From .com to You’re Dismissed

Did you know 90% of your guests will visit your church website before they visit your church? Did you know a majority of your guests will listen to your sermon and your music before they visit? Did you know most of your guests will give up coming to church if it’s not easy to find your church, enter the parking lot, and find a parking space. I wonder how many churches have lost visitors who wanted to come to their church but one of the above mentioned challenges got in the way. Websites are free to make. Streaming to YouTube and Facebook are free. These are easy solutions. If your church is hard to find or not easy to enter, you may need some help brainstorming some solutions to that problem. Does your church have a welcome sign that makes sense to guests? You can have one installed for less than $500. Is it easy to find the front doors of your church? You may need to invest in some additional signs. And do you have parking for your guests? Some churches have visitor parking signs. That may be helpful for you or you can coach your members to leave parking places for guests, elderly members, and pregnant moms. We have always coached our staff to park further away.

It may be possible if you don’t get these things right, you may have lost 99% of your visitors. Let’s say you are getting 1% of the visitors who are committed to coming to the church. You need to have greeters who are good at being friendly. Many churches today have greeters at the parking lot entrance. I never understood why that was so important until I visited a church with a parking lot greeter. We pulled in and there was only one direction for us to drive, but there was this guy in an orange vest waving us in. His friendly face sold me. I instantly felt welcomed and joyful. That is exactly what you want. It’s not about directions are parking. It’s not about a big or small church. It’s about a friendly face that sets the tone for the rest of the morning. When I was a child, my grandfather came into town and went to church with us. He was a wonderful man with incredible people skills and a refined set of manners. My dad was on greeting duty that day and so he and his father stood in the lobby greeting the church folks as they entered. My grandfather also happened to be quite the smoker. His urge hit him and he stepped out onto the church steps and lit up. He continued to shake hands, hand out bulletins, and offer a smile that was priceless, all with a cigarette hanging between his lips. Enraged the pastor rebuked my father for allowing this to happen. The pastor was devastated at the besmirched name of the church. Politely my father replied, perhaps you should asks our visitors what they think. The pastor observed that some visitors had entered the building and made a comment that it was the best greeting they had ever received at a church. The point of the story isn’t the smoking. The point is, have greeters who are exceptional at being friendly, regardless of what they look like. There may be some kids or teens or elderly, Irish Catholics you need to put at your front door.

Once your visitors make it inside the church, make sure they are greeted by members. I had a pastor once who would run around the church finding people that he thought would connect with the visiting families and would demand that they be greeted by his first round draft picks. It was his style and it worked. We all responded to our recruitment and greeted the guests. Having signage for nursery and bathrooms are important. Having coffee and bulletins that are available are important. But the most important part is having friendly people. We have often focused on these things in recent years because they are missing in many churches. It would be tragic to focus on adding signage at the expense of losing friendly, personal connections. That said, let’s address those smaller, yet important things.

Here are a few things you may want to add to your church. Your church should have signage that directs people to bathrooms, the worship center, the nursery, and the classrooms for kids. These signs need to be above everyone’s heads so people can see it when the room is full. Coffee is also pretty critical. Admittedly I am a coffee lover. But coffee goes beyond just something common adults like to drink in the morning. As I mentioned, guests usually like to hide for a few weeks at the church they visit. A cup of coffee is something substantial to hide behind. Sound ridiculous? I have heard that before. Here’s the thing. Our culture eats food for comfort, a lot! Have you ever noticed people will snack at parties without being hungry? They are looking for something to do and a way to fit in. That is the same principle as having coffee at our churches. In the northwest, many churches have espresso stands in their lobbies, even the small ones! In California we offer plain coffee and a water cooler. Our people love filling their HydroFlasks with water. We also offer great bulletins. We paid a lot of money for some really thick, color printed bulletins. We put content on the bulletins that will never change. It’s all directed at our guests. We print cheap, black and white inserts with updated news that we put inside the expensive bulletins. Then we ask people to recycle the color bulletins so we can reuse them. This does several things for us. Reusing the expensive bulletins make them really cheap! We get outstanding lookin bulletins that our guests love. We also have all the information for guests in a beautiful design. You need to tell your guests what to expect in your service. Our members like the bulletins because they can easily remove the content that is for our guests and get straight to the info they need. And we save paper for the planet. You would think this idea would have been met with open arms, but every time I have changed a bulletin design, people complained. It’s just what some people do. Be ready for it and don’t let it get you down.

Most of your guest will decide if they will return to your church within 5 minutes of the start of your service. That sounds harsh, but after reading all the above items, their evaluation time has been way longer than 5 minutes. It started when they went to your website. That’s why all of this stuff is so important. Spend time regularly thinking about the experience your guests are having when they come to your church. Do your best to make sure you are removing every barrier you can for them to come to God.