3. Regret
Regret has the potential to be the most powerful emotion that people experience when they come to your church. I like to think of this as comparable to buyer’s remorse, the feeling you get when you’ve purchased an item, walk out of the store, and suddenly feel as if you made a mistake.
When people step into the lobby of your church for the very first time, they often run into a deep sense of buyer’s remorse. Some will almost immediately feel the desire to turn around and walk out. This regret means that they are in over-processing mode and are looking for any excuse to leave. If they get a text from their long-lost aunt that they haven’t talked to in 25 years, that will take precedence over what is happening at your church on a Sunday morning. If they forgot the diaper bag, that will cause a mom to bail and decide not to drop her kids off at your programs. Regret drives (or inhibits) an incredible amount of action for first-time guests.
To combat this sense of regret, we need to clearly articulate early on that we are expecting guests to be with us. This impression is important because if a first-time guest with buyer’s remorse at least understands that we expected them, it reduces some of their regret and makes them more willing to give us a shot, even for that one moment.
Cultivating an environment of expectation helps our people feel at home and understand that God has a great plan for them.
4. Hope
A deep sense of hope also fills the hearts of first-time guests. The only reason why guests have come to your church is because there is some sort of need that they are hoping you will fill. Hope is the driving emotion that brings people to your church for the first time. As such, we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions:
Do we understand the needs that drive our guests to our churches?
Are we acknowledging what those needs are in order to fulfill that sense of hope?
The reality is that if guests don’t believe that the church can meet their needs, they simply won’t come back. We know that somewhere close to only one in 10 guests ever return to a church in the future. One of the reasons they may decide to come back is because they have a sense that their needs are going to be met by that church sometime in the future. Their needs may be relational or maybe they’re struggling with raising their kids or wrestling with theological matters. Some people struggle with who is God and wonder what difference He could possibly make in their lives, while others understand God but wonder why they’re here and what their purpose is in the world.
Have a robust understanding of the needs of your people and take the time to address those needs in your printed material or through what you talk about on a Sunday morning.
5. Distracted
Frankly, when people arrive on a Sunday morning, they’re distracted. This may very well be the most prominent mindset that people experience as they join you on a Sunday morning. We are just one, very thin slice of their overall week. In the back of their minds, there are many other things they’re wondering about, including:
- What’s for lunch?
- Is my team going to win their game today?
- Will my kids enjoy the program?
- Does the pastor at this church have anything to say that’s relevant to me?
- I wonder what’s going to happen at work tomorrow.
- I wonder what my boss really thinks of me.
- Is my mom going to call today and complain that I haven’t called her?
- I wonder what my wife really thinks about that date we went on last night.
- I’m so confused about why this church uses Comic Sans font in their advertising.
- What’s going to happen next month? Next year? 10 years from now?
