Read my “On the Lam” blog thread and you’ll see why I think Hacking the Visitor process is so important:  churches screw it up!

Too often, visitors come in the front door and slip through the side door. Your job is to figure out how to WIDEN the front door, ie, get more visitors through it; and keep them from going through the side door. Luckily it’s not hard to do. In my own very personal experience visiting churches, they so awfully neglect the basics of handling visitors that they have convinced themselves of the difficulty of visitor ministry in order to justify their negligience of it!

IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR….

“Survey Says”
There’s a lot of good data and accumulated wisdom on what makes a visitor “visit.”  The PCUSA did a study that concluded that THE BEST WAY to ATTRACT VISITORS was for their friends and neighbors -who are members of your church, -to issue them an invitation.

If this is true, and I believe it is to a degree, then we need to give our members certain OPEN DOORS to inviting their friends and neighbors to be with us. And let me suggest that “inviting them to worship” is not always the first step.

We already know part of the answer to “how and what” from general experience:
–The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  To this I would also add, “hobby.”
–And the quickest way to a woman’s heart is through her children.

For MEN, you may need to create several “men events” during the year that give your men members an “excuse” for asking their male friends to help them.  Men recruiting men to “rennovate a house” or build a playground are exactly the kinds of introductor events many men will respond to. One of the MOST attractive programs I was ever involved with -was a men’s softball team. It brought in over a dozen men and their families to become permanent members. We purposely formed a team that NEEDED the friends of our male members to fill out the roster. Worked like a charm.

For young women, “Mother’s Day Out” events are a wonderful way to get the friends of your female members introduced to the church.  I’ll leave it up to you to come up with other great ideas. Just come up with them!

For singles… spending time with OTHER singles is paramount. Older visitors will respond to traditional mens and womens groups.  If they are relocating into town, an invitation to be part of a  ”Church Dinner Group” will be welcome indeed!

CLOSING THE SIDE DOOR…

For decades the “new member” research, experience and literature has been saying “find things for new members to do.”  In one famous book it was called “places to land.”  The philosophy is true for visitors as well, because a visitor is VERY SIMILAR TO a “new member” in terms of their needs.  They are both trying to get to know the congregation, see if it fits, meet some people, and feel a connection.

Thus, Visitors need to be “tracked” and “racked.”

Tracked = Immediately after their first visit, they should be contacted, and again after their second visit. A follow up visit by the pastor should happen soon thereafter. It’s a surefire way to increase your “visitor conversion rate.”  (In business, the concept of “conversion” is well known, i.e., identifying someone who’s making initial inquiries and with the right help will become a customer. “Contact” is key.

Tracking visitors requires a weekly approach and database management. By database I mean anything between a legal pad to a piece of software. The larger your church, the more likely a piece of tracking software might come in handy. Regardless of your size, MAKING IT someone’s responsibility is crucial.

Racked = Getting the visitor plugged in somewhere. A visitor who comes to a potluck, or picnic or mission event is someone who’s seriously investigating being part of your community. But rather than stand back and wait for them to decide, the church must be pro-active.  That means HAVING events scheduled on a regular basis, and getting INVITATIONS to visitors. It can be as simple as walking up to a regular visitor and asking them to USHER or HELP TEACH a class.

Racking the visitor should also include LEANING ON the members who initially invited them to participate. MANY visitors come because they already know somebody in the congregation. Thus, your “racking” efforts will include calling the member-friend and talking to them about inviting the visitors to xyz.

Now….You might think all this is obvious, but in my “On the Lam” blog thread, you can see that in three churches I have participated in within the past 12 years, these things DID NOT happen. Each church was rather PASSIVE about its visitors, waiting for the visitors to make the move towards membership. Can you imagine Jesus telling the disciples, “Now I want you to go NEAR the towns, but don’t go IN them, and for mysake DO NOT actually INVITE any of the towns folks to come be with you. And if they shun you, it’s their fault, so shake their dust from your feet.“   No, you can’t.

So much more can be said, but I think you get the idea. Tracking and Racking will help our conversion rates. And that’s what it’s all about, right?  “conversion”

<>< Neil

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