A
pastor in charge of community building and small groups feels it's so
important for churches to make a good impression on first-time church
visitors from the moment they walk onto a church campus that he's come
up with a list of 10 statements that just might do the opposite and turn
churchgoers away.Pastor Ben Reed of Long Hollow Baptist Church
in Tennessee told The Christian Post that a church can run people off if
its greeters and the rest of the congregation are not careful about the
words they use.
"I think that we forget a lot of times that the
worship experience starts in the parking lot, not when we pastors step
on the stage," Reed said. "We can put so much effort and time into
crafting just that perfect worship service and it doesn't matter if we
miss out" by the church's guest services giving the wrong impressions,
he explained.
"If we don't really think critically about how we
are going to minister to the first-time guest then we are going to miss
it," he said.
One of the items on his "10 Statements Church
Visitors Never Want to Hear" list is "What's your address? I didn't
catch it on the first 6 forms I had you fill out."
"The Gospel is
the greatest message in the history of the world, but it doesn't have a
chance if the moment somebody walks in the door and if somehow, someway
we convince them to fill out a visitors form and then later in the
service we ask them to fill out another one, and when they pick up their
kids we ask them to fill out another one," Reed said. "They just might
throw up their hands and say, 'I don't care what your gospel is, forget
it.'"
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