[00:00:01] An area that we identified right away, you know, 14 years ago was that we really didn't have much in the way of welcome ministry. This was our entire welcome ministry. In some churches, you may feel like, oh yeah, that's us. We had a volunteer who was at a quote-unquote welcome desk, and then we had greeters at the greeters, again, quote-unquote, at the door handing out bulletins. That's what it looked like.
[00:00:27] Welcome to episode 460. Yes, most first-time guests decide if they're coming back in the first seven minutes. Is helping them feel welcome still an afterthought in your church? Are you looking to launch a guest services team or welcome ministry but don't know where to start? Or are you trying to take what you have and make it better or different? Here's a few strategic tips to make it all happen. That's today in The Reclaimed Leader.
[00:00:53] Welcome to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. I'm Jason Tucker. And I'm Jesse Skiffington. We're two pastors in the trenches who are passionate about church health for greater gospel impact. We share the ups and downs of ministry, strategies that work for us, and some that didn't, best practices and practical tools for church leadership. The goal? To help all of our churches flourish. Let's get started.
[00:01:19] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Reclaimed Leader Podcast. Jesse, it is good to be back. We're in it, man. It's like we're on the other side of Labor Day weekend if you're listening in real time, and I feel like it is launch time. I don't know if you're feeling this way. It feels like the last few weeks have been, but now it really feels like, okay.
[00:01:37] Yeah, yeah, for sure. It was kind of nice, though, to have that weird Labor Day placement. I felt like I got a bonus week in the office. There was nothing going on yet, at least for us, hardly. And the kids weren't back in school out here in the Northwest yet. So it was like, I had this week of like, why do I have so much time?
[00:01:57] And unfortunately, I was in the office. I felt like I got to take full advantage of that margin because now my week is like, I'm like, when do I have time? No, I don't. So it is full on now. And that's good. We're ready. It's fall. It's always exciting and invigorating to be back at it.
[00:02:14] Yeah. In our staff meeting, leadership meeting yesterday, I was just reminding everybody and reminding myself like, okay, now's the time. Listen, people are, and they've been introducing themselves at church the last few weeks, but newer people in the community that moved over the summer, now they're looking to get set up and all the things. And so are your churches ready?
[00:02:35] And one of the things we just reminded everybody in our meeting yesterday was take a look at your ministry areas, make sure they're cleaned up, that there's not junk hanging around, make sure if anything needs a touch up or just a dusting, people notice that stuff. So just, it doesn't have to cost a lot of money, but just, you know, everybody just kind of have eyes on, you know, what happened over the summer as things get accumulated after VBS or, you know, whatever.
[00:03:00] Yeah. Yeah. I think those first impressions are really important, right? So having grounds kind of been spruced up a little bit or the things straight in the back of the pew racks or chairs, depending on what you have, like it's just all the little odds and ends. Right. And, uh, there was a, I noticed a closet last time I was downstairs. It's, it's kind of off of our main fellowship area and it was open and it was, it was kind of summer chaos in there. It was just stuff that landed in there. And I'm like, I shut the door cause I didn't have found it. Like, like, like, or at least, at least push
[00:03:29] everything into a closet and shut the door. Hey, that works. That works just fine. I have absolutely no problem with that at all. But, um, but today this is right in this lane of, are we prepared for folks? And, and I'm going to say this, it's not just about first time guests. We do, we will talk and sort of focus on first time guests. It's really about how do we welcome people to the church? Well, um, first time guests or not, how are we making it easy for people to feel connected, welcomed, and engaged in the life of the church?
[00:03:59] Yeah. And so I was kind of rethinking about this stuff and, you know, Suzanne's been on the podcast before and she's our director of guest services and communications and does a great job of kind of getting that team going. But no matter how much she trains that team and no matter how many times we say certain things, it's almost every week where we got to remind them.
[00:04:22] Yeah. Because it's just that whole vision just, it easily kind of sneaks away if you're not paying attention to it all the time. And it's like, man, haven't we talked about that a hundred times? Haven't we talked about, don't get stuck talking to one another, make sure you're welcoming the people coming in. That's like the main job. Make sure you're, you're not over welcoming or, you know, whatever the thing is. Um, so I feel like it takes constant vigilance. So I know that there are a lot of churches out there.
[00:05:19] Mm-hmm.
[00:08:52] They just, what, whatever. We have events on there and that's a quick, easy spot for people to track stuff, but it's not, it's really outward facing is our intention. We want it to be that. And if you really need to, you can have a members area that maybe a password protect or something. You can have a bunch of stuff in it, but. You can. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
[00:09:07] Um, but Hey, but today we're, we're really leaning into how do we make sure that when people show up to church, they have a good first impression. I don't mean because, you know, we're trying, you know, like we're dating and we're trying to fool them into thinking we're doing, but, but I mean, like, just, just how do we welcome them well? And thinking about the people who, the amount of nerve it takes to show up to a new church that first time. And, and that idea that it's, it's, it's somebody's first Sunday.
[00:09:35] Yeah. You know, and how do we just make sure we're prepared well? So an area that we identified right away, you know, 14 years ago was that we really didn't have much in the way of welcome ministry. This was our entire welcome ministry. In some churches, you may feel like, Oh yeah, that's us.
[00:09:53] We had a volunteer who is at a quote unquote, welcome desk. This desk. What it is. It's looks like a piece of furniture that blends in with the colonial architecture of the sanctuary. It's very cold and it's very like huge. It's, it's high. And so somebody sort of steps up onto the thing and stands behind it.
[00:10:17] Nice. And not super intimidating, not very friendly. And, and the person who was working that desk, no smile, flat expression, often looking around or reading the bulletin or whatever, not even really paying attention.
[00:10:37] And then we had, uh, greeters at the greeters again, quote unquote at the door handing out bulletins. That's what it looked like. Yeah. Not great. Not great. Jesse. It wasn't a great first impression. It's kind of like the DMV come. If you want to take a number, I'll get to you in a minute.
[00:10:53] You're that's actually not far off. So we knew we needed to do something. And, uh, here's some things that, that we learned that I would recommend everybody either launching or relaunching their welcome ministry. Number one, just remember anyone can greet, but not everyone can welcome, you know, warm bodies can smile and hand out bulletins. Um, but, and you can use warm bodies to help with maybe behind the scenes stuff.
[00:11:21] Maybe they're, they're the ones who are monitoring the, the online connect cards, or maybe they are, maybe they prepare little gift bags for guests or something, or maybe they work in the coffee and, and, or refreshments getting that done. So you can have warm bodies as part of your team, but they shouldn't be the ones who are greeting and interacting with the people. You want people who have a, a gift of hospitality because welcomers are frontline and, you know, people with a giftedness.
[00:11:50] Uh, like you're welcoming somebody into your home. So I just want to encourage you. You may not have the right people who want to be on that welcome team. They may not all be the right people. And, and I, I know it might be awkward, but I promise you it's worth building this team out and getting the right people to be welcoming.
[00:12:09] Yeah. And I think, you know, you know, there's kind of a mentality that you might have if there's people that have been greeters or ushers for decades, right. And you're going to crush their soul by saying you're not the right person. Like do the bless and add thing. Here's a, bring a teammate there that can be the person that's the connector and hospitable. You don't have to like fire people necessarily unless they're causing problems. Right. Um, but that's, it just kind of pivoting it a little bit in the posture of what that rolls for. This isn't just to give them, you know,
[00:12:38] the welcome to the people who come every week. This is the kind of the first interaction someone's going to have with us. So who is that person that can represent the church? Well, is connected enough to know what's going on and is, it kind of has that training to be able to say, Hey, let me help you find, or we're so glad you're here. And, and, and kind of lead them through that, that welcome process.
[00:12:58] Yeah. And, um, I think the second thing or the second piece of advice is just to start with who you already have. So you may feel like, Oh my gosh, we're going to do all this recruiting or whatever, but there may be some gems. There may be some diamonds in the rough there that you can develop. Um, so don't just automatically think, well, it's all the wrong people. We've got to redo the whole thing. I mean, maybe again, if you're a Presbyterian church, you have some built-in leaders, you have deacons and elders, most likely there may be some really good ones on there.
[00:13:28] Um, as long as you're intentional, it will improve. So, and it may take a while to create the dream team, if you will. Yeah. And that's okay. It can be, it doesn't have to be perfect, but just that intentionality. If you get whoever's involved with your welcome ministry, if you say, Hey, we're going to do some training. So we want to make sure that we're really ready to go. Yeah. Even just doing that is going to help a lot.
[00:13:53] That always reminds me of, we had this amazing woman named Mary who was at our nine o'clock service. She was the greeter, welcomer there, but her resting face is, I hate you. Like, like, like that just like kind of her, just the way she kind of comes across at first. And so, but once you know Mary and once she notices you and she smiles, she's like, she's got an amazing smile and is so good at the hospitality thing. So it was just a really simple conversation of just saying, Hey, make sure we're smiling at people when they come in and whatever.
[00:14:23] And it really changed. It changed the whole feeling of people coming in because it wasn't like this. What are you doing here? Vibe. It was like, we're glad you're here. And so giving people permission. I think a little bit of training goes a long way with that stuff. Agreed. And I don't think it's an all or nothing thing. It's not like we have to have the perfect people in the, in the right spot in order to make it work. And maybe you want to give yourself a goal. Maybe say by advent, we really want to have this dialed in to this level.
[00:14:51] Maybe it won't yet be at this level, but you know, but give yourself a goal, give yourself some time, let everyone kind of catch the vision and, and learn about how it's going to be different than how we've always done it. And there's, there's a little cheat code to this now. Um, there are so many churches that do this really well and have training materials that are published and all that. So if you just like chat GPT, what is a good training for my welcome and greeting team at my church?
[00:15:17] It will give you a pretty close one that you can adapt. I mean, so it's not like you have to spend a ton of time. It's warm, welcome, smiles, availability. It's walking with people to where they're going to, you're going to show them where to go. It's, it's stuff that's, it's kind of low hanging fruit in the training world. So, uh, don't miss those, that, that just small conversation can go a long way.
[00:15:37] Yeah. And in fact, I'm going to read, uh, some of the material from North points website on how they do guest services. I think they're, they're one of the best around. So, um, the third thing is, okay. After you start with who you have and you get a vision of kind of what you want it to be, then it's time to kind of recruit and train. Um, can you identify people in the congregation who seem to just be, have a gift of hospitality, people that are welcoming people that are really, really high
[00:16:07] relational and friendly, you know, that everybody knows them, right. You sort of, these people kind of, kind of come out and, and then I think this would work just fine for training. If you keep the training simple, we know that book secrets of a secret shopper by Greg Atkinson. And we just did, we just aired his episode last week. I think it was, um, get a copy of that book. It's cheap. Get a copy or get several copies of that book. Do your training. And again, read a chapter, ask three questions.
[00:16:38] Yeah. Do that. You know, the old Dan Ryland trick. I don't think it has to be any more than that. And, and just sort of deciding this is how we're going to do it. Um, as far as resources go again, I had mentioned North Point. So if you go to inside North Point, you just do a Google search inside North Point. They have all sorts of resources. You could see all the information about how they do guest services. And I want to actually read just straight from their website because I,
[00:17:07] cause you might be asking the question, what is good guest services look like? Or what's the goal of guest services? And I feel like they articulate it so succinctly and so well. So here's what it says. I'm literally reading the text on the website page. Every Sunday is someone's first Sunday. That's their top guest services, mission and vision. Guest services mission is to make it easy to experience and engage in the life of North Point community church.
[00:17:33] How do I mean, I know that sounds, it almost sounds dumb because it's so simple, but easy. Yeah. Make it easy to experience and engage in the life of North point community church. Guest services vision is to create an experience for guests and volunteers where everyone feels welcomed and known.
[00:17:58] That's their mission and vision. Then a guest services values prioritize guests. Be positive, send positive messages to your tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. You just mentioned that second, be present, remain available to guests by saving personal conversations and phone usage for the times you aren't serving.
[00:18:23] I mean, that's awesome. Right. That's a very nice way of saying it. You know, it's there because it needs to be said, right? Like that's, that's why that's there. Yeah. And then be personal, practice good eye contact, learn and use your guest's name and when possible, walk them to a destination instead of providing instructions. There you go. There you go. Anticipate needs. Be empathetic. Try to see, hear and feel through the experience of someone who has never been there.
[00:18:52] Be informed, be prepared to answer any questions and make sure you're aware of what's happening. Remove obstacles. The observant, look for any irregularities inside and outside the building that need to be addressed. Be proactive. If you see a guest in need or notice a distraction, take the initiative to resolve it or find someone who can.
[00:19:12] Yeah. And then, and then he just, they just mentioned environments. Our environments are our first comfortable and subcategory. The temperature is pleasing. The building is safe and secure. The furniture is useful and the seating is comfortable. We provide restroom extras. They're big on this. For example, good smelling lotions and soap, personal products for women and scope with cups for men. Interesting. That's what they do. Or they have mints.
[00:19:42] It's comfortable. It is the south. It is the south. It is the south. That's right. And clean. Every environment smells clean and fresh. Yeah. All areas are neat and in order. Yeah. For example, extra boxes out of sight, pens and handouts and nice containers. Facility is spotless with floors, glass and surfaces. All white glove approved. I mean, they.
[00:20:02] Wow. Yeah. Trash cans are visible and emptied regularly. All volunteers constantly scan the floors for trash. And then he talks about clear, having good signage, effective signage. Mm-hmm. He says our volunteers are committed and they are contagious. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, it's really good. I mean, it's, you know, they get their stuff from the Ritz-Carlton trainings of hospitality.
[00:20:31] I mean, it's like, and yet, as I hear that list, these are not impossible things. No. These are so doable. The 1% of churches that can pull it off. It's like, these are all things that we could give to our people and say, hey, can we move toward this vision? And people would go, yeah, I think we can get most of the way there, you know, like, without a ton of effort. And probably, as you hear that, you're like, oh, we're already doing some of those things already. Yeah. We just need to kind of remind ourselves that these are priorities. Yeah.
[00:21:01] Yeah, that's so good. I'm glad. It's so much fun that they share stuff like that with everybody. It's great. Yeah. I love it. It's great. We've heard it more than once when we've been around stuff that they're associated with. They're like, if you can take it, use it, have had it. We're like, this is kingdom stuff, so go for it. You know how this is good with that? Just for your purpose, right? Yeah. Life Church is good with that stuff, too. Yeah. They make that available to churches all over the place. For sure.
[00:21:24] Okay. So that's an example of kind of what it looks like. What are the things that you tell your guest services team? I would say the next thing on the list is just make sure that you give your welcome ministry or guest services, whatever you want to call it, its own meaningful budget. Yeah. Consider it part of your outreach and evangelism. Yeah.
[00:21:42] So use it for what? Use it for maybe you want to do special food once a quarter. Maybe in the fall, you want to have some fall stuff. Maybe you want to have some cider and donuts or something. It just depends. Some churches do food every week. That's not us. We don't do food at all. We do coffee every week. But about once a quarter, we have a special where we just have something extra and to encourage people to linger, to hang out. Totally.
[00:22:09] You could also use a guest services budget for giveaways or resources. So we have a little resource shelf that has different books. Maybe it's books that I've referenced in the sermons or Bibles or things like that. We use our budget to purchase those things so that people can have them. Oh, as Suzanne calls it, church merch. Church merch. Yeah. That's not the church merch. That's the books. Oh, the resources.
[00:22:35] But we also have outreach gear, Jesse. Outreach gear. You're right. Sorry. Not church merch. Is that the reformed way to say that? That's right. That's right. But again, make sure. And you may want to throw your coffee ministry in together with all this. That's fine, too. But I do think just make sure it's you don't want to waste all your really good upfront people doing stuff that other people could do, like brewing the coffee and stuff like that.
[00:23:03] So just keep an eye on that. And then maybe sometimes you want to do a giveaway for your guests, make little guest bags. Again, you need some budget money to do that. I want to encourage you. Many churches, if not most, are on the calendar year with that stuff. So maybe you're out of money. You don't really have that right now. But maybe think about that for next year's budget. Yeah, for sure.
[00:23:27] And then five, develop a first-time guest process with accountability. So the goal is every guest is individually engaged and invited to take a next step, however that's appropriate. So are they warmly welcomed, led to go where to next? Or do we offer to help them with follow-up? Hey, who do you want to get connected with? So on and so forth.
[00:23:55] And the idea is to sort of make sure that there's some contact about a week after. And that's fluid. Some churches are like, we want to do it within 48 hours or we want to do it within two weeks. I don't think that really matters. You just have to have some kind of intentional accountability. How are we following up with the guests when they give us their information?
[00:24:16] Yeah. And I think that's the key part, right? Because you were talking in terms of first-time guests. But in some ways, what we're also saying is first-time letting us have their information, people. Because for us, sometimes there's folks that come for a while. And I'll say something like up front, and if you just want to be here and check things out and be anonymous for a while, that is totally fine.
[00:24:36] When you're ready to connect, we're ready. So just let us know when you're feeling ready to do that. Because some people, that first Sunday, they're maybe just wanting to kind of get a sense of things. And so creating a little permission around that. But being ready, like you said, when we do get information, what are we going to do with it? And what's our timeline for follow-up? And what's the accountability for follow-up?
[00:24:58] Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I mean, listen, if you start implementing even some of these things, I think your church welcome ministry is going to get better and better. And it's funny, once it starts going and you start creating a new culture, it changes pretty quickly. So when we actually implemented this and we found gracious ways to include the welcome desk person. Yes, of course.
[00:25:24] And the greeters. We found ways to enfold them into what we were doing. Again, bless and add. And then adding some people that we thought were going to help. And we started really small. We had a team of maybe five. And that included the three that were already doing stuff. So we added two new people to that. And we didn't have a guest services director or anything just yet.
[00:25:50] Yeah. And it already started to change. Like the first Sunday, the dynamic. Anytime you change a group dynamic, even just a little bit, it will change the outcome. And even if it's slightly, it's slightly better than what it was. So I don't know. I want to encourage churches out there to invest some time in this. You won't regret investing time in improving your welcome ministry this fall, especially.
[00:26:15] Yeah. Yeah. I think this is one of those, it doesn't feel urgent in a sense, but it's so important, right? And it's that those quadrants and there is a really direct relationship between guest retention, if you want to use that terminology, and then getting involved in the church. We're going to talk more about that next time. But you got to have that front end in order to do the next part well.
[00:26:40] So, you know, it's like you said, it's small improvements go a long way or just a little bit of attention to this is going to be so helpful to your ministry. So it's important. It may not feel urgent, but move it up the priority list because it's going to change the way things feel around the church. Yeah. And I know, again, that term guest services sounds corporate-y and not really churchy, but your ability to welcome, to show hospitality is a spiritual gifting.
[00:27:10] And it's part of what helps people engage with the gospel. It's just, actually, it's just like youth group, right? Why do we play the games? Why do we do the goofy stuff? Why did we ever play chubby bunny? Oh, well, you know, that's now canceled. But why did we ever do any of that stuff so that people would feel comfortable, relaxed, so that they were prepared to get the meat, to hear the gospel and to engage with it? And until you feel like you belong, you're probably not ready to believe.
[00:27:40] So anyway, that's all kind of for this episode. I just want to throw that out there and hopefully a little primer and reminder as we're going into this fall season. Before we go, just one thing. We're going to offer a PDF kit, and it's meant to help you assess some things in the life of your church. It's totally free. And if you are already subscribed to our newsletter, you're going to get it automatically. But it's four PDFs.
[00:28:09] It's four questions to help your fall planning, a church health, just kind of diagnostic, asking questions, a church culture diagnostic, and a guest follow-up playbook for you to think about how we're doing this well. And so I think this month, it's a great time to look at this stuff. And we want to try to give you some tools that you can use. You can find tools like this all over the place. And there's lots of great resources, but we thought we'd bundle those together into a PDF kit.
[00:28:36] So if you're a listener, go to reclaimleader.com slash kit, K-I-T, and you can download the free PDFs. And hopefully these are questions really designed for you and your leadership to ask as you're thinking, how do we make sure that we are doing what we're supposed to be doing or hoping to do, and that's to reach people for Jesus. So anyway, I hope that helps. Reach out to us anytime, Jason or Jesse at reclaimleader.com.
[00:29:05] Anything else, Jesse, before we sign off for this week? Good stuff. Let's welcome people well so we can get our ministry off to a good start this fall. Appreciate it, Jason. Sounds good. All right, everyone. Thanks so much. Ministry is hard. It is so much better when we do it together.