We want our guests to feel welcome don’t we? We understand how important first impressions are. So we launch a greeting ministry complete with “My name is…” name tags. We go after the bubbliest people that we can find and we strategically place them outside and at the front door. (If you are a smoker it’s a double bonus. You get to smoke and greet…two things you love to do at the same time.) Then, just to make sure that people feel welcome, we force you to stand up in the middle of the service and shake someone’s hand and pretend like you are happy to see them. As you are shaking their hand, you might as well say, “Hey, aren’t you the same person that I walked by and completely ignored earlier as I was in a hurry to catch up with my real friend?”
We do a pretty good job of being nice to our guests. But they aren’t looking for nice, they are looking for friendly. And friendliness cannot be achieved through a program anymore than lowering your cholesterol can be achieved by eating a Big Mac. A nice greeting program in an unfriendly church is like putting a pretty bow on a cow patty and thinking that we’re giving someone a nice gift.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if our church was so friendly that we didn’t need a greeting ministry to make guests feel welcome?
We’ve got change this! If the Church is God’s plan to bring the gospel to the World, being nice isn’t gonna cut it. We need to stop thinking that the world revolves around us and start genuinely being excited and honored that a guest would choose to step out of their comfort zone and visit our church. That’s a big deal! It should excite us to no end to think that a guest would choose to visit our church, giving us an opportunity to share the love of Jesus with them. The natural response should be authentic friendliness, not forced niceness.
How do we change this in our churches?
What can you do to help change it?
Good post Mike!
As the leader of our "Hospitality Ministry" I would like to give you a big hearty AMEN!
our church used to have the slogan "end of your search for a friendly church". We got rid of it when I pointed out that #1 we weren't friendly and # 2 the baptist church just one block over had the same slogan on their sign. We instead have begun to work on the "friendly" part. Great post !!!
I myself have walked into way to many churches that had greeters, people to show you to the child daycare and the such, but when it came down to the actual members they were basically cold.