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Your Visitor’s First 7 Minutes

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I’ve heard about a recent study that showed that most visitors decide within the first 7 minutes of their initial visit, whether or not they will come back to your church. That’s starting from when they drive into your parking lot. If you’ve ever visited another church before, you can probably relate.

This is pretty significant. So, how you can use this information? In the next few weeks, try an experiment. Go to a worship service at your church with the point-of-view of the 1st time visitor. Better yet, convince someone you know who hasn’t been to your church to do it for you. Maybe give them a questionnaire to fill out.

As you drive into the parking lot what do you see? Does the parking lot look crowded? Unkept? Or even unsafe?

Are there any parking lot volunteers to help guide you? How far did you have to walk from your car to get to the church building?

When you get to the building is there anyone greeting you with a smile? Or, are the greeters too busy having a conversation amongst themselves? Or even worse, is there no one at the door?

Once you’re inside what do you see? What do you smell?

I recently heard that there are companies overseas that blow the smell of fresh, new cash into their vents and it actually increases the workers’ productivity. I am certainly not recommending blowing the smell of cash through the vents of your church, but we often dismiss the importance of smell. Yet, it is such a powerful sense that all of us have.

There are so many more questions we can pose. But, for the sake of keeping this from becoming a book, I would like to end with this thought:

When is the last time you got together as the church leadership team to discuss the first time visitor’s experience?

It is a valuable investment of our time and resources to do all that we can to make the first time visitor feel at home. Whether they are non-Christians or Christians looking for a new church home, God is giving your church the opportunity to reach out to them. And, we are called to be good stewards of that opportunity.

-article by guest blogger, Wisdom Moon
Wisdom is the Founder of AllAboutWorship.com

Are You Too Satisfied?

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In church ministry it is normal to have ups and downs. You may go through a seaon where the attendance is low, giving is even lower, and there are a lot of people going through crisis.

Sometimes you go through a season of celebration where you’re seeing a lot of new visitors, families growing, God blessing your finances, and every week you’re seeing people come to Christ. There is a lot of excitement in the air and it just seems like the Lord’s hand is on everything.

Hosea 13:4-5 say, “But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior except me. I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat.”

Verse 6 goes on to say, “When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me.”

Often it is easy to call on God and fully depend on Him when your ministry is going through challenging times. Sometimes you just have no other choice BUT to cry out to God and put your trust in Him. However, as verse 6 talks about, when God blesses us and we have plenty, and we are satisfied, it is easy to fall into the trap of becoming proud and forgetting about God.

Not that God is not being preached at your church or that you’re not singing songs to God, but that in your heart, you’ve become satisfied and don’t feel that desperate need for Him. You get too busy doing the work of God that you neglect the presence of God. You start trusting in your church’s resources, rather than God’s hand.

Whatever season we may be in, in our personal lives and in ministry, in the high’s and the low’s, let us never become proud and forget God. May we always cling to God like He is the only One that matters, because He truly is.

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