Four Ways to Stay Alert

In a recent post I talked about the importance of being alert when it comes to your guests: keeping an eye out for those who need assistance, a kind word, or a helping hand. Here are four practical ways to make that happen:

1. Pray. Yep, it sounds terribly cliché and expected for a church blog to make prayer the first thing on the list. But I’ve found that I tend to be more aware of our guests when I ask Jesus to make me aware. Take time on Sunday morning to pray for open eyes. Lead your teams to do the same. You might be surprised at the improvement in your vision.

2. Break the huddle. Like cat litter, ministry teams tend to clump up. And like cat litter clumps, that stinks. (Try to forget that illustration. I dare you.) Team conversations need to be quick, and team members need to spur each other to remember the why. After all, the main point of a guest services team is to serve our guests.

3. Maintain an outward focus. It is incredibly easy to drift inward. We gravitate towards the inside both physically and figuratively. Thinking outside in and bumping our teams out to the fringes keeps us in an outward posture. We need to remember that our guests are usually noticing everything long before we notice them. If we can flip that trend, it makes a world of difference in their experience.

4. Make Sunday for outsiders. On the weekends, I tend to make a beeline for those I know. It makes perfect sense. Those conversations, handshakes, and hugs are the comfortable ones. It takes great intentionality to walk across the room to a stranger. Small groups and Sunday School classes are ideal places to go deep with old friends. The weekend service is a great place to start a relationship with new ones.

Those are my four. I’ll bet you have more. Comment below.

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