7 Ways Larger Churches Struggle with Hospitality
We’re continuing our “Large Church” series, which looks at guest services through the lens of the larger congregation: those with 800 or more people in attendance each week. You can see the first post in the series here.
I grew up in and cut my ministry teeth in smallish churches: those with around 200-300 in weekly average attendance. In those days, I often thought that if I could ever get to a church with 800 in attendance, that would be the magic number. Because churches of 800 have unlimited budgets, unlimited volunteers, and unlimited solutions … or so I thought.
If you’re in a church of 800 or more, you know how silly the above statements are. And if you’re a leader of Guest Services in a larger church, you know that the church growth expert Notorious B.I.G. was right: mo money (and mo people) equal mo problems.
There are seven key struggles I’ve seen in larger churches, especially when it comes to Guest Services teams. While smaller churches or super-sized churches might face some of these problems as well, they seem to manifest mostly at the larger church level.
Here they are:
1. The myth of the well-oiled machine.
To the casual observer or pew-dwelling attendee, your Guest Services Team can look like they’ve got it all together. After all, there were a couple of people in dorky orange vests in the parking lot. It’s been weeks since the lobby cafe ran out of hazelnut creamer. Those first-time guest bags seem to be spontaneously generating.
A church with “just enough” volunteers and systems can make it hard to get the volunteers and systems that you know – as a leader behind the scenes – that you actually need.
[Related post: The Problem with a Well Oiled Machine]
2. The assumption of plentiful resources.
Larger churches mean larger budgets, yes? Well, not always. There are certain ministry areas that are natural green lights for funding: kids ministry, local outreach, and the like. But if a larger church has not yet reckoned with the “who we are” question when it comes to guest services, budget dollars for that particular ministry can become an afterthought.
3. The lack of a clear leadership structure.
If your church has experienced rapid growth – or if that growth has crept up on you through the years – the guest services concept might have been tacked on to an existing role. I’ve seen a few churches where the worship pastor is responsible for the Guest Services Team, or the church admin is tasked with scheduling the volunteers, or the deacon chairman who has always run the usher team like the Italian mafia just assumes he’s in charge of the parking lot as well.
An unclear structure leads to unclear objectives, unclear wins, and unclear ways to measure what’s working.
4. The relentless slog of the approaching Sunday.
I once heard a student pastor say “Every day is Wednesday night.” His meaning: six days a week I have to prepare for the one big night our ministry offers.
It’s similar in Guest Services world. Sunday is always coming. Volunteers are always calling out. Resources are always running low. Pastors are always coming up with last-minute ideas. And even for a paid staff member whose primary role is running the Guest Services team, that relentless slog means they spend a lot of time working in the ministry, but not a lot of time working on the ministry.
5. The too-easy anonymity of the first-time guest.
Let me be very clear: if a guest wants to remain anonymous, they can do so even in a church of 200. But the larger the church, the easier it is to slip in and slip out unannounced. Worse, they can blame the church for being “too big” even if they never took proactive steps to be known.
As a church grows larger, they have to reckon with this reality. And they have to make the ways to connect simple, obvious, and practical. They have to have on-ramps. But hang on for #6:
6. The diluted effect of too many on-ramps.
An on-ramp is simply a clear way for someone to take a next step. But you can’t give new people unlimited next steps. Todd Adkins says they need a map, not necessarily a menu.
Larger churches can inadvertently provide far too many on-ramps: Join this group! Serve on this team! Come to this event! Participate in this class! But for new guests, we need to point them to one next step. Even with multiple on-ramps, every on-ramp needs to get them to the same next destination.
7. The churn of the church volunteer team.
Larger churches have more people, but they also have a larger footprint…more teams…more opportunities to serve. And just like a smaller church, the attrition rate of those people are a real factor.
That means that there are always new volunteers to invite, to train, and to deploy. Most of the larger church I’ve spoken to are nearly unanimous in the cry of We need more vols.
Those are the seven key struggles I’ve seen most often in larger churches. In the months to come in this series, we’ll tackle these one at a time, developing practical solutions for churches of size as we seek to develop a more robust vision for guest services.
What are other struggles you’ve seen in a larger church? Comment below, or email me to see your issue addressed in this series.
