Podcast Episode #583
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Does your welcoming ministry feel stale and stagnant? In today’s episode, Thom and Sam discuss four reasons why churches become less welcoming. Every ministry can get in a rut or routine. Listen in on how you can become a more welcoming church.
- Leaders in your welcoming ministry are not getting constant reminders.
- New members of your welcoming ministry have not been trained.
- Pastors are failing to check for themselves.
- Pastors take it off their priority list.
Other highlights:
- A welcoming church has to be consistently persistent.
- You have to be on your “A” game every week.
- When visitors walk into a smaller church they are expecting to be welcomed well.
- Consistent vision casting from the leader is important.
- Any ministry has the potential to get into a rut and routine.
- A guest’s first impression will begin to occur within the first 7 seconds of being onsite at your church.
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Feedback
If you have a question you would like answered on the show, fill out the form on the podcast page here at ThomRainer.com. If we use your question, you’ll receive a free copy of Becoming a Welcoming Church.
I am concerned that the Greeter Ministry has become just another program…a position to be filled….
and has become disconnected from the process of assimilation.
Hi Charles: A very interesting point and well-taken. I see that it could become just another program within the church. But how else can a church be a welcoming one? I think that instead of looking at it as a program, it might be better to view it as a transitional step to introducing newcomers and not allowing them to be ignored. My last church was very welcoming, but inside the sanctuary, there were many clicks. And the clicks were not welcoming. There needs to be something that a church can do to make people feel comfortable without bothering them but allowing them to be greeted and letting the newcomer sit by themselves and think about what they’re seeing and hearing. I’m for letting go and let God. If the Pastor is dynamite and if his message is right on as far as the Bible goes, then God will direct them to revisit again. I think it’s more that people don’t go to church any more and they don’t want to have anything to do with any church. The problem resides there. We need a ministry that will entice people to at least come in and see for themselves.
“Greeter ministry” should be practice by people who REALLY like people..and don’t mind meeting new people. I’ve been a visitor in local churches–where the way I was greeted and cared for when I arrived determined if I would ever return.
The answer is love.
1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.