Church Visitor Retention: Hosts and Guests

Church Visitor Retention: Hosts and Guests

#church #visitors #retention

How do you view yourself when you encounter visitors in your services? Are you just performing a greeter task, or a host who focuses on your guests' needs?

What do you think of visitors in your services? Do they all look alike to you?

Let’s look at an answer to these questions through inviting guests to your home for a formal dinner.

Dinner Guests. Have you ever invited guests to your home for a formal, sit-down dinner? Let’s consider what you may have to do for entertaining guests for an afternoon or evening!

Special Menu. I bet one of your first thoughts is the menu. You immediately think of an entrée apart from your ordinary every day cuisine. You peruse through special recipes to find the particular one deemed suitable for your guests. During the invitation process and your guests’ acceptance, you might even have taken the time to discover some of their likes and dislikes. You plan appropriate accompanying side dishes to compliment the main entrée. At the same time, you imagine what the portions will look like on a plate, making sure you have visual variety of colors, while having a contrasting variety of tastes. You make your special drinks, such as a special coffee and ice tea, complete with all the necessary condiments. You probably also plan on serving some light hors d'oeuvres and light drinks for the time between the guests arrival and the sit-down time of the meal.

Formal Dining Room. If you live in a home that has a formal dining area, you serve your guests there, instead of possibly sitting on bar stools around your kitchen countertop, or the everyday kitchen table. You will dust and polish the dining room table and chairs. Set the table with your best tablecloth, appropriate for the season, washed and ironed, with matching cloth napkins, your best dishes, possibly china, your best glassware and silverware, and most likely, a pleasing centerpiece with candles on either side of it. You set your table service into place before the guests arrive, and arrange the chairs just so, so the well-coordinated sight of it all speaks a visual invitation to come and sit down for an enjoyable meal.

Home Atmosphere. Around your home in room after room, you sweep, polish, dust, clean, unclutter, and straighten furniture. Beds are made, clothes picked up and put away, and all manner of domestic home preparations done too numerous to mention them all. This happens a day or two before the guests arrive, with instructions to the rest of the household to help keep everything looking that way. Even the bathrooms (toilet, tub, sink, plumbing fixtures, and floor) receives a special scrubbing. A scented candle appropriate for the season is placed in the bathroom.

Food Preparation. If you do anything like my wife and I, we prepare mixes and batters a day or two before the day of the dinner. We prepare especially the recipes that taste great after the ingredients have had time to assimilate their flavors together. This applies to some side dishes and deserts. Side dishes such as ending up as hot casseroles are mixed the day before. Fresh vegetable dishes are cooked to be finished the same time as the meat entrée. The meat is put into the cooking process many hours before. We want it to be finished at the perfect time for preparing for serving while being a hot and fresh as possible. Timing is critical for a great meal as fresh as possible. The light hors d'oeuvres and light drinks have been placed in a special inviting place not too far from the where the guests enter so they’re easily seen.

Before Your Guests Arrive. Just think of all the preparations that have been made, even before the guests step up to your door and knock or ring the doorbell. Just before arrival, you light the candles in the various rooms.

Your Guests Have Arrived. Hosts greet their guests at the door, shake their hands, maybe pat them on the shoulder, and give hugs if permissible. Hosts immediately offer to take their guests’ coats and wraps in colder or inclement weather. By the way, he or she who answers the knock or doorbell is most likely the master and mistress of the home. (Article cont’d.)

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Church Visitor Retention Introductory Webinar — Honor your visitors as Guests!

Pastor Joe, from Philadelphia, PA, went through Kingdom’s Visitor Retention Program of 12 online sessions. During his third session, he said he had a complaint about the program. Being the instructor, I had no idea of what he might say next. He went on to say that, after taking his church through the friendliness exercise and the community talking about the changes happening in his church, showing up to view it for themselves, first-time visitors were bringing with them additional first-time visitors. His complaint continued, that in a few weeks, he had gone from a few visitors per Sunday service to 10 or more. And then he admitted he did not yet have enough volunteers trained to follow up on 10 or more. If only every one had that same complaint! One visitor wrote something like the following on her first-time visitor’s survey card, “Ah ha, I finally found a church that puts people over itself!”

Church Visitor Retention Introductory Webinar — Honor your visitors as Guests!

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(Article cont’d.) But if perhaps the main persons of the home can’t be at the door, then they are certainly very close by, and greet the guests within minutes of their arrival. If your guests are visiting your home for the first time, you probably show them around to acquaint them with the overall layout and especially where the bathrooms are located, and the kids’ toy room if they have little ones.

All During Their Visit. All the while your guests are visiting, they and their comfort are the major focus of your attention. You make sure they are well fed, very comfortable, very much at ease with you, and well accommodated in every manner. Best manners and best foot have been put forward in everything. You would never think of leaving them sit in the living room for an hour or two by themselves, while you go into another room and check your email. You plan everything around wanting to provide your guests with a perfectly enjoyable time of fun and fellowship, and you want their positive memory of the visit to last forever. If your guests are from another country and culture, the considerations of their visit is very much different than domestic citizens.

Goodbyes. After an afternoon or evening of great food, fun, fellowship, lots of conversation, playing board or other games, and its time for them to depart, you are reluctant to have them leave and they are reluctant to leave. So chatting and sauntering with them to the door and retrieving their coats or wraps is probably a long, drawn-out process.

Moral of Our Analogy. Think again through all the above, and ask yourself,

“Does our church do ALL THE SAME for our visiting Guests?”

"Is our thinking about traditional Greeters and Visitors, or are we intentional Hosts having Guests? Are we in every way their Hosts and they our Guests? Do we treat our Guests as if they are coming for a formal, sit-down meal? Are our Guests the complete focus of our attention all the while they are with us? Have we made every possible moment of their visit absolutely and utterly comfortable? Have we replaced everything uncomfortable or uncertain with the utmost ease and friendliness?"

Want to know more? Do you know the seven critical ministries within your church that cause Guests to decide consciously or subconsciously whether or not they return for a second visit? Did you know this decision is made within seven minutes of parking? That’s long before they hear the Pastor’s sermon! Want to know more? Click on the hyperlink below and sign up for the Introductory Visitor Retention Webinar.

Church Visitor Retention Introductory Webinar — Honor your visitors as Guests!

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Church Visitor Retention: Hosts and Guests

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