LifeWay published an article by Rick Ezell addressing five significant facts about people visiting your church for the first time and gives five actions your church can take to make them want to come back.

Fact #1 - Your visitors make up their minds regarding your church in the first ten minutes.
Action #1 - Ask yourself:

• Are parking lot attendants in place?
• Is there appropriate signage?
• Are your ushers and greeters performing the right job?
• Is the environment user-friendly and accepting to guests?

Fact #2 - Most church members are not friendly.
Action #2 - Encourage your church family to:

• Introduce themselves with genuineness.
• Find out if guests have questions about the church.
• Introduce guests to others who may have an affinity or connection.

Fact #3 - Church guests are highly consumer-oriented.
Action #3 - Consider employing objective, yet trained, anonymous guests to give an honest appraisal. Many restaurants, retail stores, and hotels utilize the service of one or more “mystery guests” to provide helpful analysis of welcoming and responding to the consumer.

Fact #4 - The church is in the hospitality business.
Action #4 - Encourage members to extend hospitality to guests by offering:

• to sit with them during the church service.
• to give them a tour of the church facilities.
• to eat lunch with them after service.

Fact #5 - You only have one chance to make a good first impression.
Action #5 - Use the following questions as an evaluation tool:

• Are you creating the entire experience, beginning with your parking lot?
• Are you consciously working to remove barriers that make it difficult for guests to find their way around and to feel at home with your people?
• Do newcomers have all the information they need without having to ask any embarrassing questions?
• Are your greeters and ushers on the job, attending to details and anticipating needs before they are expressed?
• Does anything about your guests’ first experience make them say, “Wow!” and want to return?

You can read the complete text of the article on LifeWay’s website. How many of these actions is your church already performing? How many do you need to start doing?

Special thanks to Monday Morning Insight for highlighting the article.