We have looked at several ways to start or improve your hospitality team at your church. One important key is evaluation. We should do some form of evaluating for everything we do.
Before you start adding different things to do in the realm of hospitality, take time to assess your current methods and procedures.
Can you answer these questions or statements?
A young parent needs to change their child’s diaper, where do they need to go?
Someone needs to use the restroom.
A guest asked about getting baptized.
A new guest wants to take their children to the 3-year-old and second-grade class.
A recent guest is looking for a Sunday school group.
A guest wants to give an offering, but they didn’t get a chance to during the service.
A guest wants to know if there is a women’s ministry, Children’s events, and family stuff.
As the pastor or staff member, these answers may come easy for you. But do they for Jane that has been attending for three years?
This is why evaluation is vital.
Does your signage clearly show where to go in your church for different rooms and bathrooms? If you have multiple stories or buildings, is it clear to guests where worship is or where classrooms are or nursery?
What is your current hospitality flow?
Who makes up your current hospitality team?
Who are your greeters, ushers, point people, and what are their current roles?
What does your digital presence say to people?
Is your main door for entry clearly marked?
Do you have evident guest parking?
Here’s an activity for you to do, and I hope you do because it can be eye-opening.
Take some time to walk inside and outside your building. Put your visitor glasses on and look for things that might be out of order, unclear on directions, piles of clutter, no lights on. Outside, are the main doors marked, is there trash, how does the flower beds look. We get used to the spaces we are in a lot. We may not notice baseboards peeling, paint chipping, or broken furniture, but guests often do. Take some time at your next leadership meeting to walk your space and see what you can fix or freshen up.
The final piece we will look at in this series is the Connection Plan. Use all the information we have talked about to develop your Connectional Plan. Essentially, this is the whole goal of a hospitality focus, connecting with visitors. We will look at three parts of connecting.
Connecting People from the community to our doors.
Make sure you have an updated website, social media presence, planning events in the community, attending community events, serving in the community, well-lit building, welcoming and updated outdoor church signage.
Connecting People Entering our Doors to our Pews
Here is space for the Hospitality Team to shine! With a strong team of greeters, ushers, hosts, friendly faces, and a Connection Corner, guests are more likely to connect to your church community and come back again.
Connecting People Sitting in our pews to Each Other
Have a physical or digital Connect Card available for guests to fill out. Please don’t make them overwhelming. Sometimes just getting an email to follow up with is enough. If they feel like they have to fill out a loan contract with all their info, they are less likely to fill it out. If you want to have a guest gift at a Connection Corner, having them bring their Connection Card to that area after the service is an excellent option for further connection.
Create a plan for slowly implementing them into your routine.
Gift – we are glad you are here
Email or phone call follow up
Few more visits, where are you looking to connect?
Join XYZ group of kids or youth ministry
Looking for more areas to grow
Where would you like to serve
It can take 3 – 6 months for a visitor to attend your church before they fill out an information card. This means relational interaction is critical. Here is a growth experiment. Identify three to five areas to prepare and implement for the coming Advent Season. How are you going to grow your connectional outreach?