If I were to ask you if you were “visitor friendly” I would imagine you would say yes, of course you are. After all you do many things to welcome guests to your church. But what about the things that happen once they get there? Do you say that you want to welcome guests and then do things that alienate them? Let me give you a few observations and some suggestions along the way.

Your words make a difference. Just because your circle uses certain words, and just because they sound natural to you…for those outside the church much of our vocabulary is foreign. Words like exegesis, sanctification, backsliding are just not part of people’s normal vocabulary. On a Sunday morning when you have a mixed crowd and are trying to speak to the outsider use their language. Say “explanation of the scripture”, “grow spiritual”, and “screwed up”. Here’s a great (and quite humorous) translations for some other Christianese phrases.

Not everyone was brought up in the church. That means not everyone knows the Lord’s prayer, the doxology, or even John 3:16. Use your screens, even when it might seem redundant to you. It helps people to stay with you and not feel like such an outsider. And please, make sure whoever is running your projection is on top of the content, make sure they can follow along and even judge your next move.

“everyone stand up and raise your bible…” The bible shouldn’t be your ticket into church and I don’t really think it’s your job as a pastor to make someone feel guilty for not bringing theirs to church. Maybe they don’t have one, maybe they left it at home…does it really matter? If you want people to have a bible, put one in nearby. If you think that people bringing a bible to church = a committed churchgoer…well, putting on my ski coat doesn’t qualify me for ski patrol. Instead let’s show people how relevant and engaging God’s word is…give them a reason to dig into their bible at home because quite honestly they don’t need it so much on Sunday morning, but they do need it a whole lot on Friday night.

What did I leave out? Here are 10 other ways from David to make guests feel unwelcome. What are others ways that we send mixed messages to our guests?

Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.

Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.

That’s because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort.

Church, please stop getting by. If you can’t do great, remarkable work…don’t do it. Do what you can be remarkable at. When you settle for mediocrity it’s not just ineffective it will often set people back 10x the amount. Let me give some examples:

If you can’t afford great creative for a mailing campaign…don’t do it.
If you can’t afford a powerful logo…don’t do it, just find a nice font.
If you aren’t ready for a remarkable website…don’t do it, use facebook.

Think about this, remarkable means being worthy of being noticed…especially being noticed as extraordinary. If you are doing anything less then that can you really say you’re effective as a church? If the message you bring isn’t worthy of being noticed what are you doing?

What do you need to stop doing…or start doing to be remarkable?

McCain
Know who you are you…and be that person.

While it seems that people are trying to cover their butts by pointing fingers there is one main reason McCain lost this election: identity. He didn’t know who he was. He started with “experience” but then moved to “change”. Bad move. You have to know who you are and what your story is before you can ever expect anyone else to. He tried out “maverick” in the end and while that might have worked awhile ago…it just wasn’t believable.

When a hip new church rolls into town down the street, resist the urge to adjust. That is not the time to try and cater to the hip crowd. Steady as she goes. If you’re hip, be hip. If you’re more yourself in jeans wear jeans…if you feel better in a suit, wear a suit. Not only do you need to be who you are because that’s who you are…it also produces stability within the church atmosphere.

Obama
Set an expectation that you know you can meet, or exceed.

Obama’s biggest challenge is filling the shoes he made for himself. The nation, and even world, is excited to see the change that he held onto so tightly…if he comes to the table with same old politics it’s going to be a big fail. If on the other hand he reaches across the aisle, looks out for the people and meets those expectations big win.

You can do the same by creating consistency in your communications. Don’t call us up and want to a great mailing campaign and then meet those people who respond with a mediocre guest packet, bulletin, etc. You only get one chance for that first impression. Be consistent and start from the ground up. Prepare for greatness and then tell people how great the experience is. Here’s another one that to me seems obvious but I see it to often. Don’t put pictures showing diversity if your church isn’t diverse. Putting a picture of a black man on your brochure does not make you diverse. What it does do is disappoint that family that shows up thinking you’re the church they’ve been looking for.

Okay…you’re turn what other lessons can we apply to the church from this campaign?

• Focus Audience: who are we trying to reach?
• Forum: where can we reach all of them at once?
• Issue: why are we talking to them?
• Accelerators: what helps?
• Barriers: what hurts?
• Hook: how do we ignite their passion?

Notice that she doesn’t start with what it looks like or what style is used. Those are needed things, if it isn’t beautiful people will ignore it. We should be communicating with amazing visuals and those visuals should rest on the foundation of a clear and moving message.

And I’ll add a seventh:

• Proof: what is the story of change?

I add the seventh because often we stop just short of truly effective ministry. It’s not enough to move people emotionally. It’s one thing to move people on a Sunday morning, they may even make the trip to the altar. But as hard as they may have thought it was to walk to that altar, the real challenge is carrying it out in our daily lives. We need to craft our messages and our responses to be those of change. Please continue to bring people to the altar, but don’t forget to send them into the world.