Top Ten Ways Churches Drive Away First-time Guests

Podcast Episode #452

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Guest friendliness has been a constant theme on this blog and podcast over the past few years. There’s even a book that came out of these discussions. Today, we look at a classic post on the subject and unpack several ways churches actually push guests away.

Some highlights from today’s episode include:

• Most church members think the church is friendly—because members are friendly to one another.
• Safety and security of the children’s space at your church is of utmost importance—especially to guests.
• If your church has a welcome center, you need to actually staff the welcome center.
• Your church website needs to primarily focus on and highlight information for guests.

The 10 items we discuss are:

1. Having a stand up and greet one another time in the worship service.
2. Unfriendly church members.
3. Unsafe and unclean children’s area.
4. No place to get information.
5. Bad church website.
6. Poor signage.
7. Insider church language.
8. Boring or bad service.
9. Members telling guests that they were in their seat or pew.
10. Dirty facilities.

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