Visitor Retention

Four Crucial (And Neglected) Issues for Church Greeters

It would be easy to come up with a list of 10 issues for church greeters. Some church gurus even offer them as a free download to join their mailing list! But my experience and observation is that four crucial issues are often neglected. 1.  Start with Greeters in the Parking Lot (or doors), and

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Guest assimilation: the turnaround pastor’s roadmap

Guest assimilation for churches is like helping people out for a stroll in a strange neighborhood. Imagine it is you walking through the neighborhood after sunset. On the homeward leg a young woman approaches and asks, “Can you tell me how to find East Wilshire Terrace? I’ve walked the neighborhood, but I can’t tell which streets go

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Interim pastors can ride the wave without getting swamped

Interim pastors sometimes find themselves called to a church without knowing that it is on the cusp of explosive growth. This happened to me once before and now it looks like I’m in for my second wild ride. Image credit: epicstockmedia / 123RF Stock Photo If rapid growth overtakes an ill-prepared church you (the interim

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8 things Apple can teach about church hospitality

Church hospitality teams can learn a lot about the care and feeding of the church visitor from Apple, one of the most profitable retailers ever. Apple’s success isn’t due to iPads and operating systems; it’s about how they train their employees. Carmine Gallo, in his book The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer

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friendly-church

7 simple steps to 1st rate church hospitality

  When was the last time you visited a place that billed itself as “the unfriendliest church in town?” Me either. I don’t think I’ve ever been to one. But they’re out there in spirit if not in name. Tim Dolan reports that one of his lay ministry students found one. As an assignment, I

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Ministry metrics: the hard and soft measurements

The church I’m currently serving as the intentional interim pastor has the Annual Business meeting scheduled for the last Sunday in January. This past Sunday we conducted a dry run to finalize what would be included in the report to the congregation. The Executive Pastor, the outgoing chairman of the Board and the incoming chairman

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Can megachurches be church visitor friendly?

A colleague of mine once visited a mega-church in southern California while on vacation. The 6,000 seat auditorium was filled to capacity that Sunday morning. He was quite surprised when, during the ritual exchange of the secret Churchman’s handshake, an elderly lady made her way down the aisle from several rows back to greet him

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Church visitors’ gifts that surprise and delight

Church hospitality is a vital ministry. This is especially true for congregations with a very low church visitor retention rate. To offer anything less than superb church hospitality is sad. To neglect turning visitors into members puts the church in a death spiral. One element of a rich experience that leaves church visitors going, “Wow.

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1 powerful technique to revolutionize church hospitality

Turnaround pastors have a unique opportunity to permanently change the trajectory of church hospitality. Our “information gathering” in churches doesn’t even capture the majority of guests. Auxano research shows that five to eight percent of your worshipping community will self-identify as guests. Therefore the number of guests in one year is: [ (Ave. weekly worship attendance)

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