{"id":762,"date":"2014-11-12T11:40:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T19:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/?p=762"},"modified":"2014-11-12T11:40:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T19:40:32","slug":"driving-away-visitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/12\/driving-away-visitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving Away Visitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

I meant\u00a0to blog about Thom Rainer’s survey of how churches drive away visitors<\/a>, but hadn’t gotten to it. Now that Chris Thompson mentioned it in a recent ADN blog<\/a>, so now I’m finally blogging it. I won\u2019t quote the whole article, but here are some impressions I took from it, and my early evaluation about how we might respond.<\/p>\n

Having a stand up and greet one another time in the worship service.<\/strong> This response was my greatest surprise for two reasons. First, I was surprised how much guests are really uncomfortable during this time. Second, I was really surprised that it was the most frequent response.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was surprised that the greeting time\u00a0makes guests uncomfortable, since it\u2019s a part of the service at some churches that seem pretty guest-friendly. We have one, but not as a welcoming device at the beginning of the service. Instead we give it a theological spin as the passing of the peace. In light of how uncomfortable it makes\u00a0our guests, we should give some thought to how important it is.<\/p>\n

Unsafe and unclean children\u2019s area.<\/strong> … If your church does not give a high priority to children, don\u2019t expect young families to attend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are working on it, but this is truly one of the areas where we can always be improving.<\/p>\n

No place to get information.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is why we have 400 words of boilerplate information on the back of our Sunday bulletin. I\u2019d like to have more things people can take away. My top two priorities are: a brochure about the church with lots of color pictures, and a brochure about our mission partnerships with lots of color pictures. As an introvert myself, I\u00a0also want us to have a visitor booth where people can go\u00a0chat up a single volunteer, instead of having to plunge into the crowd of fellowship time.<\/p>\n

Bad church website.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s been awhile since I did much with this. I need to raise it in my priorities. I\u2019d like to get more people to visit our Facebook page as well.<\/p>\n

Members telling guests that they were in their seat or pew.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Regular attenders need to be aware that if I find out this happens at JLP, I\u2019m going to call them out by name during each of the next three worship services. Or maybe three dozen. By the time they feel safe returning, no one will remember it was \u201ctheir\u201d seat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I meant\u00a0to blog about Thom Rainer’s survey of how churches drive away visitors, but hadn’t gotten to it. Now that Chris Thompson mentioned it in a recent ADN blog, so now I’m finally blogging it. I won\u2019t quote the whole article, but here are some impressions I took from it, and my early evaluation about … Continue reading »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[623,625,15,386,282,624,626],"class_list":["post-762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-adn","tag-chris-thompson","tag-church","tag-guests","tag-survey","tag-thom-rainer","tag-visitors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762\/revisions\/763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messofpottage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}