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The first time Kym-Marie and Rod visited a church, they handed their visitor information cards to an usher. Later that week, the pastor of the church called and asked if he could visit.

"He was very laid back and interested in us," Kym-Marie recalls. "Basically, he asked what we wanted from the church."

Kym-Marie wanted more information about Christianity. The pastor met that need by arranging to meet with the couple for further study. Kym-Marie and Rod eventually accepted Christ and joined the church.

A Warm Welcome
Millions of Americans today are not members of a church, according to Tom Clegg, consultant for Church Growth Institute and Church Resource Ministries. Yet an overwhelming percentage of local churches are either hitting a plateau or declining. And thousands of churches are closing every year.

Clearly there's a problem. Churches that have stopped growing aren't reaching out to the unchurched in their communities. And even when people such as Kym-Marie and Rod drop in, church members aren't offering the kind of welcome that keeps them coming back.

Here's what churches can do to become more visitor-friendly:

• Look friendly. "Churches must be sensitive to the mindset of unchurched people," says Victor Mertz of the Church Growth Institute. "We should begin with the first impressions. A church must look good and offer a nice overall ambiance to make a visitor return" (see "Visitor Friendly Checklist" below). Clegg agrees. "When visitors walk through the door, they will decide in three to eight minutes whether they'll take you seriously and whether they'll return," he says?
• Offer a guest-friendly service. "We view our church service as part of the visitor follow-up," says C. Craig Burns, pastor of Vienna Assembly of God in Virginia. "The service itself is designed to make the visitor's experience a little easier."

That means offering visitors a full-service bulletin that lists the order of service and the words of each song to be sung. "We have to remember that the unchurched don't know most of our lingo or songs or even church etiquette, such as when to stand or sit," Mertz says. "They feel threatened because they don't know those things. We need to help them in those areas."

Mertz also suggests becoming more sensitive to vocabulary that might offend newcomers. "We need to call them guests instead of visitors," Mertz says. "And when our guests leave, we shouldn't say, 'Thank you for worshiping with us'—that puts them on the outside. We should say, 'I'm glad we could worship together.'"

Clegg says churches should have a place where guests can meet with church members and pastors after the service. He also recommends that people be assigned to each exit of the sanctuary to speak to newcomers as they leave.

Whatever you do, don't ask guests to rise during a worship service and identify themselves, Clegg says. That may embarrass them to the point of never returning. Let them have anonymity unless they voluntarily relinquish it.

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