Easter Practice Starts Now
At the time this post goes live, there are six “normal” Sundays left between now and Easter. Now, I get it. You get it. There is no such thing as a normal Sunday. Easter is...
Category: Guest Services
How Does a Hospitable Culture Apply to Small Groups? (part one)
We’re in a new series called Hospitable Culture. The big question is this: What if hospitality isn’t something we do, it’s simply who we are? In other words, what if we could bump hospitality beyond...
Introducing the “Hospitable Culture” Series
For the last year or so, our team has been asking a lot of questions about a lot of things. Some of those are borne out of scale: as our church grows, how do we...
2023 Year in Review: Posts
The final week of the year has become home for a few honored traditions: the relative calm after the crazy of Christmas. The anticipation of the year ahead. Cherished moments with family. Top ten lists...
Don’t MCU Your Christmas Services.
When it comes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I am what you would call a late bloomer. While I watched several of the early movies: Captain America, Thor, etc., the MCU never really clicked for...
Don’t Let Your Christmas Flip Be a Flop.
My friend Wes Gardner recently tipped me off to a great article by The Points Guy: “Up all night: How Disney transforms the Magic Kingdom from Halloween to holiday overnight.” I’ve long been fascinated by...
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,...
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...
