Director of Connectional Ministries
A few months ago I was talking with another director of connectional ministries. We were talking about visitors and hospitality, and I discovered that even though this person was in another conference, and a different jurisdiction, many of our churches shared some of the same issues about visitors.
Talking, we discovered a couple of things. Many of our churches do not regularly have first-time visitors, nor can they count many even in a one-month or three-month period.
Another issue is that many churches have first-time guests who don’t ever return after one visit. Or maybe they return for a second or third time, but then stop.
If churches notice at all that they don’t have visitors, or that second-, third-, or fourth-time visitors don’t stay, they think it must be the visitor’s problem, not theirs. Maybe churches think that the visitors just didn’t fit in, or they just weren’t committed enough.
Rev. Larry Leland, District Superintendent of Lewisburg, said that he heard a great saying: “If a church doesn’t have enough first-time visitors, there is an evangelism problem. If a church doesn’t have enough returning visitors, there is either a hospitality, a worship, or a connection problem.”
Does your church track the number of first-time guests who come to your church? If you do, what if anything does your congregation do to contact them after the worship service? Do you even have a way to get their names and contact information?
Do you know whether they come back more than once? How many times do they return as guests? Do they ever move from being a guest to being an active participant and committed Christian?
If your congregation has very sporadic and/or very few first-time visitors, I wouldn’t hesitate to guess that the issue is indeed an evangelism problem. The evangelism problem is that no one is inviting people to come. If we don’t invite, if we don’t advertise, if we don’t have a concerted effort to invite people, they just aren’t going to come. But they very well may go to another church that takes evangelism seriously.
If the guests don’t come back, or only come back a few times, then there really is a hospitality, worship, or connection problem. Before you write letters saying, “our church is the friendliest church in our town,” ask yourself, “if we’re so friendly, why don’t people return?” or “why don’t they move from a guest to a committed follower of Jesus Christ?”
Karen Greenwaldt, who was the General Secretary of the General Board of Discipleship (not Discipleship Ministries), used to say that being a first-time guest is like going to someone else’s family reunion. Could that be your congregation?
There might be a connection problem in that there is no way or no one who connects with visitors except to hand them a bulletin or pass the attendance pad. Connection is critically important, not just as people walk into the worship space, but as people set foot on your church property, and even as they leave.
There might also be a worship problem in that the visitors didn’t find worship meaningful or helpful. That’s a hard thing to write and think about, but it is important. If we really care about making disciples we must make sure that our worship, our music, and our worship space is the best it can be. We must make sure that the sermons, whatever liturgy we use, and the music we choose will speak to contemporary people and contemporary issues. The entire worship service must connect us to God but also help us live in these difficult times.
Joanne and I visited a church, and three days after worship we received not only a letter, but a postcard as well asking us to tell the church what we thought of worship. It included such questions as: did people greet us?; how was worship and the music? It also asked for our feeling about the sermon and if it spoke to us in our daily living. If I remember, there was also a place for us to talk about what might have improved our worship experience.
As the new year unfolds, my hope for our churches in the Susquehanna Conference is that we will take seriously our mandate to make disciples of Jesus Christ. One of the ways we make disciples is through evangelism and working to make sure that not only do we have first-time guests often in our church, but that they return regularly until we can help disciple them into committed Christians.
God’s blessings — Tom
