A colleague of mine once visited a megachurch in southern California while on vacation.
The 6,000-seat auditorium was filled to capacity that Sunday morning. He was quite surprised when, during the ritual exchange of the secret Churchman’s handshake, an elderly lady made her way down the aisle from several rows back to greet him with a, “Hi, this is your first time here, isn’t it?”
He was flabbergasted! “Yes, it is. How did you know?”
“Because you’re sitting in my seat.”
According to my friend this is a true story.
Church visitors: opportunity and challenge
Church visitors present an opportunity and a challenge. Churches big and small have many opportunities throughout the year to welcome guests and start the assimilation process. Eventually, a significant percentage of church visitors should become fully engaged in the life of the congregation.
But church visitors also present a variety of challenges.
The hospitality crew and folks in the congregation should connect with them multiple times before and after the service. The service itself should leave the guests feeling challenged by the Word and uplifted by the worship. The professional way in which information is conveyed, not overwhelming them but giving just enough to help them know the next step in your process is vital lest your guests be left wondering what to do next.
Some megachurches fail church visitors
Let me state up front that this is not a rap on megachurches. I’ve seen plenty of medium-sized churches and small churches make an #epicfail with church guests! But the vast resources available to larger churches should put them in a class by themselves when it comes to treating church visitors and visitor assimilation.
Sadly, many of them fail.
Former mega-church pastor Geoff Surratt recounted his experience as an anonymous visitor at nine different megachurches.
Not surprisingly, he discovered big churches are invariably far less welcoming than they imagine. In a bid to be helpful he offers several “tried and true” suggestions to address the problem. Among the suggestions are teaching on hospitality, auditorium “hosts” (my term, not his) and “gorilla greeters” (his term, not mine!) and the “make it easy to navigate” idea. All good ideas in and of themselves, but they will not solve the problem.
Why?
Because the typical megachurch embraces the idea of welcoming, connecting and enfolding in theory (an “aspirational” value), but it will not become reality until two mission critical components are calibrated properly: vision and metrics.
