Resources
Visitor Friendliness
Andy has helpfully documented many of the processes he has gone through in his church planting experience, and here shares about the importance of visitor friendliness.
According to statistics, visitors decide whether they want to return to your church within four minutes of entering the building. Being friendly matters.
I visited two large churches from other streams and had welcome experiences at opposite ends of the scale. One had stewards in the car park, excellent signs, friendly greeters and was overall very welcoming. The other church had multiple services. We turned up for the second, having struggled to find the venue. We could see 400 people going one direction and 400 in another. It wasn’t clear which way to go and there were no signs and no stewards in the car park to help. The door greeters were more interested in giving me an enormous welcome pack than saying hello. Once in the large school we couldn’t see where to go – we hadn’t, as it happened, gone in the main entrance. Ten minutes later in our seats a steward welcomed us. During the meeting we had to stand and be clapped as a visitor, which I did not enjoy. After the excellent meeting, I thought that the purpose of the large welcome pack in my hands was to alert regulars to be welcoming – I was wrong! If I were looking for a church, I would definitely not have gone back to the second one.
At King’s Lynn, we have adopted a ‘gate to gate’ welcoming philosophy. We want people to feel welcomed as they drive in from the road and for that welcome to continue until they drive out again! Romans 12 exhorts us to practice hospitality – so often we think that means inviting friends round for meals. Hospitality is philoxenia – the love of strangers. It is about making strangers and foreigners feel like they are part of the family and is essentially evangelistic in nature.
Here are some keys to visitor friendliness
Teach and envision the core team for your plant to be the most welcoming church in the area – my people know I want to talk to new people first. Teach people not to just stick in small cliques.
Make sure there are plenty of banners and signage to guide people. (9ft by 30” PVC banners can be colour printed on Ebay for around £50 and large A-frames are about the same price)
Have friendly people on the door.
Encourage regulars to be early, to welcome visitors who are always early!
Make sure people get appropriate help for where kids work will be and have the offer of sitting next to someone if they have come alone.
Have a pre-service “First Sunday Survival” Powerpoint explaining with photos what happens – we learnt that one from Kings Arms. An example is on the forum.
During the meeting, explain what is happening if there are tongues, ministry and so on. We won’t dial back spiritual gifts and signs and wonders for visitors, but we will explain.
Provide good refreshments – we bought a 60 cup coffee percolator from www.nisbets.co.uk for around £50.
Keep looking around to make sure all the newcomers are engaged in conversation and introduce people to each other or send people over to introduce themselves
Talk to newcomers first after the meeting and arrange to visit or meet for coffee. That gives a context for getting address details and almost guarantees they will come back. Joel Comisky’s cell group research shows that if you visit within 36 hrs, 85% return, within 72 hrs, 60%, within a week 15%.¹ We produced a spreadsheet to track visitors’ details and how they were followed up and found that by measuring we improved!
I personally hate being embarrassed as a newcomer during the meeting, so would never do it. We also only have a small welcome leaflet. When we get so large that it becomes difficult to distinguish newcomers we will produce a bigger one and teach members to be extra welcoming to those holding one!
¹Comisky, Joel, Home Cell Group Explosion (Touch Publications, 2002), p. 72.
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