Hospitality is a Thermostat
In Terry A. Smith’s delightful book The Hospitable Leader, he shares this remarkable insight: A hospitable leader creates home wherever he or she is. Many of us lead in inhospitable places. We must be thermostats,...
Category: Guest Services
How (and Why) to Mise en Place Your First-Time Guest Workstation (part two)
In a recent post, we talked about the concept of mise en place, a French term used by chefs that means “everything in its place.” And I argued for mise en placeing our first-time guest...
How (and Why) to Mise en Place Your First-Time Guest Workstation (part one)
Disclaimer #1: this post is only for the super-nerds, the people driven by processes, and the detail-oriented among us. If your happy place is a cluttered junk drawer, just skip it. It’s too much. You’ll...
You Can’t Have Both.
When you get serious about creating inviting environments for your guests, you’re going to face difficult choices. You can make the insiders comfortable: they talk to friends they already know, they gravitate towards parking spaces...
A Solid “Why” Leads to a Better “What”
We’ve long used the saying “The Why is More Important Than the What.” It’s one of our five Guest Services plumb lines, and the gist of it is this: if we know why our role...
Never Lose the Guest Mentality
When we serve in, work for, or repeatedly show up at the local church, it’s all too easy to gain a sense of familiarity with how the whole thing works: we know the insider language....
Wanderers Pining for Home
A couple of weeks back I wrapped up my official summer reading list, capping off the literary journey with Beth Moore’s excellent memoir All My Knotted-Up Life. (Side note: I want to write as beautifully...
“This is Too Corporate.”
I heard those four words again not long ago. I was with a group of church leaders in another state, and the topic of training guest services volunteers came up. One of the staff repeated...
Left Hands, Right Hands, and the Brain in Between
Recently I took a five hour road trip. You should know that I drive a thirteen year old car with nearly 170,000 miles on it. My teenage car can do five hour road trips, but...
They’re Coming. Are You Ready?
Every church leader worth their salt knows about the Christmas and Easter peak crowds: those couple of times per year when the sanctuary is full and resources are stretched to their limits (but don’t call...
