Image: Anthony Kelly | Flickr

What does your church do well? And how long does it take a first-time guest to experience it?

Your response to those questions is a huge factor in how well your church attracts and keeps new people.

According to church leadership experts, most people will subconsciously decide whether to come back to a church within the first 7-10 minutes of driving into the parking lot.

If your church is doing everything great, keep it up. But that’s not the case for most of us. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit we do some things well, but there are other aspects of the Sunday morning service we struggle with. And some parts we’re just awful at.

What’s worse, many churches take the things we don’t do well and put them at the beginning of the service. That means our church guests have made a yes/no decision about being a part of our congregation when all they’ve seen are the things we’re not that good at.

No, a 7-10 minute window isn’t enough time for people to make a fair assessment. But it is reality.

A Mistake We May not Know We’re Making

Despite the fact that most pastors are aware of this 7-10 minute phenomenon, few of us have done much about it. But it’s not because we don’t care.

Here’s an example.

Most small churches have a hard time finding someone to lead in worship. I know because I spent a lot of years – decades, actually – fighting this battle. By the time I got up to preach, I often had to rescue the church from the hole that had been dug during the front half of the service.

I know I’m not alone in that experience. Most small churches don’t have the people or equipment to do worship music well.

Yet, how do most of us start our services? By singing together. Badly.

Yes, I know the scriptures say “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” but that doesn’t mean we should front-load the noise.

What Options Do We Have?

How does a church break away from burying our best ministry 15-20 minutes into the middle of the service?

Change that game. Flip the script.

Front-load the value and give them our best stuff up front.

This is a radical idea for many of us. But I wish I’d thought of it 30 years ago so I could have implemented it when I needed it most.

(If your church is high-liturgy, in which the order of service is prescribed for you, I respect that. This post may not be for you. Maybe my next one will be just what you need.)