Recently, Dr. Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay, posted an article on his blog that highlighted ways to get people to never visit your church again. These points were reactions to real churches from real visitors. I found the post helpful and wanted to highlight it here. I will post a few of the points I thought were best.
“Someone told me I was sitting where their family sits. That really ticked me off. I didn’t see a reserved sign there. If I was not getting paid to do this, I would have said a few words to them and walked out of the service before it ever began.”
“The preschool area was dirty and not secure. I took my two-year old with me, but I would not leave her in the church’s preschool area. You could tell they didn’t care about the cleanliness and the safety needs of little children. So I took my child to the worship service. That proved to be another headache.”
“No one spoke to me. They certainly spoke to people they apparently knew, but I was not a part of their cliques. I felt badly just being there. I wanted to get up and leave on the spot.”
“I had to walk fifty yards in the rain. There was no guest parking. No one offered me an umbrella. Apparently the members got there early so they could get the best parking spaces in the inclement weather.”
What can we here at First Baptist learn from the principles found here? We need to always be on the lookout for ways to make our church more accessible to visitors. I want to encourage you to read the whole thing. For the rest of the article, just click here: Eight Terrible Church Visits.
