Q&A: What Would You Change?
Q:
Go back to your early days in your role. If you could easily “reset” from ground zero, would everything still look the same when you built it back, or what would change in regards to Guest Services as a whole?
[Corey Tyson, Pastor for Connections & Membership, Summit Crossing Community Church, Huntsville, Alabama]
A:
Thank you for sending me down the rabbit trail of fond nostalgia, unrealized dreams, and crippling angst.
Actually, maybe just 1.5 of those things are true. As I look back over two decades plus in the guest services space, there are three things I think I’d approach differently:
1. Language really does matter.
As the saying goes, words build worlds. There were parts of this I think our team got right from early on: we drilled down on guests, not visitors (thanks to Mark Waltz for this insight). But I think I’d use “Guest Services” instead of “First Impressions” from the very beginning. I struggled with the nomenclature of our team for years, finally pulling the trigger and changing what we call ourselves.
Guest Services – to me, at least – carries a broader application of who it’s for, much better than does the First Impressions Team. I like it more than the Hospitality or Welcome Team, because it’s more specific than the former and broader than the latter.
2. Leadership pipelines are solutions to bottlenecks.
When I think about some transformative moments in ministry, two of those were the advent of gatherings like our Guest Services Collective and High-Capacity Volunteer Cohort. Some of our very best volunteer leaders, staff members, church planters, and overseas missionaries have come out of these groups.
Now to be clear, I don’t think it was the gathering that made them a great leader, staff member, planter, etc. I think it was simply that an environment was provided where great leaders could gather, which made great leaders easier to identify, which made great leaders easier to invest in and help take a next step.
And the “bottleneck” thing? Oh my. I look back on so many times where the ministry seemed to slow down, stop, or go backwards, simply because I was not capable of leading forward. I needed a team that I wasn’t building early enough.
All that to say…I’d implement those gatherings (or something very similar) from day one, and then get out of the way and let others lead.
3. Central resourcing should happen earlier.
This is an issue specific to multi-site churches, but if you ever see yourself heading in that direction, pull the trigger on a central resourcing team much earlier than you think you should. We were around five or six campuses strong before we switched to a central model. And if I’m brutally honest, I think we were three campuses too late.
Many of our DNA issues, resourcing issues, structuring issues, etc., can be traced back to those Book of Judges days where everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. I’m not saying those same issues still exist, nor were they the fault of any staff member or volunteer, nor was a central resourcing team the magic bullet that fixed it all.
I’m also not insinuating that these problems existed outside of Guest Services. Other ministry teams hummed right along. But in our world, everyone was just a few degrees off from everyone else, which made it hard to build consistency. And I think someone who had their eye on the entire picture could have helped with that.
Those are the top three things I’d do differently if I could press the reset button and/or build a time machine. I’m going to stop thinking about it now, lest the crippling angst settles in.
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