The experience church visitors have begins well before they step foot on your church’s campus. And in order to do the best job possible of guiding church visitors to become church regulars, we have to be intentional with every step they take before they arrive, during their arrival and during the worship service.
Odds are, you have each of these pieces somewhat in place or fully in place. But you may not see them all as vital pieces that are working toward the same goal. When you are able to optimize each stage of your church’s visitor experience, you’ll see more and more become regulars who will get to hear and respond to the gospel more and more.
Guiding Church Visitors to Become Church Regulars
1. Pre-Arrival
Optimize Your Church Website
This is a tough one for a blog post because I don’t know what your church’s website currently looks like or even if you have one. But let’s just assume that you do have a website. To optimize your church website so that it helps potential visitors get to a Sunday worship service, let’s make sure you have the necessary content/information on your website.
Content Your Church Website Must Have—via ChurchThemes
Here’s a summary from Church Theme’s article linked to above (be sure to look at the article for more detail):
- Location – make sure people know where to find you.
- Service Time(s) – make sure people know when to join you.
- About Us – tell people your beliefs, a brief history of your church, your values and feature your leadership.
- What to Expect – what should people wear, how long do services last, what kind of music should they expect?
- Ministries – tell people how they might be able to serve within your church.
- Events – tell people what things are coming up (and keep this updated).
- Sermons – show people what your church’s preaching is like.
- Contact Info – tell people how they can get into contact with you.
Beyond this, be sure to use pictures of the church building and the people who make up the church.
RELATED: Don’t Make it Awkward
Optimize Your Facebook Page and Strategy
With 65 percent of Americans on Facebook and one billion people worldwide on Facebook, it’s the place for churches to be most active when it comes to social media. It’s likely that a person will look you up on Facebook before they’ll even see your website. So with that being the case, your church being active on Facebook is really important.
If your church does not yet have a Facebook page, here’s a tutorial on how to set one up.
There are a lot of things you can do on Facebook to not only inform potential visitors and motivate them to visit but also enhance people’s walk with God who are already part of your church.
The big idea here is to make sure that if you have a presence on Facebook and keep it updated, informative and inspiring. Facebook is for regulars, not just first-timers.
If you’d like an example of what this looks like, check out The Crossing Facebook Page.
2. Their Arrival
A vital ministry team for every church is something to the equivalent of First Impressions. But this doesn’t mean you just put a greeter by the entrance to the worship room. This means you’re intentional at key connection points.
Parking Lot
Depending on your context, you may need people stationed throughout the parking lot to help people know where to park. You’ll want people by the sidewalk or curb in front of the main entrances. These people can be equipped with umbrellas when it is raining and smiling faces at all times, sharing warm “hellos” and “good mornings.”
Front Door
No one should need to open the door to the building on their own. Front door greeters should be ready to open the door hundreds of times if needed. They should know where to forward visitors to, where the children’s ministry wing is, and be able to express warm greetings in a sometimes fast-paced window of time.
