Ten Insights from Happy First Time Guests

They showed up once. You’d love to see them again.

You’ve considered the concerns of first time guests from our last post, How to Turn First Time Guests into Only Time Guests. Now you want to offer guests every reason to feel welcome and return for subsequent visits.

Here are ten insights from happy first time church guests:

Someone asked me to sit with them. It’s a simple thing. And it may be the best thing you can do. Even though you’ve just met, they feel welcomed like they belong. Because they do.

People introduced themselves to me. A church worship service isn’t about you and your preferences. We gather to worship God with one another. It’s a joy to make new friends too.

They had clear signage. Consider walking into any public building for the first time. Where is the restroom? The children’s area? Does it even look like they are expecting guests?

There was an inviting welcome center. Clearly marked, not cluttered, with a friendly volunteer. A welcome center—even a small table—with a well-designed brochure is always welcome.

Our kids loved their children’s area. You always want your kids to have a good experience no matter where they are, but especially church. Effort here is noticed. So is the lack thereof.

The children’s area was clean and secure. You can have a great worship experience, but fail here never to see that first time guest family again. Make it safe. Keep it clean.

Guest parking was clearly visible. Right next to the accessible parking, the best parking spots should be set aside for guests. Note: “Guest Parking” feels better than “Visitor Parking.”

They didn’t make me stand up and greet people. This really friendly-if-you-belong practice is terrifying if you don’t. As we learned, it is the #1 complaint first time guests. Stop it.

The members weren’t pushy. Friendly, yes. Kind, yes. Welcoming, yes. But not pushy and definitely not creepy. You’ve got members with the right interpersonal skills and discernment.

The guest card was easy to complete. Nicely printed on card stock or well designed and accessed through an easy to find QR code. Contact info says they want to know more. That’s great!

80% of first time church guests are unhappy with their visit, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You just read how to make guests happy. You can read what makes guests unhappy. This post in another response to The Great Dechurching. Thanks to Thom Rainer for these research-based insights from his concise book, Becoming a Welcoming Church.

---

To subscribe to this Serving Churches blog via RSS, click here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. Thank you!

How to Turn First Time Guests into Only Time Guests

You read that right. Research tells us 80% of first time church guests are unhappy with their visit. Their first time visiting your church may be their only time visiting your church if you aren’t aware of their top ten concerns.

This topic is one more response to The Great Dechurching—40 million Americans previously active in church no longer attending. When we invite dechurched family and friends to join us, how they experience their first return visit is crucial. Thom Rainer’s brief book, Becoming a Welcoming Church, lists ten concerns of first time guests.

Bad Website. You’ve got two types of potential first time guests: those invited by members and those who start with an internet search. If your website has outdated style or content, is hard to navigate, and full of insider language, those potential guests will go elsewhere.

Unfriendly Members. Ask the average church member about their church and they’ll say they are friendly and welcoming. Ask the average guest, and they have a different experience. Your members don’t speak to guests or make them feel welcome as much as they think.

Poor Signage. You know where everything is and if you don’t, you know who to ask. Your guests do not. Your lack of clear, engaging signage from the parking lot to hallways to sanctuary tells guests they are not welcome or even expected.

No Information Available. Your guests would love to see an information area. Put it in a visible location, clearly directed by signage, staffed with friendly people, free of clutter, and containing well-written, visually appealing material.

Unsafe and Unclean Children’s Areas. You think your children’s ministry is great—you know the loving leaders and precious kids. Your guest looks with new eyes—they see lack of safety protocol and your dingy, dusty, cluttered, outdated spaces.

Stand and Greet Time. You love it—you know the people. Your guests do not love it—they feel awkward or left out. Greet your friends before and after service leaving the worship time for prayer, praise, and proclamation. This is the biggest bother to your first time guests.

Insider Language. Listen to your announcements. Listen to your sermons. Listen to your songs. All of it is full of words that aren’t spoken outside of church. Yes, we need that language, but be mindful to add explanatory words or phrases for the sake of guests.

Boring or Bad Worship Services. Sure enough your guests are judging you based on performance from the platform as well. We know worship is not a performance, but guests are evaluating your service as consumers. Do your best. Then get better. Our Lord deserves it.

You’re in My Pew. Seriously?! In 2024 this still makes the list. You want guarantee no return visit and a bad Google review, make sure you have self-serving, clueless, unkind members with the arrogance to ask people to move out of “their” spot.

Dirty facilities. My mother-in-law says, “It’s one thing to be poor; it’s another thing to be dirty.” No matter how small your congregation is or how old your building is, there is not reason your facilities can not be spotless clean and fresh smelling. Old church is a smell; one that guests don’t like.

Unhappy guests will be only time guests. You can criticize them as judgmental or shallow, but their commitment to Jesus is not your commitment to Jesus. Will you make the effort to lead your church to remedy each of these concerns? Will you glorify God by prioritizing the dechurched and unchurched above your own preferences and comfort?

---

To subscribe to this Serving Churches blog via RSS, click here.

To read the first of The Great Dechurching posts, click here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. Thank you!

Five Excuses Not To Speak

The Great Dechurching—the largest religious shift in US history—provides Christ followers reason for concern. It offers a call to action as well. We can invite the dechurched to join us again. Thom Rainer’s concise work, I Will: Nine Traits of an Outwardly Focused Christian offers numerous suggestions.

When it comes to the topics of evangelism, reaching out to the dechurched and unchurched, and anything related to being an outwardly focused Christ follower many of us have excuses. Let’s consider excuses not to share Jesus or invite others to church from Chapter Five of I Will.

Five Excuses Not To Speak

Not my gift. Our most common excuse is to spiritualize. That’s not my spiritual gift; I’m not an evangelist. Though true that not all posses the spiritual gift of evangelism, all Christ followers are commanded to go and tell the Good News.

Not my job. If we don’t spiritualize, we excuse ourselves as amateurs. We’ve hired professionals—our pastors and staff. We don’t need to do the work of ministry; that’s their job. But it is our job to be ambassadors for Christ no matter our gifts.

Not enough time. Time is always a concern. You don’t understand how busy I am. I just don’t have time to share the Gospel. If you are too busy to tell others about Jesus and invite them to church, then we must ask: What are your priorities? It’s simple—be friendly and talk to people.

Not offend. Overreactions to opposing opinions are epidemic. I don’t want to impose my beliefs on others; I wouldn’t want to offend. If the Gospel is indeed Good News, then what are we afraid of? If the local church is THE hope of the world, then why not include everyone?

Not outgoing. If giftedness or other excuses don’t fit, then a good number of people default to personality. You don’t understand. I’m an introvert. I can’t talk to people. Sure you can! You talk to plenty of people every day. Now share the hope of Jesus and his church.

May we be so full of the Holy Spirit and so enabled by his presence in our life that we speak to others like Peter and John in Acts 4:19-20, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

The lost and dying of this world need Jesus. The dechurched and unchurched need Jesus. We can share his love. We can share the Gospel. We can invite people to church. Speak.

---

To subscribe to this Serving Churches blog via RSS, click here.

To read the first of The Great Dechurching posts, click here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. Thank you!

Six Issues of and Six Messages for the Dechurched

Casualties of the church. You read that right. Though many have casually dechurched—most often simply due to moving—there are some who have actively dechurched. They left the church by choice. The church hurt them. And we must seek to respond with lovingkindness.

Research reported inChapter 11 of The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why They Are Leaving, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? considers six issues of the dechurched along with six messages for the dechurched.

The Political Issue: The Gospel Comes with an Ethic

“We know that many Americans have left the church because of political disagreements. They haven’t just left a church; they’ve left the church.” (166-167) 18% left for political disagreements with their church; 16% left for political disagreements with their pastor. Listening first. Seeking to understand. We must graciously ask if a secondary issue became primary? Or it may have been that their pastor was out of step with the Gospel ethic; that leads to our second consideration.

The Hurt Issue: You Don’t Have to Return to What You Left

14% of dechurched left because they felt unloved by their church. 22% left because they didn’t feel as if they fit in. Everyone deserves to be loved. Everyone wants to belong. It hurts when you are left out. When in dialogue with someone hurt by the church, we can grieve their loss as we demonstrate our love. We can ask them to consider that not all churches are the same; they can return to a different church or a different type of church.

The Streaming Issue: “Online Worship” is Not the Gathering

At 2022 Pew Research study shows 22% of Christians worship only online. The Great Dechurching research shows that number closer to 30%. Though we are thankful for the technology—most of us experienced it during COVID-19—it does not replace the gathering together of the Saints. We gather together as individuals; we need one another to function as and worship as a church. A corporate worship service is an experience of family, community, unity. We belong to one another.

The Abuse Issue: Blessed Are the Little Ones

The Catholic Church has faced thousands of priests who have abused thousands of children. A 2022 report in my own Southern Baptist Convention brought to light hundreds of cases of sexual abuse that were mishandled, covered up, and ignored. The safety of our children and the most vulnerable along with the abuse of office by pastors should be a concern for every church member. 7% of all dechurched and 12% of dechurched evangelicals left over their concerns with clergy sexual abuse. We must seek to make our churches the safest places for children and the vulnerable. We must seek to make them safe places for the abused and concerned as well.

The Isolation Issue: You Need the Church (and the Church Needs You)

11% of the dechurched left because church attendance was no longer convenient. That rose to 17% among dechurched evangelicals. As we consider such dechurched people our approach is simple: love them and invite them. When people feel welcome and included, they want to belong. We need genuine relationships. We need one another. We need to make the time and spend the effort that others belong.

The Belief Issue: The Gospel is Good News

A change in belief is the single largest reason people left the church. 23% of dechurched did so because they no longer believe as they did before. Maybe their theology changed, maybe they no longer match the biblical morality of the church, or maybe their abuse by others led to a change of belief. No matter what happened, we all do well to remember that we are sinners in need of a Savior. Jesus, our Savior, died to forgive our sins and restore our brokenness. No matter what it is. God loves you. No matter what.

Practicing the six types of awareness from our last post, Reasons for Hope Amidst the Great Dechurching, would be most helpful in addressing the six concerns above. If you are just joining us, you may want to read our introductory post, The Great Dechurching, and the second post in this series, Who are the Dechurched?, that looks more deeply into the statistics.

---

To subscribe to this Serving Churches blog via RSS, click here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. Thank you!

Reasons for Hope Amidst The Great Dechurching

Engaging the Dechurched

We continue our examination of The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why They Are Leaving, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? by Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan Burge. What looks like defeat, really has hope. Some things are out of our control, but other things are not. There are effective ways we can respond to The Great Dechurching. Let’s consider some reasons for hope.

Reasons for Hope

First, 51% of dechurched evangelicals said they will return to the church one day. And why or when will they return? When a friend, family member, or coworker invites them. You can do that. Invite people into a personal relationship with you—extend friendship and be welcoming. Invite people to consider a personal relationship with Jesus—share his love and the Gospel. Invite people to attend a church activity or worship service with you—ask them to be included.

Second, research shows belief, belonging, and behavior are connected. When we consider the behavior of church attendance we can be encouraged that behavior follows belief and belonging. Most dechurched people have stopped the behavior of church attendance, but their beliefs are still very much in line. “They left their religious label behind but not their belief” (121). They still belief, we just need to invite them to belong once more.

Third, the relational incompetence of both the churched and their churches is a major problem in dechurching. Those wanting to reverse The Great Dechurching would do well to improve their relational wisdom. We need some critical competencies to increase our relational wisdom. The six competencies of relational wisdom are as follows.

• God-Awareness—God loves the dechurched and desires an rich, love relationship with them; such awareness can empower us.

• Self-Awareness—Healthy within our own personal relationship with God, self-awareness enables us to more wisely relate to others.

• Others-Awareness—Our growing relationship with God and right understanding of self allows us to best engage others in gracious, respectful, and loving manner.

• Emotional Awareness—Of self and others informs how we invite others to consider the Gospel.

• Awareness of How Others Perceive Us—Am I awkward or cringy? Or do I come across naturally, transparent, and, in the right circumstances, more deeply vulnerable as a real person.

• Cultural Awareness—Growing from awareness of others, we must consider our cultural biases and differences when sharing with the dechurched.

In short, all of us would do well to practice calm, quiet, curiosity in relating to others, particularly the dechurched. These points lead us to consider: What awareness do I struggle with and for what reasons? Specifically, how can I improve my awareness?

God So Loved

God so loved the world—churched, unchurched, and dechurched—that he gave his one and only son that whoever—no matter their story, their labels, their background, or their sins—believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. That is still the Gospel. Let us share it winsomely.

---

To read the previous posts, The Great Dechurching, click here, and Who Are The Dechurched?, click here.

To subscribe to this Serving Churches blog via RSS, click here.

Please comment, like, and share this post. Thank you!