Perhaps you’ve noticed, our culture is often evaluating church in a negative fashion. Church people are perceived as being hypocritical, looking very different in life expression than the claims from faith identity. And, in a related way, the church message is received as irrelevant, out of touch with the reality of how faith intersects […]
At my church, the first person a guest likely has conversation with is “Tom.” Tom has Asperger Syndrome. He’s the perfect front line for hospitality. His life situation keeps him focused on the mission at hand. He’s not distracted by people he knows who are tempted to chat with each other.
His job is to […]
What is church hospitality? Is it unique from other hospitality? What about the rather significant emphasis on hospitality in the Bible? Let’s be honest, most churches are fortunate to have good hospitality, not great. Okay, most congregations have poor hospitality when it comes to loving the stranger, the first time guest.
For me, the pivotal […]
Every church says they are friendly (hospitable), but that usually is true only among church members themselves. The experience of the stranger, of the first time visitor, is often very far from a sense of being welcomed.
Let’s be honest. The call to make disciples and the kingdom goal is at stake here. It isn’t […]
I was working on a worship evaluation and thought that I’d share words and recommendations about a church’s welcome. If you’re going to be open and welcome to guests, you might want to consider the following.
Hospitality begins in the parking lot.
Well, it really begins when a guest goes to your website to find out […]
The threat with church hospitality at present is that it can become just another program to get people to church. Hospitality had better be grounded in a true sense of loving God’s people.
People often refrain from church these days because of what they determine to be hypocrisy. You could say that that means there […]
These are four of the most important questions you and your staff should be asking when it comes to visitor retention.
What happens when a new person visits your church? Are they greeted in the parking lot, at the door, and at the information desk?
What happens with the new person the week after […]
The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you,” has been the hallmark of the church for nearly two millennia. However, the rule has lately been misapplied to mean, “We’ll do unto others as we would have done unto us… so all those ‘others’ will have to like what we […]
For the week of January 31, 2005
Radical Hospitality
By: Tom Bandy
Most churches have learned that hospitality increases worship attendance … but they rarely go far enough. Radical hospitality is the readiness, not just to do what you like only better, but to do what you do not like for the sake of the newcomer. Imagine […]
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