Q&A: How Do I Effectively Run a First Impressions Team in an Older Facility?
Q:
Our church building is an older campus with multiple entry points and no central welcome desk. How can I lead our First Impressions team to greater effectiveness?
[from the 2024 blog survey]
A:
Most of us have experienced the eventual letdown of living in a house we didn’t build: If I were starting over, I’d put a window there. If I had control of the blueprints, this bathroom would be 30% larger. If I were sitting down with the contractor, I’d ask for the living room floor to come equipped with a trap door for when company stays too long.
Alrighty, maybe that last one is an extreme example (though one can dream!), but this feeling is certainly true in church world. Many of us inhabit buildings we inherited, rather than prosper in buildings we planned. And when a building fits the style of a previous decade (or century), it can prove frustrating to run guest services the way we’d choose.
But if our ultimate goal is welcoming and keeping guests, displaying the gospel so they can hear the gospel and receive the gospel, we need to do whatever it takes to make that happen.
Before I get to this particular answer, let me point you to this post, where the context was a new facility with planned multiple entrances. While most of the principles will remain intact for my answers below, I’m going to expand on those answers from your context: an older campus that undoubtedly comes with congregational muscle memory and old habits that are hard to break.
1. Don’t make any plans for three months.
That’s right. Take the hurry-up-and-stand-there approach. Don’t open a fresh Google Doc and start drafting your plan. Rather, take the next 12 Sundays and just observe: where do new brand-new people naturally enter your parking lot? Which doors are they typically gravitating to? What are the combustion points where they are confused, lost, or frustrated?
For bonus points, follow up with some of these first-time guests in the week after their visit. Offer to buy their lunch if they’ll swing back by the church and do a walk through with you. Getting feedback from their perspective will basically write the inevitable Google Doc for you.
2. Make a plan with an open hand.
Once you’ve had three months of observations and conversations with newcomers, it’s time to test your theories. By this point, you’ve likely noticed a pattern of where people go when they show up for the first time. You may discover there’s a particular road they enter from or an entry point into the parking lot that is vastly more popular than others. And hopefully, you’ve sketched out a plan of attack for your “forced experience,” which I’ll explain in detail in point #5 below.
Then take your theories and your sketches and start having lots of conversations with your staff, your key volunteers, your long-timers, your newcomers, and do a lot of listening: what are the problems they foresee? What is the pushback they’re giving? What are the issues you haven’t thought about? Remember: your plan is still just a sketch, so don’t get defensive. Just listen.
3. Get agreement on the plan to move forward.
With pushback and revisions in hand, it’s time to get your “final” proposal in front of those who need to see it. Maybe that’s your elder or deacon team, your lead pastor, or the rest of your staff. It should certainly include the volunteer teams who will be affected: parking, greeters, whomever. Don’t let anyone be caught off guard by what’s about to come in #4…
4. Lay the groundwork for change.
Everyone loves change, except for the 104% of church members who do not. But I would assume (and that’s a big word) that a few things will need to change in your organization and on Sunday mornings if you get serious about implementing point #5. Because remember: all of this is leading up to point #5.
- Play “Fruit Basket Turnover” in your parking lot. You know this game: apples and bananas switch with oranges and kumquats, whether they want to or not. You’ll likely discover the need to take large chunks of cars and put them in places where it makes the most sense: families with young kids by the Kids Ministry doors, middle aged couples closer to the education wing for small groups, etc. (Related posts: How to Map Your Parking Lot and 6 Parking Areas Your Church Should Consider)
- Be selective about your doors. Not every door has to go somewhere. That random exterior door that just leads people to a little-used hallway isn’t doing your guests any favors. Plus, there are all sorts of security risks associated with a random door standing unlocked. So decide which doors will remain locked on Sunday morning, and apply vinyl decals to the window or a-frame signage to the sidewalk to redirect people to another entrance. And speaking of signage…
- Develop a sign plan for your parking lot. You’ll likely need monument (permanent) signage that stays up all week, and temporary “Sunday only” signage. These signs should direct those chunks of people mentioned above to their designated spaces, but it should especially alert your first-time guests to their preferred parking area. Which finally brings us to point #5…
5. Plan the path for your First-Time Guests.
This is what you’ve been building toward. This is what all of the observations and conversations have been designed to get you to: what do you want your first-time guests to experience? Where should they park? Which door should they walk into? What should be the first area they see? Who is there to help them?
You need to think through every step, from the perimeter of your property to the pew, and back out again. Think outside in. Provide plenty of on-ramps. Decide what you want your guests to see by creating a “forced experience” that is for their benefit.
But here’s the reality: not all guests are going to follow your clear signage and park in your clearly-marked areas. Some of them will intentionally ignore it, wanting to fly under the radar. Some of them will simply miss it in the anxiety of a new place. So that ultimately brings us to a (somewhat) failsafe model for an older building with a billion entrances…
6. Create a “hub and outpost” welcome station model.
The key part of point #5 is that you have some sort of central hub for first-time guests. My obvious first choice (and strongest suggestion) is a first-time guest tent outside of your building, obnoxiously in the way of the entrance. But if your climate simply doesn’t allow for it, an indoor welcome center is a close second (just make sure that it is right inside the entrance and not buried in the center of your facility where a guest will never find it).
Now that you have your hub, figure out your outposts. That could be another tent or welcome center at another entrance. We have several campuses that employ two tents because they have two “main” entrances. Or it could be eagle-eyed greeters at other entrances or key pathways in the building who are watching for first-timers, engaging with them, and – this is important – walking with them to wherever your hub is. That means that you’ll have to overstaff your outposts, since you will have volunteers who will leave their posts for several minutes at a time.
To my question-asker…or anyone else who’s made it to this point…that’s an awful lot. This post is going to clock in at over 1,300 words. These six steps aren’t necessarily easy, but they are worth it. Let’s clear the clutter so our guests can easily connect to our churches and ultimately be connected to Jesus.
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