Your Entry Point Matters
I love my garage. When we moved from Arizona to Orlando, I wanted to make sure we bought a house with extra room in the garage. I use my garage to store my car and work on it. We also have an extra freezer, paint, bikes and whole lot of other stuff.
The funniest thing is nine out of 10 times we use the garage to go into the house. Entering the house through the garage, isn’t usually a clear path inside.
But where do you point guests when they come to your house? I know the last place we would want a guest to go is through our garage to come inside. Family and close friends might occasionally walk through the garage, but first-time guests…not a chance!
Why? Honestly, it’s more comfortable for us and I also think it’s more comfortable for them.
Thinking from a similar point of view, let’s talk about the church. When it comes to a guests’ experience in the church, each church must pay attention to three important steps along the way: clarify, create and compete. Let me explain.
Most guests will make up their mind if they want to come back to your church before the sermon is ever preached. That is typically the case for people with no church background. Thus, ushering your guests into your church through the garage is bad idea and a poor strategy.
Clarify
The first step to improving guest experience is clarifying entry points and next steps for all guests. Here are a few questions that will help bring clarity to the process.
1. Where do we want guests to park?
Consider giving all guests special parking privileges. Set up signs that are readable from the front of a car that point new people where to go. It’s helpful to use language that makes sense and is comfortable for guests. Think “New Here? Park Here.” This is a non-threatening way for guests to find their place without saying “I am a guest!”
2. Where do you want guests to walk?
This is the point at which good signage is needed. Do you have signs? And if so, do they make sense to the average person? Do non-church people know what sanctuary means? Your goal is make it as simple as possible for new people to know where to go and to help them find their place quickly. Here are some other helpful things to consider for guests: Do they know what to do with their children? Does the children’s space feel safe? Are the bathrooms easy to find, etc.?
3. Do we regularly present a friendly atmosphere for people in the community to come and feel accepted just as they are?
Every week should be considered an outreach opportunity and should provide a doorway for every person of your community.
Create
This is where things get practical. Work to create a team that owns and even designs the entry way of the church to appeal to those in the community. Here are some more things to think about:
1. Is the physical environment appealing and relevant?
My garage is full of dirt, oils stains and weird smells seeping out of the garbage can. It would be embarrassing to take a first-time guest to my home through the garage. Thus, people from the community need an entry point to your church that is welcoming and appealing. That means it needs to be clutter free and prepared as if you were having guests over. The parking lot, hallways, bathrooms, lobby, children’s environment and auditorium need to be taken care of and created in such a way that they all are appealing to first-time guests from the community.
2. Do we create an engaging experience?
Not only does the environment need to be nice, the church experience needs to be engaging. And just as I mentioned above, engagement needs to start in the parking lot. Look for ways to make the experience fun and add a little “wow” moment for first-timers. Always leverage your most engaging people.
3. Are we answering the questions people are asking?
I can’t tell you how many times I have walked into a church or even a business and noticed they were paying attention to details that didn’t matter to me. All the content given on a Sunday needs to be practical, helpful and applicable to everyday life. Helpful content doesn’t mean it’s watered down, it means it is understandable and relevant. Can people apply what they don’t understand?
Compete
The last thing you have to pay attention to is competing opportunities. There are people and opportunities that have good intentions that will get in the way of connecting with first-time guests. Over time, complaints, or let’s call them “suggestions,” can crowd the entry point for new people. The doorway to connecting with God is narrow, and we need to compete for the space to help those who are far from God to come to meet, know and love Jesus.
One way to compete well and keep the mission alive is to constantly remind your teams that every week is someone’s first Sunday. That one piece of insight will help keep people on mission. Share stories of how people got invited to church and eventually gave their life to Jesus. Those stories fuel the mission.