Have you ever tried to make a complicated recipe? It can be challenging. Maybe you thought you followed the directions exactly but your anticipation dissolved into heartbreak with the final result. Something as simple as overbeating your eggs can determine whether you have a beautiful soufflé or merely a fancy pudding.
Fostering church growth is similar to crafting a tricky recipe. When it’s not going well, it can be frustrating to identify where things are going wrong. Sometimes small oversights about a visitor’s experience can undermine all your preparation. When attendance does not rise as you expected, you end up scratching your head.
Here are four mistakes churches might not realize are sabotaging their best efforts.
1. Fostering a “just us” atmosphere.
Sometimes you don’t realize how messy your house is until someone drops in for a visit. Suddenly, you see all those little problem areas and projects you’ve neglected. Your church environment can be the same way.
Once a congregation gets acclimated to their environment, they may stop noticing things that anyone else would see. It could be the unpainted parking lot, the rundown feel of the nursery, or even the insider jokes in the sermon. It’s easy for churches to slip into a “just us” mindset. If that happens, they stop being great hosts.
Take regular opportunities to remind both your church leaders and the congregation about the importance of experiencing your church through a visitor’s eyes. Help them think through a Sunday morning from different perspectives. If someone has never stepped into a church before, what kind of experience will they have at your church? What about if they are new parents looking to return to their Christian roots?
When church leaders and members become outwardly focused during a Sunday morning, it makes all the difference.
2. Smothering or ignoring visitors.
Even if you have been a committed Christian all your life, walking into a new church can be tough. Most people experience low-level anxiety about doing something foolish or having an awkward experience. At the same time, they want to feel welcomed and noticed.
Finding a balance with visitors can be tricky. If the church struggles with the “just us” atmosphere, church members will likely fall into the habit of talking to the same four people they spoke to last week. Standing around after a service and watching people retreat into their cliques can make a guest feel lonely.
On the other hand, a guest does not want to be surrounded by a lot of manic energy either. Perhaps you’ve visited a church and felt completely overwhelmed by an overly friendly church member who gave you a rundown of the church calendar and all the opportunities that are available—when you weren’t even sure if you were going to come back.
It’s helpful to train your congregation to honor the five-foot rule: If a church member is within five feet of someone they don’t know—who is not already engaged in a conversation—they greet them and introduce themselves. Congregants don’t need to have a long, drawn-out conversation with a visitor (unless the chemistry is there), but you want them to at least say, “Thanks for joining us today—we’re glad you’re here.”
3. Not prioritizing contact information.
If someone shows up at one of your services, do you have a plan to contact them again? Many churches use connect cards as a way to receive visitor information, and this puts the ball in your court. If you do not collect contact information, you miss out on the opportunity to influence another visit.
Please note, though, that connect cards only work if you highlight and promote them every week and follow up within twenty-four hours. Because it’s not enough to receive guests’ contact information—you need a plan for actually connecting with them. If visitors go too long between their visit and your first contact, the chances for their return begin to diminish.
Connect cards, whether paper or digital, do more than help you capture contact info. They also give people a way to engage with you. Visitors can use them to request prayer or ask to meet. It is a low-stress way for people to reach out when they need you.
4. Using technology poorly.
Media tools, such as presentation software, can either be helpful to your services or a distraction. It all depends on the quality of your content. You do not need to incorporate new technology into your services to get people to come back. But when you choose to implement tech solutions, it’s essential that you do it well. Allocate resources and time for someone on your team to invest in learning how a program or software works to get the most out of it. Otherwise, you may appear out of touch to people who are increasingly comfortable using tech in their everyday lives.
Take your website as an example. If someone wants to learn more about you, they are going to visit your website. Potential visitors are used to accessing websites all the time, and it does not reflect well on your church if your site is out of date, poorly designed, or does not have the information guests are looking for. The problem is that you will never know when someone checks out your website and then decides not to visit.
When you incorporate technical solutions, commit yourself to doing it right. Otherwise, you might be hurting yourself more than you are helping.
Covering your bases.
Aiming for church growth without an outreach plan can be like shopping for recipe ingredients without a recipe. You might have the best ingredients available, but if you’re not sure what to do with them when you get home, you’ll struggle to create the final dish. In the same way, a good outreach strategy without a plan to assimilate visitors does not work.
Once your church begins to see itself through the eyes of visitors, you can connect with your guests and turn your outreach into real, sustainable growth.
