Five Simple Ways to Make Your Church Stickier (Pt 1 The Friendly Factor)

For the first time in our lives Sherry and I have the freedom to choose what church we attend. When we lived at home our parents chose for us, and after we got married we always attended the church I (and sometimes she) worked at. But now we are free to visit any church we want, so over the past couple of months we have visited nine different churches. In most cases we have gone as anonymous visitors and it has been an eye-opening experience. We have been surprised how difficult it is to fit in and connect at a new church. (If you know we attended your church recently I’m obviously talking about one of the other eight.) So this week I thought I’d share some tips on how to attract, connect and retain new attenders: Five Simple Ways to Make Your Church Stickier. None of these ideas are new or revolutionary, but I bet you think you’re church is a LOT better at each one than you really are. Trust me on this, they're not.

Let’s dive in with Simple Way One:

Make your church friendlier

I’m sure you assume your church gets a pass on this one; your church is one of the friendliest churches on the planet. When you walk in everyone says hi, you have a built in greeting time in your service when all the new people feel welcomed, and after church people hang around forever laughing and connecting. You’ve got the friendly thing down.

Let me give you an outsider’s perspective on the friendliness of your church. When I arrive one or two assigned people with big nametags smile and say hi. (At some churches the assigned greeters are either engaged in conversation with someone else, grunt hello, or just frown and hand me a bulletin.) Once I navigate past people in the lobby talking to people they already know I am placed in an isolation bubble called the auditorium. I sit with people who don’t acknowledge my presence in any way until the forced greeting time. “Turn and greet your neighbor before you sit down.” At most someone might crack a half smile, give their name and shake my hand. Normally I get a grimaced look, a quick handshake and a short, “Hi”. I don’t realize it at the time, but that is the last time anyone will make any contact with me at your church. After service I again have to navigate the lobby where people who already know each other have exclusive parties with other people who already know each other. Sometimes I stand in the lobby looking bewildered and feeling as out of place as a bikini in aDenver snowstorm, but no sees me.  Finally I find my way back to the car feeling more alone than I did when I arrived. And in case you think its because I’m an introvert, my extroverted wife feels the same. Feeling alone and disconnected is the one experience we’ve had at almost every church we’ve attended.

So how do you make your church friendlier? Here are a couple of ideas (most of these I stole from others):

Teach on hospitality
Take a weekend (or a month) and teach your congregation how to be hospitable at church, in the workplace and at home. Hospitality has always been a hallmark of Christianity, so we need to teach on it.

Create a “gorilla greeter” team
Get as many people as possible to be gorilla greeters. Their job is to make sure they talk only to people they don’t know for the first ten minutes after they arrive and for the first ten minutes after the service is over. They don’t need lanyards or nametags (in fact that would defeat the purpose.) Their job is to find people who seem disconnected and figure how to connect them.

Adopt a “neighborhood”
Divide your auditorium into sections and get leaders to adopt a section as their neighborhood. They commit to attend the same service each week, sit in their neighborhood and watch for new people who sit in the section. They become the small group leader of that section.

Give the greeting time a purpose of kill it
Find a way to make the greeting time in your service purposeful. Why are you doing this? How can you make it more effective? Is it accomplishing the purpose you designed it for?

How has your church worked on friendliness? What has worked and not worked?

 

Comments

[Jim Evans]

My wife and I are in the same situation. We are in a different church almost every Sunday at this particular time in our lives and ministry.
It's amazing how most churches assume that "tagged greeters" and the "take-a-minute-to-greet someone-around-you" moment = friendly. It's an eye-opener for us to be the new people and get the feel.
Good post.

[Cheryl Marting]

How true! As part of the work we do at Auxano, we provide a Guest Perspective Evaluation for our clients (essentially, a secret worshipper). Of all the ones I have conducted, I would say that only 5% of those have really done hospitality well. In other words, have the regulars extended warmth and genuine welcome. And when I ask people what they like best about their church, the typical reply is "oh, we are so caring and friendly." And they are - to each other! Sometimes, too, the hospitality team is so overbearing, it can feel awkward. People need to be trained to be welcoming while being tuned into the people they are welcoming.

Good post! - you hit on some very important points that church leaders need to give serious thought and attention to.

AND, my regards to Sherry! We worked together on the Leadia project. Enjoy Denver!

[Todd]

After 16 years at the same church, most of that time on staff, we are now churchless. So far we've visited two. We had some minor connections at both of them, so that helped. But it's still a very weird experience.

[Geoff Surratt]

Jim and Todd, I feel your pain. It is weird to be on the other side of the door.

Cheryl, thanks for the comment. Great point on the overbearing hospitality team; that can be worse than no attention at all!

[Jeff Kinney]

Hey Geoff…great post!

I wish we would talk more about our “forced fellowship” time during the services. I have been a part of planning worship services for over 30 years now and I still don’t understand why we (the Church) do it. I’m not opposed to it, I’m just not clear on what we hope to accomplish through it. I guess the reality is we feel like our guests either “need it”, or “like it”. Maybe we feel it will aid our members in getting to know each other better. I can’t say I have ever heard a guest or member comment on how powerful our greeting time was last Sunday, or how a guest was planning on returning because our greeting time touched them. I’m curious to find out if anyone has a clear vision behind why they do the welcome/greeting time?

Not tossing stones…just asking!

[Geoff Surratt]

Hey Jeff, I think we started the "greeting" time to make up for the fact that we struggle being friendly without being forced. Unfortunately I think it has devolved into the opposite of what it was designed to do. Probably time to try something completely different.

[Bobbyminor]

Geoff,
I visit churches all the time (both as a "secret shopper" and just for fun) and 9 times out of 10 a church is never as friendly as they think they are. This goes for churches of all shapes, sizes, and colors. I spend a good part of my time with the churches I work with just on first impressions and the whole guest experience and follow up. The whole experience actually begins with their website which make the first impression 80% of the time.
Bobby

[Bill Dawson]

These are great observations. This portion of the "church experience" is probably as "canned" as it gets. It just doesn't seem to matter how you play it - "canned" always comes out for what it really is. It's hard to make it pretty.

We've twisted the tail of this challenge until we've pretty much wrung it off - and the kitty's pretty irritated - and it has claws and sharp teeth. Have we "respected the privacy of others" as a rational to excuse ourselves from anything other than the shallow exercises that have been described here? Is it time for a fresh approach to love and hospitality? Maybe even one that extends outside the four walls? Is the "respect for privacy" the very thing the visitor has come with hopes of extinguishing?