low view of the Body of Christ. We aren’t marketers or salesmen with a slick, frictionless, experience; we are God’s chosen, sinful, broken people, gathering together to meet our Lord in his Word and Sacraments.
Levi,
This was a tongue-in-cheek piece. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I’m a pastor myself, and we on our staff like to constantly put ourselves in the shoes of the first-time visitor who’s looking for any excuse possible to NOT come back to our church.
The Gospel is offensive enough…and we’re ok if people choose to not return because they heard the Gospel at our church. However, we’re NOT ok if someone chooses to not return because they weren’t greeted in the parking lot, because they were spammed, or because we publicly call them out from stage.
Petty though these things may be, we don’t want them to be stumbling blocks for people to hear and respond to the Gospel.
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks for clarifying. I did not catch the tongue-in-cheek tone. Backing down… :-)
Levi, they may not be the main determining factors in choosing a church, but they are very important to first-time visitors. If you want people to come, hear the Gospel, and be a part of a community of believers (Acts 2), then you want them to come and stay. All these things are deterrents for first-time guests. Someone who is deeply-rooted in Jesus and understand what the Gospel is all about and lives it out may be able to look past these things, but those aren’t the people we are necessarily reaching out for. And if your church isn’t doing these things, then anyone who truly wants to live for the Gospel should probably not stick around, either. It isn’t necessarily about marketing or being slick, it’s about honoring your guests. I went to a church that had no care in the world about their guests. Yes, they may have went to them and said “hello” at times (not always), but nothing beyond that. You were lucky to see those same people come back. I have watched as that church has been slowly dying out. My current church has always been about loving and being inviting, but last year decided that they needed to really step out and honor their visitors. It has been amazing to see what God has unleashed in the time since. If you are offended by this post, then I would think that you are probably doing some of the things that are talked about. I would graciously ask that you consider what is being said, here. You don’t have to have a church that is out to just make people comfortable or frictionless (trust me, our church doesn’t), but honoring and making your first-time guests feel welcome goes a long way in reaching people for Jesus.
“honoring and making your first-time guests feel welcome goes a long way in reaching people for Jesus”
I respectfully disagree. You have made your guests feel comfortable, which is commendable (I’m not arguing against such things.). But a restaurant or a shopping mall can do the same thing. The power of God is not present in a frictionless church experience which everyone gives a 4-star-rating. The power of God is the Gospel, which manifests itself among sinful, broken people. Our message is offensive, we are the offensive dregs of society with a message that is repugnant to the world. No amount of smiling or scowling parking attendants can remove the offense of the cross or dilute its power.
All of the above points make sense if you’re a salesmen trying to lure people in to pitch them a product. This isn’t who we are. We’re ambassadors proclaiming the kingdom of God and the fall of all other kings and authorities before his rule.
Jesus was very welcoming to first-timers…
I feel he is spot on. Most of the time people who are first time guest are broken people who are looking for a way out of there current situation and after exhausting every resource they have decided to give Jesus a try At least this was my experience. They come into the doors scared intimidated and some are even afraid the building just may catch fire. They come asking the question.what is this church going.to.offer me. They come as consumers and until they grow spiritually we have to accept these are the people we are serving. The church isn’t a hotel for saints but a hospital for sinners…
Anhave to go above and beyond what we deem as ne
I truly don’t understand how these responses are going to be helpful or edifying
They’re not, Courtney. But these are the “words” of first-time visitors to your church. My hope and prayer is that people would only find an offense with the Gospel in our churches…and that our actions would always point them to Jesus, never away from Him.
The responses are helpful insofar as some people in some churches are blind to how they are perceived by newcomers. And while some people may feel that these standards are “consumeristic”, the reality is that churches are dying out and closing up because people expect religion to be welcoming, comforting, in a tangible sense, and provide something in addition to just the word. When churches do not do this, people leave. If you are not a good docent, watch your numbers dwindle as people die out or move away. One church on Long Island’s “Gold Coast” has a web site in which they boast of how affluent their congregation is, and how high the average level of education is. They forgot that Jesus was the son of a carpenter. Their message is sickeningly elist, and it certainly scared me away after I read it- afraid that my wife and I, simple government workers, could not measure up. These people obviously have no clue as to how they are perceived, otherwise, why would they put up such an elitist web site?
I visited an evening service where an acquaintance was leading music, but I got the times confused and arrived an hour early. I had a brief conversation with a man sitting in the narthex. He turned out to be the guest preacher for the evening and proceeded to point me out by name in the middle of the sermon. It made me exceedingly uncomfortable.
Good point…calling people out by name makes people feel uncomfortable.
As a pastor’s wife, I have been asked to remove myself from someone’s seat (in a church with hundreds of empty seats), I have been asked how I planned to give financially each month on my very first Sunday, I have been told that they didn’t like my family living in their house because they wanted to make money and sell it (again on a “first Sunday”), I have been asked to drop my health benefits while walking back to my seat from communion, I have been told that I cut pies wrong, I have been told that it was “my problem” to try to get out of our garage when church members were parked in front of it…these are ways to make a ministry family feel really unwelcome too!
Ouch. That hurts, Anita. Incredibly unwelcoming!