Tuesday, October 16, 2012

10 Things First-Time Church Visitors Don't Want to Hear

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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