Thom Rainer put together a pretty good list of things not to say to guests who are visiting for the first time. I think the central theme behind most of them (I would exclude #10), is that the guests don’t really matter.

I would add a few more things to his NO list of 10 items;

11) Make people stand up during service and tell them about themselves: Now I realize this doesn’t happen in large churches. But really, having everybody stare at you is not the best way to engender welcomeness. And the poor introverts will tremble!

12) Take first time visitors to a separate room and give a speech about the church: This actually happened during a 3 month church search when I moved to Dallas.   It was eerie, to say the least. However, the mood was lightened by my then 11 year old son who introduced himself to the associate pastor as Bobby Boucher.

13) Give them a doctrinal survey to determine their spiritual state: yeah, this is important. But really, whether they are Christian or not, they are probably there searching for something. If they are not Christian, relax. If the gospel is preached, they will hear it without going through your battery of tests. Making them feel like they have to jump through hoops is not very endearing. And if the church is serious about membership, they will get to those questions eventually.

Other ways we can treat people as they don’t matter is to be interested in what they can bring to the table to ‘help” the church. Seriously, this is dehumanizing. People are not stupid. They can usually sense when they are being treated as a church widget and not a person. People are not projects. They are people.

So this got me to thinking about what has endeared me to congregations, including my present one and why it made a difference. Now I’m not big on how-to’s because different situations warrant different interactions plus, I’m just not a fan of the how-to lists.  But from my experience, I think I can safely commend the following things to say to new visitors. Continue reading →