Preach Your Announcements
Church announcements tend to be the pariah of the weekend service. They can be too long, too boring, too fuzzy, or there’s just too many. In our context, we often use a plumb line that...
Category: Guest Services
Your Biggest Guest Services Needs Probably Won’t Surprise You.
Most church leaders are not caught off guard by the things that stand between their church and a guest-friendly culture. No clear onboarding process? They usually know about it. Systems and scripts that speak more...
Don’t Promise a “Wow” That Doesn’t Deliver.
In the guest experience, we can be bad about over-promising and under-delivering: take this step and this great thing will happen! Which is great when the promise works, but terrible when it doesn’t. And it’s...
People We Can’t Keep Are People We Can’t Send
There are all sorts of not-so-healthy reasons to improve the guest services culture at your church: You want people to like you. You want to hit the Outreach 100. You want to outdo the other...
How to Use “Scheduled Access” Parking
We’ve all heard the “80% full is full” rule. And while that primarily applies to pews on the inside, there’s a similar application to parking spots on the outside. Think about your parking lot from...
You Can’t Be Helpful if You Can’t Be Present
Once upon a time, a friend invited me to tour his church building during a Sunday service. Our mutual goal was to spotlight cracks in the guest process and figure out how to connect people...
“Nice” Can’t Overcome Sloppy
Our volunteers are really nice. That may be true. But the friendliness of a volunteer team will only carry your guests’ experience so far. I’ve had plenty of friendly waiters when the kitchen was extremely...
Want to Learn Names? Look in the Mirror.
Most of us will freely confess that we’re bad at names. We can try all of the old tricks, and still find ourselves grasping for Bob or Bill or maybe it was Enrico? 45 seconds...
As Long As You Fix the Problem, It’s Probably Not a Problem.
Not long ago my youngest son and I were on a trip out of town. We went to dinner at a local restaurant, ballyhooed by a friend as “one of the best burgers in the...
“You’re Not the Audience.”
In leadership, it’s difficult to avoid the “please like me” trap. We want to keep the peace, to make everyone happy, to stay in our lane and keep from rocking the boat. But leaders have...
