Latest posts

Primer Posts

Volunteer culture (turning volunteers into leaders)

You just landed on an every-once-in-a-while series called Primer Posts, a curated collection of my favorite articles and books on one particular topic. These are the resources I usually point to when people ask about getting started...

Give Your Team Permission to Call You Out

All of us have work habits that drive our co-workers crazy. Maybe you’re always five minutes late to a meeting. Perhaps it’s your incessant need to get things perfect before you get them published. Maybe...

Kill Your Admin.

Let’s be clear: no one is recommending homicide, bloodshed, permanently dispatching, offing, taking out, or issuing a one-way ticket to buying the farm. (Legal issues covered? Good. Let’s move on.) But whether you call that...

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 church across...

How to Lead at Other Campuses (When You Can’t Leave Your Own)

If you’re a leader at a multi-site church, how do you effectively lead at other locations when you’re tethered to one particular place? That was my story for the first few years of our multi-site...

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...

Top Ten Quotes: Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth

The next time you’re at an evangelical dinner party, you can bring things to a standstill – I’m talkin’ record scratch on the Jars of Clay 1995 Flood LP – by just clearing your throat,...

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...

Long Hollow Church (Hendersonville, Tennessee)

Each month, we revisit a series of posts called Guest Services Road Trip. We’ll travel the country from the comforts of our couches, interviewing leaders who are in the trenches of ministry. Do you have an idea for GSRT...

“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...

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