This is another installment in my “On the Lam” blog. The following is another post about something important I learned the hard way. I hope you can use these observations to improve your church’s ministry.
The Wide Open Side Door…
Sidedoor = the one visitors exit through.
After leaving the church where we had been members for 10 years, we began exploring other churches. For about 3 months we investigated my sister’s church. It is a large, well-staffed, wealthy downtown congregation. That church had a lot of nice folks, great social ministry, and good adult ed. But if our experience was the norm, dealing with visitors was not one of their strengths.
We visited that particular BIG church about 8 times. And eight Sundays no one from the church ever walked up to us after worship to say hello, -unless my sister was with us and they were walking up to her and she introduced us. People smiled and nodded, but “approached” in more than a polite smiling way -we were not.
The greeters were polite but never gave us more than a “welcome” (a brochure about the church would have been nice). At various times we took the initiative to approach the three ministers after worship and they were nice. Interestingly, there was always one standing by the main door saying good-bye to everyone. And they had a volunteer standing behind them taking notes, but only if you had a pastoral concern. The minister would turn and tell the volunteer, “Ellen’s mother is sick,” and the volunteer would dutifullly write it down. But not once when we identified ourselves as visitors did the minister have their volunteer write down anything about us. A missed opportunity.
We religiously signed the pew pads, but never received a call, and never received a newsletter. We did receive an invitation to join the new member class –three months after we stopped going there. This confirmed A LOT about that church –after we already had the inklings.
The youth pastor or youth leaders (whoever they were) also never approached my teenager. [I add this last "never" because I was a parish minister in two churches, and I considered it my JOB to make sure I spotted visitors and said hello to their kids. Those two churches grew while I was there too, not because I was wonderful, but because of our intentional outreach to visitors. People like to be noticed!]
I did once get an email from the pastor (with whom I had a passing acquaintance). It came about two months after we had started to attend. She wanted to know why we were no longer attending our former church and didn’t want to “poach” us from our former church. I emailed her back we were looking for a new church. And that was the last I heard from her. [You know you can right click an email in Outlook and select "follow up" and set a "reminder" to reply back to someone at a later date? The wonders of technology.]
Three months after we stopped going there, we received our first letter from that church. The letter thanked us for our “regular attendance” and thought we might be interested in joining the church. The letter had both our street number and zipcode incorrect but still got delivered. The letter was dated April 2nd, postmarked April 8th and arrived April 15th. The new member class mentioned in the letter started April 13th, two days before we got the letter, and only 5 days before the letter was mailed. I should mention that we religiously signed their pew pads, my handwriting is legible, and they did cash our checks which also had our address on them.
How does a church with great ministry and tons of staff blow something this simple and important? Where was the contact after our first visit, or second, or third? Why weren’t we mailed a newsletter? And how could they invite us to join without realizing we had stopped attending? And how could they get the address wrong, and mail an important letter so late? There’s no excuse because the process is just too easy set up and execute. Entering us into their computer should have generated a letter, put us on the mailing list, and flagged us for follow up. And generating a mailing on time is what staff is being paid for.
We slipped through the sidedoor, and I doubt they even know they left it propped open or did anything to point us in the direction.
Postscript: That church is a wealthy old downtown church which spend millions of dollars fixing up their building, and now has a huge debt it is having trouble servicing. They began cutting staff, including the CE staff, and their membership continues to shrink.
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A Previous Side Door…
In 1996 our family moved back into town and spent a year attending the church where my wife and I had grown up and been married. During that year we were never invited to join, which is probably a good thing because we would have said “no.” The pastor at that time was, –well let me just say “he had issues.” They had other problems too, one of which I’m going to describe below.
The Side Door Opens Up…
But it wasn’t all that pastor. We got a lot of odd vibes being back in our home church, and the following “vignette” pretty much sums them up.
One Sunday morning on one of our first Sunday’s back in the congregation, my two youngest daughters walked up to the coffee table after worship looking for juice, -only to be told that the church only had water for the children. Later, I asked the pastor and DCE about this, and they confirmed that it was the policy of the church to offer coffee and tea to the adults, but only warm tap water to the children. This policy bother the jerk pastor (no surprise there) but the DCE didn’t have much to say about it either. And yes, they had tile floors so “the mess” wasn’t an issue.
You might think is a minor issue, but remember I said “this one sums them up.” The church had friendliness problems, among other things. And remember, we KNEW quite a few of the people there! They were leaking young families too. The lack of juice was merely the poster child for the little things that didn’t seem to mean a lot to them.
The Push out the side door…
The final push out the door happened one Sunday sitting in adult ed class. We heard people talking about “the class party” they had had last night. I asked, “when was that announced?” And they said, “in last week’s class” -which I had missed because I had helped teach a children’s class. When I asked the DCE why they didn’t mail a calendar or a postcard reminder, she told me (and I’m not making this up) that they “didn’t have postage in the budget.” Needless to say, I was flabbergasted. This was a wealthy suburban congregation of 1000 members.
Jerky minister, no juice, no postage. 10 others things I’m not mentioning here, –and we were out of there. Within 3 months the Associate Pastor left that church, and a year later Rev Oddball was gone too. But by then, we had landed at another church which served juice.
In through the front door one more time…
For the next ten years we were active members in a ”juice serving” church –which also happened to be closer to home. You can read about that experience in other posts here. But now it’s 2008, and during the past few months since leaving our “10 year church” and since not going back to that downtown church, we have gone back three times to attend our “former” church. The jerk was gone, the juice was back, and we assume they finally got a postage budget.
I liked the ‘new’ pastor there a lot. She knew we were in-between churches and enthusiastically greeted us the last time we were there. But we have yet to hear from that church. No letter, no newsletter. Apparently they HAVEN’T solved their postage problem!
[On Easter Sunday how many local people who are non-members come to your church? Wouldn't you send them a card or newsletter inviting them "come again" ? That was the last time we went back to our home church which is just 4 miles from our house. Signed the pewpad with our address and spoke to the pastor. Yet, no follow up.]
At this point, you’re probably asking, “what’s wrong with Neil and his family?”
I don’t blame you. Apparently we have horns.
My wife and I are not PETTY church-goers. We would not base our attendance or joining on receiving a piece of mail. The point is that all churches should be more pro-active about such matters, especially those which have lost members (like all of the three mentioned in this blogthread). And quite likely, most of the members of the churches described here would be aghast, surprised, and embarrassed that their church dropped the ball on such a simple thing.
It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your “Visitor Welcome Process” is?
We know every church has its issues. But in this day and age of Computers and Databases there is no excuse for a church not generating even a simple postcard after your first visit. And we’re not even beginning to scratch the surface of WHAT ELSE TO DO to attract visitors!
If you’ve read this far, don’t assume YOUR church is doing the right thing! Ask.
Which brings me to the concept of “Standard Operating Procedures.”
“SOPs” are practices you have in place to avoid mistakes you cannot afford to make. They are so basic as to be UNDEBATABLE. Lacking them, or not following them should be grounds for a pastor’s removal. A church or committee which fails to implement them should be punished by having to lead the next Jr. High Retreat.
SOP #1: Staff needs to actually read the pew pads that visitors sign and follow-up on them within a week. Make them a Monday morning priority.
SOP #2: Appoint someone to be in charge of visitor follow-up. This used to be the pastor’s responsibility, but apparently they are too busy complaining about attendance to do anything about it. ANY timely follow-up is better than none. Speaking from experience, we would have loved even a lowly postcard.
SOP #3: Make visit and new member follow-up a measurable stat that gets discussed in personnel performance review.
SOP #4: Every pastor should have cards made up and stuffed in their pockets to hand out on Sunday. They should be nice looking ones, not business card boring, with their church and home phone listed, and an invitation to call them. Every visitor they meet should get one, and the pastor should also write down the visitor’s name and phone number on a card in their pocket.
SOP #4: First item on the staff’s regular meeting and the membership committee’s monthly agenda: who have we contacted since the last meeting?
SOP #5: After a visitor has visited 2 or 3 times and obviously stopped coming, a very nice person and good listener from the church should call that visitor and listen to why that visitor stopped coming. You can learn a lot from former-visitors IF you choose to listen.
If you have other SOP’s you’d like to add to this list, please leave a comment.
<>< Neil
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Read my post here on the Wide Open BACKdoor! http://sundayresources.net/neil/2008/04/20/the-wide-open-backdoor/
You may also enjoy reading my ideas for Promoting Church Attendance and Attracting Visitors over at www.sundaysoftware.com/promoting.htm It has a lot of good ideas in it.