February 12, 2025 • 49 mins
Read the full show notes at malphursgroup.com/277
When a guest visits your church, they've already decided to be brave. Don't let overlooked details create unnecessary anxiety for them! In this episode, we dive into five questions every guest is silently asking - from parking logistics to communion etiquette. Learn practical ways to address these unspoken concerns and create a more welcoming experience for your visitors.
Whether you're a growing church looking to improve your guest services or a established congregation wanting to stay sharp, these insights will help you see your facility and processes through fresh eyes. Plus, discover why your bathroom might be more important than you think and how to make your coffee service more strategic. It's time to eliminate those small barriers that can make guests feel like outsiders.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Five overlooked guest experience questions today on the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello,
and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast, brought to
you by the Malthers Group team, where each week we tackle
important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:23):
Matthew.
Welcome to the church revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball, and
I'm joined by my friend and cohost, AJ Matthew. We are also joined
today by my cold. So
my apologies if I Welcome to all to all two of you.
Yeah. If I cough or if I sniffle, I am so sorry.
(00:48):
It's just the nature of the beast today. So, today we're talking
about when people come to
your church, they're bringing more than just themselves
they're bringing some questions along with them.
And, I guess maybe let me take a step back. One of the
reasons why we wanted to take some time today
(01:12):
to start talking about guest experience is it's,
when this releases, it'll be February 12,
I think, is when this episode will go out. It's not too early to
start thinking about Easter, AJ, and preparing for that.
And and sometimes making some of the adjustments we're gonna be talking about
today's episode, you can't just flip a switch and change these things. It
(01:34):
takes a little bit of time. So we wanted to talk about this
so that you could be as Easter ready as possible in your guest
experience. But also on that note,
AJ, we have some Easter materials to
help serve your church available inside the
Healthy Church's toolkit. So if you're already a subscriber, congratulations,
(01:57):
like you're gonna have access to all that. I'm talking about
Easter series that you can adapt on your
own with discussion guides and printable
materials and, I mean, a social media plan and the
whole nine yards. And all that is available inside the
toolkit. So as always, you can go to
(02:18):
malphorsgroup.com/toolkit and sign up for
free, and we won't tell anybody if you
just download all the stuff and and,
and then cancel. You can sleep at night doing that. That's alright.
Okay. But you get you get access for seven days for
free. Again, when this releases on February
(02:40):
13, which should be the day after this episode goes
live, we're gonna have a, like, a
tour, so to speak, of that Easter hub with all
the materials, kind of reviewing what materials are in there, and
how to take advantage of them, and how you could print them
and modify them. And,
(03:02):
also, we a new AI tool. We have a new AI tool inside the
toolkit that we're releasing to help you develop a guest follow-up sequence,
email sequence. So there's lots of new stuff that's happening this
week in the toolkit. So we thought we would shameless plug,
talk about that, but also talk about how you can get your church Easter ready
and your guest experience. So Yeah. You can call that a
(03:27):
healthychurchestoolkit.com and register. That's true.
That's true. Yeah. Malphorsgroup.com/toolkit or
Healthychurchestoolkit.com. All those things will get you where you need to
go. Yep. And, by the way, that, you know, this thing that we're doing on
on Thursday, we do every month. So the Healthy Churches
toolkit gains a resource every month, and we do a live workshop.
(03:47):
They're recorded also. You can go back to the archive and review those. But,
yeah, for subscribers, you can join us once a month,
because the toolkit grows every month, and we tell you about it and
how it can be useful for your church. Yes. Indeed.
Alright. So, these questions, these common questions that
that guests have, let's just walk through them. Alright. Five
(04:10):
overlooked guest experience questions, and we're starting off with the arrival,
and the question by a guest. Where do I park,
and walk in? Where do I park and walk in? And sometimes too far here.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's not always clear. Maybe one might
be clearer than the other, or both might be unclear.
(04:30):
Scott, you and I have just have some all, we have got a a
a breadth of experience in how all of these things we're talking
about today are handled in churches. But making it clear, like,
this is the entrance. You might think some of this is ridiculous because you're picturing
your church. Maybe your church has one entrance and one door,
and you've got, you know, four guest parking spots
(04:53):
pretty close to the front somewhere. And you're like, what? This is simple stuff.
But it's not. Everybody's, church is a little bit different, and we've
seen some really complicated scenarios. And
the only way to make complicated scenarios easier
is with good information and signage usually. And that's
that's usually the tweak that needs to happen in those cases,
(05:16):
is just put some signs out. And it doesn't even have to be permanent things.
Sandwich boards put out, you know, early Sunday morning by a volunteer just
to direct guests. Having some guest parking so that,
you know, they're not driving around, making loops, you know, trying to find a
decent spot. Have some guest parking upfront. But, you know,
there's there's some strategy to that, Scott, when your guest parking
(05:38):
is upfront. Yeah. Let me let me, like,
talk about this in a concrete user
experience type way and why this is confusing. Because I know so so many of
you are listening to this and you're going, oh, okay. Yeah. Well, this one doesn't
apply to me. We've got visitor parking and it's right up front.
Okay. But I don't want you to think about upfront.
(06:00):
Here's what I want you to think about.
When your people who are there every week,
when they come what door do they walk in? And why
do they walk in that door? So it might be because, oh
well, they walk in that door because the children's check-in is
actually inside that door. Mhmm. So
(06:23):
a regular attender doesn't walk into the main entrance,
they walk into the side entrance because that's where children's check-in is.
So that should lead you to ask yourself, if that's what a
normal person does, because it's the most
convenient and makes the most sense, Why would I
have a newcomer walk in the
(06:45):
entrance that's the most confusing? They're gonna have to walk through
a maze to find the children's check-in or
where the guest connection table is. So we think it's right
up front. This is good parking. Good parking is not next to
necessarily next to the main entrance. It's it's near
the things that they need to know. Does that make sense, AJ? It it does.
(07:08):
It does. Yeah. So this is where the mistake that a lot of churches make
is they go, we have guest parking. It's right up front. But then you walk
in the main entrance, and now I'm even more confused.
Like, I don't know. Where do I go from here? Yeah. And perhaps the team
members that then they, come in contact with first
aren't actually trained or equipped to direct somebody.
(07:30):
They just noticed that you parked in the, yeah, in the guest parking. So they
don't know that you're new. They don't know that you don't know where to go.
Yeah. I you know, I would say in scenarios like this in which there is
there's more than one entrance and maybe there's a better entrance based on whether
you have kids or not have guest parking in both
places then. And we're gonna we're we're gonna talk about
websites more at the end. But, yeah, letting
(07:53):
letting people know. Like, yeah, if you're dropping off kids, this store over here is
the best place to go in. If that's not a thing that, you know, you
as a visitor, need or care about, then, you
know, that's that's not gonna be as important. Yeah. I'll give I'm gonna give
a a positive shout I've I've used them as a positive shout out on a
lot of episodes, so I know they don't mind.
(08:14):
But I I worked with a church in North Carolina that this was
a criticism that I had of theirs initially was
their guest parking was close to their main entrance, but their children's check-in
was I mean, it felt like
a mile away. I mean, it couldn't have been further away from
(08:34):
the main entrance. And I was like, How would I
even know? And they're like, Well, we walk people back there. I'm like, Do you
though? And they're like, Man, I mean, sometimes we
do. And they responded so well to that, they
moved two things (08:50):
they moved where the children's check-in was, and
they moved the entrance where they were encouraging guests to walk into,
into this sort of like entrance that's in between
where the main lobby is and where the kids ministry area was. They
realized we can direct guests to this point because they had a
very small it was like their old narthex, but it's perfect
(09:13):
for encountering the newest of
people. So, they don't do their full guest
connection stuff there, but they do do they do check children's
check-in and, you know, first time guests and all
that. They're able to corral all of that right there, and they have very
clear flags that tell you new here, children's
(09:35):
check-in, this way. And it you can't miss it now. It's so obvious.
And it's like perfection. And they
manage that so well, and you all know who you are,
and I know lots of you actually listen to this podcast, and you know actually,
when you're listening, how much that's impacted your church. I mean, they've grown a
lot, and one keys to their success has been
(09:58):
they've really optimized that first time guest experience. It's it's
spectacular. Yeah. That's awesome. I love hearing those stories too about,
you know, just rethinking. You've gotta re sometimes you have to change your
perspective and and rethink things. Well, like, you can't like, in their case,
you can't help the fact that you have this older older building and then you
have this add on, like and the children's ministry is in the older
(10:19):
building and your nice beautiful lobby is in the add on.
You can't help that that's the case, but you can help which you can
optimize the entrance that makes the most sense for where children's check-in should be.
Yeah. Yep. And and you make do with it. Like, you go,
okay, well, wouldn't it be nice if the children's check-in was in the
beautiful new lobby? Well, it's not, like, and it can't be all the way over
(10:42):
there because it doesn't make any sense for it to be there. Yeah. You know
what I'm saying? Yeah. And it they've made they've maximized what
they have done and it's worked really well for you. Sometimes, you know, I
think the thought also is that these parking spots, you know, they should be, like,
closest to the door, and that's just and and that and that's a nice convenience.
You know? Let's let's make our guests not have to walk very far, and that's
(11:02):
that's cool. That's a nice sentiment. But sometimes, you know, having them closer
can also be a strategic location where there it's more visible,
so that somebody, a team member, can actually see, okay. Somebody just parked
there. I don't need to wait for them to come in looking, you know,
with the deer in the headlights look. I can just anticipate they're gonna
have questions. I can welcome them as a guest. I've I've
(11:25):
got pretty good evidence they're a guest because they park there. Every now and then,
we run into a church where the most entitled of members use the guest
parking. But That's right. But you get to know that. Call them out. You should
call them out. You should be like, you can't park there. Yeah. You can see.
Maybe you can see from the door or you got somebody, you know, somebody working
out in the parking lot. And we're like, alright. Somebody just parked there. When
(11:46):
this family or this person comes up, I can go, hey. I'm glad glad you
came to visit. You know, where can I direct you? You know? Are you,
are you just here for for worship, or what can I what questions can I
answer? Use it to your advantage to welcome them as a guest.
You don't even have to have a parking team. You can just have a greeter
at that whatever that guest entrance is. Think of it as a
(12:07):
guest entrance and not a primary entrance. Those might overlap, they might
not. Yeah. And if you've got and if you've got a greeter kind of
stationed at the guest entrance and it's within just
eyeshot of the guest parking, you should be able to notice who parks there.
Yeah. Yeah. And keep that with you. By the way, on that note, like
3%, about 3% of your parking should be dedicated
(12:28):
to guests. Yeah. So you just do that math based on the size of your
parking lot. If you've never had a guest or it's been a really long
time, give us a call. We would like to talk to you because
we can help you with that.
You know, and you also mentioned, you know, walking people. Like, they might say, well,
we walk people there. Actually, I work one of the earlier churches I ever worked
(12:50):
with had that strategy in place, had that team in
place, and they were utilizing students, like high school
student age, because this they had a ton they had
I think they might have only had maybe they had two different parking lots, but
they just had a ton of entrances. And they'd left them all open,
and, they had just team of high school students
(13:11):
posted at those doors. You know, like, two or three of them,
like, they literally were walking people. They're like, hey. Welcome.
Let me take you wherever you need to go. Let me escort you there.
And, and that, you know, then there were still somebody posted there until that one
got back, and they had enough in that rotation. It's just it worked
great. Great way to engage students in in
(13:33):
hospitality ministry. So, yeah. You can
there's some super creative ways to manage
maybe bad design and things in your
Yeah. Space. Totally. Alright. Number two.
Number two. We were kinda talking about this already, but, yeah, the next the
second question, what do I do with my kids? Mhmm.
(13:56):
And, this needs to be really clear because,
in fact hold on. Let me back up a second here, Scott. Because I I
just said the word because. Why is this because why? Because
guests guests, you know, have have made a really important
decision to visit your church today, and there's a lot of reasons that they made
that decision. That decision might have happened a half hour ago, might
(14:19):
have happened weeks ago. But but they're there,
and they're new, and they don't know what you know.
And your job is to make it as easy and comfortable for them as
possible because this is assuming you want them to
stay. You do want them to become a part of your fellowship. You want them
to get to know Jesus. And so there's a lot of big
(14:40):
reasons, and there's a lot of big things happening in that
moment on a Sunday morning that could affect them
positively or negatively. And so the big because here
is that let's make guests feel welcome, and, and let's
help them focus as much on God as they
can in that, you know, ninety minutes or a hundred twenty minutes that they might
(15:03):
be on your campus, and not be thinking about the things
that they're the baggage that's is going on in their life or the things that
you've introduced them to that morning that might be stressing them like this
one. What do we do with my kids? And what's gonna be what's gonna happen
to my kids? I'm gonna hand you hand you my kids, you strangers.
What exactly are you gonna be doing with them for the next seventy five
(15:24):
minutes? And so, yeah, what do I do with my kids?
Where do they go? How do I drop them off? How are you making me
feel comfortable and confident that they're gonna be well taken care of, that they're
gonna be safe, that it's gonna be easy for me to get
from wherever they are to where I'm gonna be going and back?
And, you know, even that both ways. I've dealt with some churches that have such
(15:47):
complicated buildings that if you drop the kids off and they had
somebody there to bring you to the sanctuary, I'm not sure I would
find my way back the first time. You know? So, I mean, you've
dropped them off now in a space, and they're left with, like, how do we
get back there? And I you know, like, I know we made four rights. Wouldn't
that have brought us back? Isn't that a circle? No. Somehow, we ended up in
(16:07):
a different place. So, there's just tons of questions out, and
we just need to make sure that, that we're we're
ahead of our guest every step of the way. Yeah. I I
think, again, this is another thing where there's
just competency bias in a sense. Competency is
probably not the right word, but just where you're so familiar with it.
(16:30):
Comfort bias, information bias. Yeah. Right, where you go, Okay,
this is intuitive and it's just maybe
not intuitive. And so
parents, there's two kinds of guests. There's the ones that show
up really early, and there's the ones that show up, you know, when
the service has already started. And, in
(16:52):
in in any case, you know, you'll you have got a limited amount of time
to to check-in a a kid and all of this stuff. So if you can
shorten that by having a plan to visit, we'll talk more about
website stuff, I guess, later, AJ, like you said, but, have
a plan your visit module on your website or link on the
website and have that integrate with your church management software so you can already have
(17:14):
the kids' information for the planners that will help.
It also gives you an ability, an advantage that you
don't have when they just show up, but
you can pre communicate with them about where the check-in is and how the
process works, and how does checkout work, and where's their classroom, and what are they
gonna be learning, and what are the safety protocols that you have in place.
(17:37):
You don't need to send them I went to a church one time
that, like I was just as a visitor and
they gave us literally a plastic
bag full of content. I
think I counted something like 15 or 16 different
packets that they gave us in the children's ministry of, like, how to be a
(17:59):
parent and also here's what our safety protocols are and, I mean, all this
stuff. I was like, oh, this is overwhelming. So you don't need to do
that. But parents wanna know, are my kids gonna have a good time? Are
they gonna be safe? How do I drop them off? How do I pick them
up? And, if you can get that information to them
in advance, all the better. If you have to do it
(18:21):
when they just first show up, have a good system for that.
It is not uncommon for me to visit a church,
and I can find the check-in relatively
well enough, easy enough, but it's just a
kiosk, you know, and everybody checks themselves in, which is fine for a regular
attender, but when you're new, you don't know what you're doing. So you need
(18:44):
you need a volunteer there who helps the people who aren't there
every week to check-in and give them information, and what is
the process? You know, some churches they have kids
join in the service for part of the time and then they dismiss them halfway
through for children's church. What's that look like? Because if
you like, if you're sitting there with your kid and you're new and all
(19:06):
these kids get up and they start walking out, like, is my kid supposed was
I supposed to do something? Was I supposed to fill something out? They're just getting
up. Should my kid get up? Or That's a good actually, that's
a good point, Scott. And we were just Where are they going? What room are
they going? Going? Yeah. How would I pick them up after church? Like,
where would I even go? All of those things you just that's just normal
(19:28):
for you, but it's not normal for a guest. So
Yeah. Community. I'm trying to think if I've worked with a church that did that
and what was the safety protocol. How do you
manage they do I mean, well, the ones that have safety protocols,
what they do is they have, you
check-in and before the service So that your kids already they've got their
(19:51):
So your kid has already checked in and they got their name tag. Wristband or
whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And then they have volunteers who walk with the
kids to wherever children's church is, and then after the service, you
go and you check out your kid from children's church. Yeah. But so it's not
like it's unsafe. It's perfectly safe. That is a system that you
gotta understand. Yeah. You'd have to know it. Yeah.
(20:13):
Man. Yep. All right. Our next guest
experience question, where's the bathroom? And, you
know, people kind of need to know that. So
there's all kinds of needs out there from you know, changing a diaper to
medical conditions and just the plain old being a human. So,
and, you know, I guess the best way to handle this in most cases is
(20:36):
just have some decent signs, in the building.
But you could, you know, as a party I mean, you don't wanna overwhelm
with information like you just mentioned, Scott, in the the packet or the bag that
you got. But, you know, if there is a really simple,
layout map, that, you know, it's a part of a guest thing, you
know, like, here you go. Mark's for the bathroom. He didn't point out. Look. Bathroom's
(20:57):
right here. It's good to that. Put a camp put a campus map on your
Yeah. On your website. Mhmm. Yeah. It'd be a good thing.
I know that seems like a small thing, but,
a lot of churches, you know, they they were built. And
I don't know who designed church buildings, you know,
sixty years ago, but no one seemed to care, like, where the bathroom was and
(21:20):
if it made any sense. You know? It's like some back hallway
somewhere, and you're like, what what are we doing here? Yeah. And it's the doors
on either it's the front of the sanctuary, and there's a door on the right,
there's a door on the left, and everybody's gonna see who goes in and out
of this. It's made a complete distraction, but, you know,
there's nothing you can do about it at this point No. Without a major renovation.
(21:42):
So Yeah. Yeah. I worked with the church like
an airplane lavatory, though, where after you go through that door, a light comes on
that says Oh, I come on. Occupied. Yeah. I worked with
a church, a couple years ago
that, it's not their fault. I mean, just their they had
their sanctuary, worship space,
(22:04):
and it it did not have a bathroom in it. It
was pretty old. They had a fellowship hall
that was adjacent to it
that had the bathroom was in the fellowship
hall, this is a small small church.
But the problem was if you needed
(22:27):
the handicap ramp, if you couldn't do
stairs for whatever reason, the only way for you to
access the bathroom would be to go out the main entrance
of the of the worship center to go to use that ramp
and then use the the ramp into, or
I guess no, the fellowship hall was on ground level. So you had to go
(22:49):
down the ramp outside because the
fellowship hall and the main building were connected but they were connected by a set
of stairs. So if you are in a wheelchair
and you needed to use the restroom, it really was
not simple. Yeah. Not an easy process. And if you were a
guest, you really wouldn't know. You would probably be
(23:12):
rolling around like, where is there a bathroom? And like, actually, you gotta go
outside. Yeah. You know? In the snow or in the rain
or in the or in the ninety day whatever the weather was. I
hadn't thought of that yet. So, I mean, that's that's that's a great point, you
know? I mean, to not only think about this from, you know, the perspective of
of able-bodied people, but disabled as well on how they're gonna move
(23:34):
around your campus and facilities. So yeah. So, I mean, to their
credit, they knew it was a problem and they were actually getting
bids to spend literally tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a small addition
to their facility that would include,
restrooms. So I mean, it wasn't their heart for that to be the situation, it
(23:57):
was sort of the thing that just The sanctuary space was very
old. You know, there's nothing they can do about it. It's not their fault. So
I'm not I'm not criticizing them in any way, but that's information
that you need to know if you're a guest there. Like Right. How do I
get to where the restroom is? Yeah. Absolutely. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, you know, we're not trying to bring down, you know, or give
(24:18):
a hard time to any churches that that have just you know, you have to
deal with some challenging facilities. The older your building probably is, the
more difficult it also is. That's right. It's not we're not there's no
blame. It's just you have to communicate what that is. What can I make
one other note on bathrooms before I do that?
I'm not saying it's the most important thing in in the world. Like, most
(24:40):
bathrooms are just utilitarian. You know? Like,
it's it serves its purpose and it's fine. And and most bathrooms that
I go into in churches are clean. Like, I rarely walk
into a church bathroom that is, you know, in
rough shape. But a couple that one
pet peeve that I have about about bathrooms and churches,
(25:02):
and, and then another tip on how to make it even better.
So my, my pet peeve on bathrooms is a lot of
you I know have septic tank situations, and
so you need to communicate what can and
cannot be flushed, you know, or warnings
about that. But just, like, be mindful of how you
(25:25):
formulate those signs and what they look like. I've seen
I mean, I'm not I don't have any one church in mind. I have several
churches in mind where I've seen these signs, and they're almost
like downright aggressive. I guess because someone at some point flushed something that they
shouldn't and it caused a lot of trouble. And I
I've seen some of these signs that are like, don't you dare. I mean, they
(25:47):
basically read as, don't you dare flush anything
other than toilet paper down the toilet, and it's all in,
like, bright cute you know, they're laminating the things,
angry signs and red, like, you know, it just
you can communicate the information, but it doesn't have to be so, like,
(26:09):
aggressive, maybe. Do you know what I'm talking about? My
loneliness, or am I the only one that's, like, seen some pretty angry
signage in the bathroom? There's we've seen some crazy
signs throughout churches, for sure. Yeah. That definitely
did not have any oversight. Yeah. So that's a so that's a pet peeve. Just,
you know, you can just say, you know,
(26:31):
please please only flush toilet paper in the
facilities or something like that. I mean, it doesn't have to be everyone we know.
Like, we know all the things that aren't included. You don't need to put in
clip art that shows us the things that we shouldn't put in the toilet. Like,
we got it. And and someone who's going to flush other
things is gonna do it whether there's that,
(26:53):
you know, clip art or not. Like, they weren't gonna read
your sign. Yeah. Yeah. For some reason, yeah.
I don't know why they had a children's toy in the bathroom with them and
decided to flush that, but, yeah. Exactly. They were gonna do that anyway. So
number two, I real quick tip my tip my tip. If you go above
and beyond in a bathroom that counts for something.
(27:15):
Like you get, like, good soap. You
know? Not just the dial. But I mean, like, you you see
you go for the slightly better smelling soap. Mhmm. You
know? You put you put you plug in one of those things that makes the
bathroom like, not not the Glade plug in that's, you
know, burns your nose, but, like, the, you
(27:37):
know, something in there that really elevates the Since you're opening up this
this line of discussion, I'm telling you, if you're
you can blame it on your septic system that you have to have single ply
toilet paper, but I'm telling you, if you need to have the septic tank
cleaned out three times a year instead of once and have some decent toilet paper,
that needs to be in the budget. Because I think
(28:00):
what? There's gonna make me more aggressive in how much toilet
paper I'm going to have to use than if it's single ply. And That's
true. Yeah. That's a good point. You would use less if it if it was
better. Yes. Give some give the people some decent no
offense. But if you see Scott on the shelf, it's,
You're talking not me. Scott paper Scott toilet paper. Okay. I'm
(28:23):
sorry that the worst toilet paper shares
a name with you, my friend. Yeah. But, Yeah. When
you're when yeah. When the the shelf your toilet paper storage shelf is
right there next to the sink, and I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah. You just told me
what brand I'm dealing with here. Yeah, man. That's what I'm talking about. It's like
it's those little things where you're like, oh, you know, I mean, most of you
(28:44):
guys, some of you are maybe have really large facilities in your
you've got you gotta buy a lot of toilet paper. But for a lot of
you, you're not. You've got, you know, a couple of bathrooms.
And what's the what's the what's the delta on that
between the single ply commercial stuff and and the good
stuff? Not that much. Not using twice as much single
(29:07):
ply. I know. I mean, seriously? So but, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm just telling you, like, these little things people do notice. They're like,
oh, man. Good toilet paper. Yeah. I was at a
retreat center. I was working with a church just last week in Texas,
and, they had their meetings off-site rather than,
at their church. And this particular center where we
(29:29):
were at had this incredible bathroom, like, it was
immaculate and it smelled incredible. It was beautiful. And,
they had this is an interesting touch. They had
the, hand towels that they had washed
like, like, washcloths. Like a bunch of them. White
just white ones that they had laundered and folded and had them
(29:53):
piled up and used that instead of, paper towels.
I'm not recommending that every church do that. That would kind of
probably be more laundry than and work than
anyone would wanna do. But my my point is, like, I'm
I'm still thinking about that bathroom. And and I know that that's
stupid, but when you take care in small
(30:16):
things like that, this is the broader point. When you take care in
small things like that, it communicates something about your church. It's a
thing you didn't have to do that you chose to do,
and it says something about who you are. Yeah. That's the point. Positively and
negatively. People people will talk about bathrooms. A husband and wife, when they
leave church, if one of them had to use a facility, that's probably gonna be
(30:37):
part of the conversation. I went in the bathroom and you wouldn't believe, or I
went in the bathroom and you would not believe. You wouldn't believe. Yeah. Exactly. So
yeah. I also remember, you know, doctor Malfour said this. This is
just something that has stuck with me from, you know, our early days,
Scott. He used to say that it in regards to bathrooms,
that old can be confused with dirty.
(30:58):
You might have a really clean bathroom, but if it's kind of broken
down, things are looking worn, it it gives the impression
of not being clean. And, and so now we're
talking money and sometimes a lot of money to renovate bathrooms. I
know that's not feasible for everybody, but that's something to keep in mind. You know,
bath the bathroom shouldn't be, like, the lowest priority of what we fund. So
(31:20):
But you could do I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do that
are relatively inexpensive, like without changing out major fixtures
or ripping out tile. Like change the mirror out,
put in the better soap. Like, there are all kinds of things that you can
do to spruce up a bathroom. And, again, those
we've we've talked about the bathroom way too much, but it's
it's the little things that go a long way. That's the point. When you're on
(31:43):
your third style of soap dispenser and all of the
holes in the wall are there from the previous iterations? Let's just
patch that up. Let's patch the whole thing. Or you or you still have the
soap dispenser on the wall Yeah. Then you have the you have the pump. The
pump. You're like, you know what? Forget it. Let's just buy it a couple. Everyone
in the lawn and everyone's going to the thing on the wall and you're like,
oh, no. There's nothing in there. Oh, I gotta get this. Along with the broken
(32:05):
automatic paper dispenser. Yeah. Yeah.
That's right. Have have we been around? Is this a sore spot, Scott? It's it's
definitely It's been put in a lot of bathrooms. A lot of tourist bathrooms.
Alright. Our fourth guest experience question, this is a fun
one. Is coffee allowed in here? What do I what do I do with my
coffee? What do I do with my drink? What do I do with my
(32:26):
96 ounce Yeti that, for some reason I'm carrying in
a bag? So, yeah. What are what
are what is what's the policy here? We did an episode on this, Scott, back,
02/15. Two hundred '15. So malfordtroop.com/215 if you
wanna go back and read about us talking about coffee in the
sanctuary. But make this clear though, definitely don't.
(32:49):
Because I think the impetus for that was didn't didn't someone on
the internet like John Piper. John Piper. It was John Piper. It was like,
we shouldn't have coffee. Yeah. And we debated whether or not he
was right or wrong. It was an interesting
conversation. Yeah. It was fun. Actually. Yeah. Yeah.
People have different views on that for sure. And, you know, we're not telling you
(33:11):
one one that's right or wrong. But just but, you know, try to make it
somewhat obvious, you know. If there's a sign that says, you know, no food or
drink in the sanctuary, make it big enough. People like to style you know,
let's make a let's make a sign that blends in with the wallpaper. Well, no.
Let's make a sign that people can actually read because the last thing you want
is somebody not to know and then get called out for it, you know, by
(33:32):
an usher or a or a member. And so
whatever you want, just make it pretty clear so that,
people don't, don't get embarrassed, you know, or Phrase it in the
positive, like, rather than rather than no coffee in the
sanctuary. Say water only, please, or something like that. So
you could Yeah. You should be thoughtful about how you phrase things, but be clear
(33:54):
about it. I was at the church a few weeks ago, and,
I had a cup of coffee from the hotel. And
I as I pulled into the parking lot, I was like I I
just doubt it. I was like, I don't know. This is not their fault because
but but, I mean, they couldn't pre tell me. I mean, you know what I
(34:15):
mean? Like, I'm not blaming them, but I do have to give them no choppy
vibes. Well, no. No. Not necessarily. No. Not at
all. But I I I was just like, I don't wanna because it was
pretty full. It was almost entirely full, and I thought I don't wanna put a
full cup of coffee in one of their trash cans. That's And on
the Nice view. Chance. Yeah. Yeah. And on the off chance that
(34:36):
they don't want it in the sanctuary, I don't
wanna have to throw it away in there. So I'll just You might not be
able to find a bathroom to pour it out. So That's
true. For I was just like, well, whatever. You know, I I'm I'm not gonna
worry about it. Turns out they would have been it would have been fine to
bring it in. And, in fact, they had coffee,
so I got another cup of coffee from from their coffee
(35:00):
stash. But, you know, I wasn't sure.
So just make sure you're clear on that. I would love for us to spend
a couple minutes here since we I'm using the
excuse of is coffee allowed to
maybe spend a couple minutes talking about some best practices around coffee,
so, and how to leverage that coffee experience.
(35:21):
Yep. Good convo. So I wanna actually ask you,
you've had this experience, I think, more than I have at this point, but we've
worked with a number of international churches. So these are
English speaking churches in, outside
The United States. And a lot of them,
a key feature of their experience, I
(35:44):
don't not making a universal statement, but this is common, is
for them to have like a coffee
Coffee fellowship. I mean, they can serve it. Unintentional
fellowship time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And,
you know, I think the culture is different, obviously, and
the culture of these churches are different. And, you know, the ones we've worked with
(36:07):
have been not exclusively in Europe, but largely in Europe.
So I mean, the culture is different. So I'm recognizing that. But there are some
things I think that we've noticed that work really well that I think could
apply in a in a North American context. So I'm curious, what what have you
observed from that and and what could we learn from that?
Well, I mean, yeah. Functionally,
(36:30):
sometimes there's not necessarily a lot of difference, you know? I mean, okay.
There's there's a time and a and a place and there's coffee
available there. And maybe there's donuts or some other, you know, food or snacks,
cookies, whatever it might be. So a lot of churches do that,
but I think it I think the difference is how it's
communicated and how the purpose of it is communicated.
(36:53):
And then how maybe staff and volunteers
interact with people in that space, leading
then over time to a culture difference in which
how everybody interacts with people in that space.
So, I mean, that's I don't have any that's not like
anything real specific there for you, Scott. So, I mean, you know, some examples are
(37:15):
of some of these some of these churches. A lot of
times it happens after church. It's not necessarily a
before church. There might be some refreshments available for before church, but
their greater area of intentionality is after church.
And it is a no need to rush out of here atmosphere.
And, you know, it's just a pretty good spread of stuff put out. There's plenty,
(37:40):
there's plenty of cups. There's plenty of coffee. You know, it's not like everybody has
to get in line for, like, one carafe of coffee.
It's it's it's all over so that, you know, you're not waiting, you
know, ten minutes behind a dozen people to to make coffee. So,
I mean, that that helps. Let's get our beverage quickly. Let's get our
snack. And then be able to mingle and have time.
(38:02):
And I went with the I went to a church that had they would put
up stand up tables. They did it outside, weather permitting.
And they had tables. There wasn't a lot of seating necessarily, but stand up
tables that people could could gather around. So
but, yeah, it's it's an intentional time for people just to
relax, just hang out, you know. I mean, we've been to church. We've got things
(38:23):
to talk about. You know, we're there's we all just had, like, a
common experience together. And so in addition to, you know,
what's going on in our lives that we can have conversations about some of the
most fun time, you know, that I've had in those in those
environments. I worked with the church in in California a number of years
ago that, had
(38:44):
an intentional coffee time like that.
And, they had a really good coffee and great coffee
ministry, but one of the things that they did since they were in Southern California
and could get away with it, you know, ninety nine out of a
hundred days, is they would,
do their coffee ministry outside as well, and they would they tried
(39:07):
to position it near the sidewalk because down there in Southern
California, there's a lot of people that that most people are not going
to church. So they they tried to actually make that coffee ministry not only
fellowship, but also a little a little bit of an evangelistic focus
because they made it open to anybody who was walking. Where
their church was was on, like, near a main street,
(39:29):
so lots of foot traffic just from the
community people near they were near a park, people walking their dogs and things on
a Sunday morning, and that was pretty cool. Just, you know,
the church people were interacting with guests and one
another, but also passersby saw it and, you know,
the the coffee and refreshments were very clearly,
(39:51):
like, open to anyone being able to come up and and
enjoy it. Not even that Sunday that I was there, I I saw two or
three people just walking by, come and get a cup of coffee. And,
so I I was impressed and maybe just challenging you.
That might not be your context. You not might not be right on a sidewalk
where that would make any sense or the weather would be too poor or whatever.
(40:14):
But, don't just shove your coffee
back in a corner somewhere where it's an amenity. Like, if you're
gonna do this, bring it out. Like, use it as a
tool to to for edification
and for, you know, and maybe even evangelism.
Yeah. Don't buy the coffee equivalent of
(40:37):
single ply toilet paper. So Yeah. Have good coffee.
Yeah. That's right. I've, you know, I went to a church been to
a church that, they had a great coffee set up,
like, before the service started.
And, you know, and I was like, oh, this is I mean, it's really nice.
They a lot of coffee stations, donuts, and all that stuff came out of the
(41:00):
service. This is like a second service. And it was
gone. Like, you know, the elves came in during church service and just
put it away. Every volunteer is gone. I mean, nothing but,
you know, a crumb is like, how the Grinch stole Christmas. You know, the there's
not even a crumb left for a mouse. And it was like,
oh, wow. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here kind of
(41:22):
a thing. It was it was a little shocking. Like, dang.
They really want you to leave at this point. So, you
know, consider these things. Can what does it what does it look like? What's what's
the vibe we're putting out? What's the you know? What does what does it communicate?
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Last one. Last one. Last question from
guest experience. What do I do with the communion
(41:44):
elements? So this is turning into a long episode. We've got a you know, you
start talking about guest experience. You and I have a lot of opinions on things,
but Lots of feelings. Yeah. Communion elements. This is this
is another one, especially well, you know what? I was gonna say especially non
believers. That's important. It's it's equally as important to
believers. People that have come from another another church or had, like, a
(42:05):
childhood experience. Maybe, you know, they've been out of church for a long time and
they're trying a different denomination. Just make this
stuff clear because this can be really
nerve nerve wracking, I think, you know, when you don't know
what's happening here. Well, I mean, it certainly takes you out
of the moment. Like, you're not reflecting on
(42:26):
That's a good point. Yeah. You're thinking about doing it wrong.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean,
yeah. If every if if you're, like, everybody goes up kinda thing, you know, and
you're sitting in the middle or the back, you know, you're, like, looking
up, what exactly are they doing? I can't tell. You know, they're blocking blocking my
view. I don't know what they're doing. Are they dipping? Are they, you know are
(42:47):
we sharing a cup? You know? What's the deal? Yeah.
And and are we taking both elements at the same time? Are
we taking them to as a group altogether? Am I supposed to hold on to
it? Are we doing it on our own, on our own time? You
know, is this open to a believer, you know, or is it only for your
membership? What you know, all of those
(43:09):
things, it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't need to be a bunch
of instructions, but just have the instructions.
I attend a church where we take communion every Sunday, which I absolutely
love that, but I think a
tendency, you know, in our tradition, is to forget
that there are people there each week who who don't know what the routine is.
(43:32):
And so if you're like our church, you know, it's it's all the more important
to just have that awareness and go, okay, here are the
instructions, you know, and but that's true even if your church takes it once a
month or once a quarter, you know, be sure you give clear
instruction. It's just one of those things that's easy
to forget to get it lost in the mix.
(43:53):
So as just a reminder that guests,
if there's gonna be communion and it's a guest who is
a believer, they they maybe will know that they'll know the deal
a little bit, but if you're if they're not a believer, all the
more reason to be clear with them that this is only open to believers
because you don't want them drinking
(44:15):
and eating judgment on their own head as the scripture says. You
know, not there is not that there isn't grace for the that mistake,
but you're not serving them well. You're not serving
a non believing guest well by allowing them to take communion when they're
not inconvenient. So, maybe even give them
something an alternative, you
(44:37):
know, suggestion for, like, use this time, you know, in contemplation or
prayer or read over the material that we gave you when you came in. There's
a there's a paper in there. We'd love for you to review that, you know,
and and hear about what a relationship with Christ looks like. You know, give them
something to do besides, like, just stay there.
If you've got if you've got guests if you if you are able to give
(44:58):
someone to guests when they walk in and you do take communion every week
like we do or, you know, it happens to be a communion Sunday,
having instructions about communion even just in there would be would
be good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff.
Okay. Hey. You know what? A lot of this stuff that we've talked about today
can be handled on your church's website. Sounds like I'm about to start we're going
(45:20):
to an ad for, like, a church website company, but no. Which we don't know.
There is no ad here. No. There's no ad. The ad is go to
healthychurchestoolkit.com or to malpracticegroup.com/toolkit. Yep.
Take advantage of the Easter stuff. That's the ad. That that's the only pitch
today. But, you know, give give your website
another look because a lot of these things can be handled there. And
(45:41):
everything that we talked about today, it can be handled by
good signs, good printed information, and good
verbal communication. And the the common denominator is the
word communication. Everything that we talked about just needs to be
communicated in one form or another. Intentionally. Absolutely. I think that's
the big thing is, like, it's just so easy to
(46:03):
get stuck in that
comfort and assuming. You know, remember
every Sunday is someone's first Sunday. It's new. It's the
first time for somebody every time. And I know some of
you were thinking, well, that's not true for our church, like, because we we know
we're small and we don't have guests. Well, start acting
(46:25):
like you're gonna have a guest this Sunday and see see how that changes.
I've I've had more than one church I've I've worked with.
We've probably talked about this before, AJ, on the on the podcast.
I'm not saying if you build it, they will come. I'm not saying that. But
it is a little bit surprising that when you start preparing for guests, how the
Lord brings them. I give the same
(46:48):
advice every single time a church is like, Oh gosh, I don't know, we had
like five guests last year. It's been months since we've had a guest. I'm like,
You need to start pretending like there's a guest here this Sunday.
So totally agree with that. And it and and it's the
Lord. You know, it's not magic, but I I do think the Lord honors that.
And you'd be surprised when you start getting ready for the guests, they start
(47:10):
coming. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. So, yeah, take some
time. Have a fresh look at your facilities, at your processes, at your
signage, everything, and just be guest
ready and take these things into account. It's a worthwhile
investment, and it might lead to some really great discussions and
some some really positive changes in your church. Yeah. And don't don't
(47:33):
wait till don't wait till April 1 to start
working on this. You know what I'm saying? That's why we're talking about it now.
Yeah. Some of this might take a little bit. You know, if you're gonna
change some signs, it takes time to design them and to order them and
you know what I mean? Take the take take some time out of your week
this week to to do a bit of an audit, do a little bit of
(47:54):
a walk around. Are we ready? There you go. This has
been episode two seventy seven of the Church Revitalization podcast.
Today's show notes are at
malfordgroup.com/270seven. The,
video version of this will be up on the YouTube channel,
right now as you're hearing this. Comment over
there some of the best examples or worst
(48:18):
examples that you might have experienced or that your church has in
any of these areas. Know about your bathroom. We wanna know
drop in the comments how how many ply your your your
toilet paper is. Informal pull.
Alright. Thanks for being with us, everybody. Be sure to go to
malfordgroup.com/toolkit or
(48:38):
healthychurchestoolkit.com and get registered for your free account
now and, begin enjoying and using all those resources.
They're there for you. Thanks for being with us. See you next time.
Five overlooked guest experience questions today on the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello,
and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast, brought to
you by the Malthers Group team, where each week we tackle
important, actionable topics to help churches thrive.
And now, here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ
(00:23):
Matthew.
Welcome to the church revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball, and
I'm joined by my friend and cohost, AJ Matthew. We are also joined
today by my cold. So
my apologies if I Welcome to all to all two of you.
Yeah. If I cough or if I sniffle, I am so sorry.
(00:48):
It's just the nature of the beast today. So, today we're talking
about when people come to
your church, they're bringing more than just themselves
they're bringing some questions along with them.
And, I guess maybe let me take a step back. One of the
reasons why we wanted to take some time today
(01:12):
to start talking about guest experience is it's,
when this releases, it'll be February 12,
I think, is when this episode will go out. It's not too early to
start thinking about Easter, AJ, and preparing for that.
And and sometimes making some of the adjustments we're gonna be talking about
today's episode, you can't just flip a switch and change these things. It
(01:34):
takes a little bit of time. So we wanted to talk about this
so that you could be as Easter ready as possible in your guest
experience. But also on that note,
AJ, we have some Easter materials to
help serve your church available inside the
Healthy Church's toolkit. So if you're already a subscriber, congratulations,
(01:57):
like you're gonna have access to all that. I'm talking about
Easter series that you can adapt on your
own with discussion guides and printable
materials and, I mean, a social media plan and the
whole nine yards. And all that is available inside the
toolkit. So as always, you can go to
(02:18):
malphorsgroup.com/toolkit and sign up for
free, and we won't tell anybody if you
just download all the stuff and and,
and then cancel. You can sleep at night doing that. That's alright.
Okay. But you get you get access for seven days for
free. Again, when this releases on February
(02:40):
13, which should be the day after this episode goes
live, we're gonna have a, like, a
tour, so to speak, of that Easter hub with all
the materials, kind of reviewing what materials are in there, and
how to take advantage of them, and how you could print them
and modify them. And,
(03:02):
also, we a new AI tool. We have a new AI tool inside the
toolkit that we're releasing to help you develop a guest follow-up sequence,
email sequence. So there's lots of new stuff that's happening this
week in the toolkit. So we thought we would shameless plug,
talk about that, but also talk about how you can get your church Easter ready
and your guest experience. So Yeah. You can call that a
(03:27):
healthychurchestoolkit.com and register. That's true.
That's true. Yeah. Malphorsgroup.com/toolkit or
Healthychurchestoolkit.com. All those things will get you where you need to
go. Yep. And, by the way, that, you know, this thing that we're doing on
on Thursday, we do every month. So the Healthy Churches
toolkit gains a resource every month, and we do a live workshop.
(03:47):
They're recorded also. You can go back to the archive and review those. But,
yeah, for subscribers, you can join us once a month,
because the toolkit grows every month, and we tell you about it and
how it can be useful for your church. Yes. Indeed.
Alright. So, these questions, these common questions that
that guests have, let's just walk through them. Alright. Five
(04:10):
overlooked guest experience questions, and we're starting off with the arrival,
and the question by a guest. Where do I park,
and walk in? Where do I park and walk in? And sometimes too far here.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's not always clear. Maybe one might
be clearer than the other, or both might be unclear.
(04:30):
Scott, you and I have just have some all, we have got a a
a breadth of experience in how all of these things we're talking
about today are handled in churches. But making it clear, like,
this is the entrance. You might think some of this is ridiculous because you're picturing
your church. Maybe your church has one entrance and one door,
and you've got, you know, four guest parking spots
(04:53):
pretty close to the front somewhere. And you're like, what? This is simple stuff.
But it's not. Everybody's, church is a little bit different, and we've
seen some really complicated scenarios. And
the only way to make complicated scenarios easier
is with good information and signage usually. And that's
that's usually the tweak that needs to happen in those cases,
(05:16):
is just put some signs out. And it doesn't even have to be permanent things.
Sandwich boards put out, you know, early Sunday morning by a volunteer just
to direct guests. Having some guest parking so that,
you know, they're not driving around, making loops, you know, trying to find a
decent spot. Have some guest parking upfront. But, you know,
there's there's some strategy to that, Scott, when your guest parking
(05:38):
is upfront. Yeah. Let me let me, like,
talk about this in a concrete user
experience type way and why this is confusing. Because I know so so many of
you are listening to this and you're going, oh, okay. Yeah. Well, this one doesn't
apply to me. We've got visitor parking and it's right up front.
Okay. But I don't want you to think about upfront.
(06:00):
Here's what I want you to think about.
When your people who are there every week,
when they come what door do they walk in? And why
do they walk in that door? So it might be because, oh
well, they walk in that door because the children's check-in is
actually inside that door. Mhmm. So
(06:23):
a regular attender doesn't walk into the main entrance,
they walk into the side entrance because that's where children's check-in is.
So that should lead you to ask yourself, if that's what a
normal person does, because it's the most
convenient and makes the most sense, Why would I
have a newcomer walk in the
(06:45):
entrance that's the most confusing? They're gonna have to walk through
a maze to find the children's check-in or
where the guest connection table is. So we think it's right
up front. This is good parking. Good parking is not next to
necessarily next to the main entrance. It's it's near
the things that they need to know. Does that make sense, AJ? It it does.
(07:08):
It does. Yeah. So this is where the mistake that a lot of churches make
is they go, we have guest parking. It's right up front. But then you walk
in the main entrance, and now I'm even more confused.
Like, I don't know. Where do I go from here? Yeah. And perhaps the team
members that then they, come in contact with first
aren't actually trained or equipped to direct somebody.
(07:30):
They just noticed that you parked in the, yeah, in the guest parking. So they
don't know that you're new. They don't know that you don't know where to go.
Yeah. I you know, I would say in scenarios like this in which there is
there's more than one entrance and maybe there's a better entrance based on whether
you have kids or not have guest parking in both
places then. And we're gonna we're we're gonna talk about
websites more at the end. But, yeah, letting
(07:53):
letting people know. Like, yeah, if you're dropping off kids, this store over here is
the best place to go in. If that's not a thing that, you know, you
as a visitor, need or care about, then, you
know, that's that's not gonna be as important. Yeah. I'll give I'm gonna give
a a positive shout I've I've used them as a positive shout out on a
lot of episodes, so I know they don't mind.
(08:14):
But I I worked with a church in North Carolina that this was
a criticism that I had of theirs initially was
their guest parking was close to their main entrance, but their children's check-in
was I mean, it felt like
a mile away. I mean, it couldn't have been further away from
(08:34):
the main entrance. And I was like, How would I
even know? And they're like, Well, we walk people back there. I'm like, Do you
though? And they're like, Man, I mean, sometimes we
do. And they responded so well to that, they
moved two things (08:50):
they moved where the children's check-in was, and
they moved the entrance where they were encouraging guests to walk into,
into this sort of like entrance that's in between
where the main lobby is and where the kids ministry area was. They
realized we can direct guests to this point because they had a
very small it was like their old narthex, but it's perfect
(09:13):
for encountering the newest of
people. So, they don't do their full guest
connection stuff there, but they do do they do check children's
check-in and, you know, first time guests and all
that. They're able to corral all of that right there, and they have very
clear flags that tell you new here, children's
(09:35):
check-in, this way. And it you can't miss it now. It's so obvious.
And it's like perfection. And they
manage that so well, and you all know who you are,
and I know lots of you actually listen to this podcast, and you know actually,
when you're listening, how much that's impacted your church. I mean, they've grown a
lot, and one keys to their success has been
(09:58):
they've really optimized that first time guest experience. It's it's
spectacular. Yeah. That's awesome. I love hearing those stories too about,
you know, just rethinking. You've gotta re sometimes you have to change your
perspective and and rethink things. Well, like, you can't like, in their case,
you can't help the fact that you have this older older building and then you
have this add on, like and the children's ministry is in the older
(10:19):
building and your nice beautiful lobby is in the add on.
You can't help that that's the case, but you can help which you can
optimize the entrance that makes the most sense for where children's check-in should be.
Yeah. Yep. And and you make do with it. Like, you go,
okay, well, wouldn't it be nice if the children's check-in was in the
beautiful new lobby? Well, it's not, like, and it can't be all the way over
(10:42):
there because it doesn't make any sense for it to be there. Yeah. You know
what I'm saying? Yeah. And it they've made they've maximized what
they have done and it's worked really well for you. Sometimes, you know, I
think the thought also is that these parking spots, you know, they should be, like,
closest to the door, and that's just and and that and that's a nice convenience.
You know? Let's let's make our guests not have to walk very far, and that's
(11:02):
that's cool. That's a nice sentiment. But sometimes, you know, having them closer
can also be a strategic location where there it's more visible,
so that somebody, a team member, can actually see, okay. Somebody just parked
there. I don't need to wait for them to come in looking, you know,
with the deer in the headlights look. I can just anticipate they're gonna
have questions. I can welcome them as a guest. I've I've
(11:25):
got pretty good evidence they're a guest because they park there. Every now and then,
we run into a church where the most entitled of members use the guest
parking. But That's right. But you get to know that. Call them out. You should
call them out. You should be like, you can't park there. Yeah. You can see.
Maybe you can see from the door or you got somebody, you know, somebody working
out in the parking lot. And we're like, alright. Somebody just parked there. When
(11:46):
this family or this person comes up, I can go, hey. I'm glad glad you
came to visit. You know, where can I direct you? You know? Are you,
are you just here for for worship, or what can I what questions can I
answer? Use it to your advantage to welcome them as a guest.
You don't even have to have a parking team. You can just have a greeter
at that whatever that guest entrance is. Think of it as a
(12:07):
guest entrance and not a primary entrance. Those might overlap, they might
not. Yeah. And if you've got and if you've got a greeter kind of
stationed at the guest entrance and it's within just
eyeshot of the guest parking, you should be able to notice who parks there.
Yeah. Yeah. And keep that with you. By the way, on that note, like
3%, about 3% of your parking should be dedicated
(12:28):
to guests. Yeah. So you just do that math based on the size of your
parking lot. If you've never had a guest or it's been a really long
time, give us a call. We would like to talk to you because
we can help you with that.
You know, and you also mentioned, you know, walking people. Like, they might say, well,
we walk people there. Actually, I work one of the earlier churches I ever worked
(12:50):
with had that strategy in place, had that team in
place, and they were utilizing students, like high school
student age, because this they had a ton they had
I think they might have only had maybe they had two different parking lots, but
they just had a ton of entrances. And they'd left them all open,
and, they had just team of high school students
(13:11):
posted at those doors. You know, like, two or three of them,
like, they literally were walking people. They're like, hey. Welcome.
Let me take you wherever you need to go. Let me escort you there.
And, and that, you know, then there were still somebody posted there until that one
got back, and they had enough in that rotation. It's just it worked
great. Great way to engage students in in
(13:33):
hospitality ministry. So, yeah. You can
there's some super creative ways to manage
maybe bad design and things in your
Yeah. Space. Totally. Alright. Number two.
Number two. We were kinda talking about this already, but, yeah, the next the
second question, what do I do with my kids? Mhmm.
(13:56):
And, this needs to be really clear because,
in fact hold on. Let me back up a second here, Scott. Because I I
just said the word because. Why is this because why? Because
guests guests, you know, have have made a really important
decision to visit your church today, and there's a lot of reasons that they made
that decision. That decision might have happened a half hour ago, might
(14:19):
have happened weeks ago. But but they're there,
and they're new, and they don't know what you know.
And your job is to make it as easy and comfortable for them as
possible because this is assuming you want them to
stay. You do want them to become a part of your fellowship. You want them
to get to know Jesus. And so there's a lot of big
(14:40):
reasons, and there's a lot of big things happening in that
moment on a Sunday morning that could affect them
positively or negatively. And so the big because here
is that let's make guests feel welcome, and, and let's
help them focus as much on God as they
can in that, you know, ninety minutes or a hundred twenty minutes that they might
(15:03):
be on your campus, and not be thinking about the things
that they're the baggage that's is going on in their life or the things that
you've introduced them to that morning that might be stressing them like this
one. What do we do with my kids? And what's gonna be what's gonna happen
to my kids? I'm gonna hand you hand you my kids, you strangers.
What exactly are you gonna be doing with them for the next seventy five
(15:24):
minutes? And so, yeah, what do I do with my kids?
Where do they go? How do I drop them off? How are you making me
feel comfortable and confident that they're gonna be well taken care of, that they're
gonna be safe, that it's gonna be easy for me to get
from wherever they are to where I'm gonna be going and back?
And, you know, even that both ways. I've dealt with some churches that have such
(15:47):
complicated buildings that if you drop the kids off and they had
somebody there to bring you to the sanctuary, I'm not sure I would
find my way back the first time. You know? So, I mean, you've
dropped them off now in a space, and they're left with, like, how do we
get back there? And I you know, like, I know we made four rights. Wouldn't
that have brought us back? Isn't that a circle? No. Somehow, we ended up in
(16:07):
a different place. So, there's just tons of questions out, and
we just need to make sure that, that we're we're
ahead of our guest every step of the way. Yeah. I I
think, again, this is another thing where there's
just competency bias in a sense. Competency is
probably not the right word, but just where you're so familiar with it.
(16:30):
Comfort bias, information bias. Yeah. Right, where you go, Okay,
this is intuitive and it's just maybe
not intuitive. And so
parents, there's two kinds of guests. There's the ones that show
up really early, and there's the ones that show up, you know, when
the service has already started. And, in
(16:52):
in in any case, you know, you'll you have got a limited amount of time
to to check-in a a kid and all of this stuff. So if you can
shorten that by having a plan to visit, we'll talk more about
website stuff, I guess, later, AJ, like you said, but, have
a plan your visit module on your website or link on the
website and have that integrate with your church management software so you can already have
(17:14):
the kids' information for the planners that will help.
It also gives you an ability, an advantage that you
don't have when they just show up, but
you can pre communicate with them about where the check-in is and how the
process works, and how does checkout work, and where's their classroom, and what are they
gonna be learning, and what are the safety protocols that you have in place.
(17:37):
You don't need to send them I went to a church one time
that, like I was just as a visitor and
they gave us literally a plastic
bag full of content. I
think I counted something like 15 or 16 different
packets that they gave us in the children's ministry of, like, how to be a
(17:59):
parent and also here's what our safety protocols are and, I mean, all this
stuff. I was like, oh, this is overwhelming. So you don't need to do
that. But parents wanna know, are my kids gonna have a good time? Are
they gonna be safe? How do I drop them off? How do I pick them
up? And, if you can get that information to them
in advance, all the better. If you have to do it
(18:21):
when they just first show up, have a good system for that.
It is not uncommon for me to visit a church,
and I can find the check-in relatively
well enough, easy enough, but it's just a
kiosk, you know, and everybody checks themselves in, which is fine for a regular
attender, but when you're new, you don't know what you're doing. So you need
(18:44):
you need a volunteer there who helps the people who aren't there
every week to check-in and give them information, and what is
the process? You know, some churches they have kids
join in the service for part of the time and then they dismiss them halfway
through for children's church. What's that look like? Because if
you like, if you're sitting there with your kid and you're new and all
(19:06):
these kids get up and they start walking out, like, is my kid supposed was
I supposed to do something? Was I supposed to fill something out? They're just getting
up. Should my kid get up? Or That's a good actually, that's
a good point, Scott. And we were just Where are they going? What room are
they going? Going? Yeah. How would I pick them up after church? Like,
where would I even go? All of those things you just that's just normal
(19:28):
for you, but it's not normal for a guest. So
Yeah. Community. I'm trying to think if I've worked with a church that did that
and what was the safety protocol. How do you
manage they do I mean, well, the ones that have safety protocols,
what they do is they have, you
check-in and before the service So that your kids already they've got their
(19:51):
So your kid has already checked in and they got their name tag. Wristband or
whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And then they have volunteers who walk with the
kids to wherever children's church is, and then after the service, you
go and you check out your kid from children's church. Yeah. But so it's not
like it's unsafe. It's perfectly safe. That is a system that you
gotta understand. Yeah. You'd have to know it. Yeah.
(20:13):
Man. Yep. All right. Our next guest
experience question, where's the bathroom? And, you
know, people kind of need to know that. So
there's all kinds of needs out there from you know, changing a diaper to
medical conditions and just the plain old being a human. So,
and, you know, I guess the best way to handle this in most cases is
(20:36):
just have some decent signs, in the building.
But you could, you know, as a party I mean, you don't wanna overwhelm
with information like you just mentioned, Scott, in the the packet or the bag that
you got. But, you know, if there is a really simple,
layout map, that, you know, it's a part of a guest thing, you
know, like, here you go. Mark's for the bathroom. He didn't point out. Look. Bathroom's
(20:57):
right here. It's good to that. Put a camp put a campus map on your
Yeah. On your website. Mhmm. Yeah. It'd be a good thing.
I know that seems like a small thing, but,
a lot of churches, you know, they they were built. And
I don't know who designed church buildings, you know,
sixty years ago, but no one seemed to care, like, where the bathroom was and
(21:20):
if it made any sense. You know? It's like some back hallway
somewhere, and you're like, what what are we doing here? Yeah. And it's the doors
on either it's the front of the sanctuary, and there's a door on the right,
there's a door on the left, and everybody's gonna see who goes in and out
of this. It's made a complete distraction, but, you know,
there's nothing you can do about it at this point No. Without a major renovation.
(21:42):
So Yeah. Yeah. I worked with the church like
an airplane lavatory, though, where after you go through that door, a light comes on
that says Oh, I come on. Occupied. Yeah. I worked with
a church, a couple years ago
that, it's not their fault. I mean, just their they had
their sanctuary, worship space,
(22:04):
and it it did not have a bathroom in it. It
was pretty old. They had a fellowship hall
that was adjacent to it
that had the bathroom was in the fellowship
hall, this is a small small church.
But the problem was if you needed
(22:27):
the handicap ramp, if you couldn't do
stairs for whatever reason, the only way for you to
access the bathroom would be to go out the main entrance
of the of the worship center to go to use that ramp
and then use the the ramp into, or
I guess no, the fellowship hall was on ground level. So you had to go
(22:49):
down the ramp outside because the
fellowship hall and the main building were connected but they were connected by a set
of stairs. So if you are in a wheelchair
and you needed to use the restroom, it really was
not simple. Yeah. Not an easy process. And if you were a
guest, you really wouldn't know. You would probably be
(23:12):
rolling around like, where is there a bathroom? And like, actually, you gotta go
outside. Yeah. You know? In the snow or in the rain
or in the or in the ninety day whatever the weather was. I
hadn't thought of that yet. So, I mean, that's that's that's a great point, you
know? I mean, to not only think about this from, you know, the perspective of
of able-bodied people, but disabled as well on how they're gonna move
(23:34):
around your campus and facilities. So yeah. So, I mean, to their
credit, they knew it was a problem and they were actually getting
bids to spend literally tens of
thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do a small addition
to their facility that would include,
restrooms. So I mean, it wasn't their heart for that to be the situation, it
(23:57):
was sort of the thing that just The sanctuary space was very
old. You know, there's nothing they can do about it. It's not their fault. So
I'm not I'm not criticizing them in any way, but that's information
that you need to know if you're a guest there. Like Right. How do I
get to where the restroom is? Yeah. Absolutely. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, you know, we're not trying to bring down, you know, or give
(24:18):
a hard time to any churches that that have just you know, you have to
deal with some challenging facilities. The older your building probably is, the
more difficult it also is. That's right. It's not we're not there's no
blame. It's just you have to communicate what that is. What can I make
one other note on bathrooms before I do that?
I'm not saying it's the most important thing in in the world. Like, most
(24:40):
bathrooms are just utilitarian. You know? Like,
it's it serves its purpose and it's fine. And and most bathrooms that
I go into in churches are clean. Like, I rarely walk
into a church bathroom that is, you know, in
rough shape. But a couple that one
pet peeve that I have about about bathrooms and churches,
(25:02):
and, and then another tip on how to make it even better.
So my, my pet peeve on bathrooms is a lot of
you I know have septic tank situations, and
so you need to communicate what can and
cannot be flushed, you know, or warnings
about that. But just, like, be mindful of how you
(25:25):
formulate those signs and what they look like. I've seen
I mean, I'm not I don't have any one church in mind. I have several
churches in mind where I've seen these signs, and they're almost
like downright aggressive. I guess because someone at some point flushed something that they
shouldn't and it caused a lot of trouble. And I
I've seen some of these signs that are like, don't you dare. I mean, they
(25:47):
basically read as, don't you dare flush anything
other than toilet paper down the toilet, and it's all in,
like, bright cute you know, they're laminating the things,
angry signs and red, like, you know, it just
you can communicate the information, but it doesn't have to be so, like,
(26:09):
aggressive, maybe. Do you know what I'm talking about? My
loneliness, or am I the only one that's, like, seen some pretty angry
signage in the bathroom? There's we've seen some crazy
signs throughout churches, for sure. Yeah. That definitely
did not have any oversight. Yeah. So that's a so that's a pet peeve. Just,
you know, you can just say, you know,
(26:31):
please please only flush toilet paper in the
facilities or something like that. I mean, it doesn't have to be everyone we know.
Like, we know all the things that aren't included. You don't need to put in
clip art that shows us the things that we shouldn't put in the toilet. Like,
we got it. And and someone who's going to flush other
things is gonna do it whether there's that,
(26:53):
you know, clip art or not. Like, they weren't gonna read
your sign. Yeah. Yeah. For some reason, yeah.
I don't know why they had a children's toy in the bathroom with them and
decided to flush that, but, yeah. Exactly. They were gonna do that anyway. So
number two, I real quick tip my tip my tip. If you go above
and beyond in a bathroom that counts for something.
(27:15):
Like you get, like, good soap. You
know? Not just the dial. But I mean, like, you you see
you go for the slightly better smelling soap. Mhmm. You
know? You put you put you plug in one of those things that makes the
bathroom like, not not the Glade plug in that's, you
know, burns your nose, but, like, the, you
(27:37):
know, something in there that really elevates the Since you're opening up this
this line of discussion, I'm telling you, if you're
you can blame it on your septic system that you have to have single ply
toilet paper, but I'm telling you, if you need to have the septic tank
cleaned out three times a year instead of once and have some decent toilet paper,
that needs to be in the budget. Because I think
(28:00):
what? There's gonna make me more aggressive in how much toilet
paper I'm going to have to use than if it's single ply. And That's
true. Yeah. That's a good point. You would use less if it if it was
better. Yes. Give some give the people some decent no
offense. But if you see Scott on the shelf, it's,
You're talking not me. Scott paper Scott toilet paper. Okay. I'm
(28:23):
sorry that the worst toilet paper shares
a name with you, my friend. Yeah. But, Yeah. When
you're when yeah. When the the shelf your toilet paper storage shelf is
right there next to the sink, and I'm like, uh-oh. Yeah. You just told me
what brand I'm dealing with here. Yeah, man. That's what I'm talking about. It's like
it's those little things where you're like, oh, you know, I mean, most of you
(28:44):
guys, some of you are maybe have really large facilities in your
you've got you gotta buy a lot of toilet paper. But for a lot of
you, you're not. You've got, you know, a couple of bathrooms.
And what's the what's the what's the delta on that
between the single ply commercial stuff and and the good
stuff? Not that much. Not using twice as much single
(29:07):
ply. I know. I mean, seriously? So but, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I'm just telling you, like, these little things people do notice. They're like,
oh, man. Good toilet paper. Yeah. I was at a
retreat center. I was working with a church just last week in Texas,
and, they had their meetings off-site rather than,
at their church. And this particular center where we
(29:29):
were at had this incredible bathroom, like, it was
immaculate and it smelled incredible. It was beautiful. And,
they had this is an interesting touch. They had
the, hand towels that they had washed
like, like, washcloths. Like a bunch of them. White
just white ones that they had laundered and folded and had them
(29:53):
piled up and used that instead of, paper towels.
I'm not recommending that every church do that. That would kind of
probably be more laundry than and work than
anyone would wanna do. But my my point is, like, I'm
I'm still thinking about that bathroom. And and I know that that's
stupid, but when you take care in small
(30:16):
things like that, this is the broader point. When you take care in
small things like that, it communicates something about your church. It's a
thing you didn't have to do that you chose to do,
and it says something about who you are. Yeah. That's the point. Positively and
negatively. People people will talk about bathrooms. A husband and wife, when they
leave church, if one of them had to use a facility, that's probably gonna be
(30:37):
part of the conversation. I went in the bathroom and you wouldn't believe, or I
went in the bathroom and you would not believe. You wouldn't believe. Yeah. Exactly. So
yeah. I also remember, you know, doctor Malfour said this. This is
just something that has stuck with me from, you know, our early days,
Scott. He used to say that it in regards to bathrooms,
that old can be confused with dirty.
(30:58):
You might have a really clean bathroom, but if it's kind of broken
down, things are looking worn, it it gives the impression
of not being clean. And, and so now we're
talking money and sometimes a lot of money to renovate bathrooms. I
know that's not feasible for everybody, but that's something to keep in mind. You know,
bath the bathroom shouldn't be, like, the lowest priority of what we fund. So
(31:20):
But you could do I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do that
are relatively inexpensive, like without changing out major fixtures
or ripping out tile. Like change the mirror out,
put in the better soap. Like, there are all kinds of things that you can
do to spruce up a bathroom. And, again, those
we've we've talked about the bathroom way too much, but it's
it's the little things that go a long way. That's the point. When you're on
(31:43):
your third style of soap dispenser and all of the
holes in the wall are there from the previous iterations? Let's just
patch that up. Let's patch the whole thing. Or you or you still have the
soap dispenser on the wall Yeah. Then you have the you have the pump. The
pump. You're like, you know what? Forget it. Let's just buy it a couple. Everyone
in the lawn and everyone's going to the thing on the wall and you're like,
oh, no. There's nothing in there. Oh, I gotta get this. Along with the broken
(32:05):
automatic paper dispenser. Yeah. Yeah.
That's right. Have have we been around? Is this a sore spot, Scott? It's it's
definitely It's been put in a lot of bathrooms. A lot of tourist bathrooms.
Alright. Our fourth guest experience question, this is a fun
one. Is coffee allowed in here? What do I what do I do with my
coffee? What do I do with my drink? What do I do with my
(32:26):
96 ounce Yeti that, for some reason I'm carrying in
a bag? So, yeah. What are what
are what is what's the policy here? We did an episode on this, Scott, back,
02/15. Two hundred '15. So malfordtroop.com/215 if you
wanna go back and read about us talking about coffee in the
sanctuary. But make this clear though, definitely don't.
(32:49):
Because I think the impetus for that was didn't didn't someone on
the internet like John Piper. John Piper. It was John Piper. It was like,
we shouldn't have coffee. Yeah. And we debated whether or not he
was right or wrong. It was an interesting
conversation. Yeah. It was fun. Actually. Yeah. Yeah.
People have different views on that for sure. And, you know, we're not telling you
(33:11):
one one that's right or wrong. But just but, you know, try to make it
somewhat obvious, you know. If there's a sign that says, you know, no food or
drink in the sanctuary, make it big enough. People like to style you know,
let's make a let's make a sign that blends in with the wallpaper. Well, no.
Let's make a sign that people can actually read because the last thing you want
is somebody not to know and then get called out for it, you know, by
(33:32):
an usher or a or a member. And so
whatever you want, just make it pretty clear so that,
people don't, don't get embarrassed, you know, or Phrase it in the
positive, like, rather than rather than no coffee in the
sanctuary. Say water only, please, or something like that. So
you could Yeah. You should be thoughtful about how you phrase things, but be clear
(33:54):
about it. I was at the church a few weeks ago, and,
I had a cup of coffee from the hotel. And
I as I pulled into the parking lot, I was like I I
just doubt it. I was like, I don't know. This is not their fault because
but but, I mean, they couldn't pre tell me. I mean, you know what I
(34:15):
mean? Like, I'm not blaming them, but I do have to give them no choppy
vibes. Well, no. No. Not necessarily. No. Not at
all. But I I I was just like, I don't wanna because it was
pretty full. It was almost entirely full, and I thought I don't wanna put a
full cup of coffee in one of their trash cans. That's And on
the Nice view. Chance. Yeah. Yeah. And on the off chance that
(34:36):
they don't want it in the sanctuary, I don't
wanna have to throw it away in there. So I'll just You might not be
able to find a bathroom to pour it out. So That's
true. For I was just like, well, whatever. You know, I I'm I'm not gonna
worry about it. Turns out they would have been it would have been fine to
bring it in. And, in fact, they had coffee,
so I got another cup of coffee from from their coffee
(35:00):
stash. But, you know, I wasn't sure.
So just make sure you're clear on that. I would love for us to spend
a couple minutes here since we I'm using the
excuse of is coffee allowed to
maybe spend a couple minutes talking about some best practices around coffee,
so, and how to leverage that coffee experience.
(35:21):
Yep. Good convo. So I wanna actually ask you,
you've had this experience, I think, more than I have at this point, but we've
worked with a number of international churches. So these are
English speaking churches in, outside
The United States. And a lot of them,
a key feature of their experience, I
(35:44):
don't not making a universal statement, but this is common, is
for them to have like a coffee
Coffee fellowship. I mean, they can serve it. Unintentional
fellowship time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And,
you know, I think the culture is different, obviously, and
the culture of these churches are different. And, you know, the ones we've worked with
(36:07):
have been not exclusively in Europe, but largely in Europe.
So I mean, the culture is different. So I'm recognizing that. But there are some
things I think that we've noticed that work really well that I think could
apply in a in a North American context. So I'm curious, what what have you
observed from that and and what could we learn from that?
Well, I mean, yeah. Functionally,
(36:30):
sometimes there's not necessarily a lot of difference, you know? I mean, okay.
There's there's a time and a and a place and there's coffee
available there. And maybe there's donuts or some other, you know, food or snacks,
cookies, whatever it might be. So a lot of churches do that,
but I think it I think the difference is how it's
communicated and how the purpose of it is communicated.
(36:53):
And then how maybe staff and volunteers
interact with people in that space, leading
then over time to a culture difference in which
how everybody interacts with people in that space.
So, I mean, that's I don't have any that's not like
anything real specific there for you, Scott. So, I mean, you know, some examples are
(37:15):
of some of these some of these churches. A lot of
times it happens after church. It's not necessarily a
before church. There might be some refreshments available for before church, but
their greater area of intentionality is after church.
And it is a no need to rush out of here atmosphere.
And, you know, it's just a pretty good spread of stuff put out. There's plenty,
(37:40):
there's plenty of cups. There's plenty of coffee. You know, it's not like everybody has
to get in line for, like, one carafe of coffee.
It's it's it's all over so that, you know, you're not waiting, you
know, ten minutes behind a dozen people to to make coffee. So,
I mean, that that helps. Let's get our beverage quickly. Let's get our
snack. And then be able to mingle and have time.
(38:02):
And I went with the I went to a church that had they would put
up stand up tables. They did it outside, weather permitting.
And they had tables. There wasn't a lot of seating necessarily, but stand up
tables that people could could gather around. So
but, yeah, it's it's an intentional time for people just to
relax, just hang out, you know. I mean, we've been to church. We've got things
(38:23):
to talk about. You know, we're there's we all just had, like, a
common experience together. And so in addition to, you know,
what's going on in our lives that we can have conversations about some of the
most fun time, you know, that I've had in those in those
environments. I worked with the church in in California a number of years
ago that, had
(38:44):
an intentional coffee time like that.
And, they had a really good coffee and great coffee
ministry, but one of the things that they did since they were in Southern California
and could get away with it, you know, ninety nine out of a
hundred days, is they would,
do their coffee ministry outside as well, and they would they tried
(39:07):
to position it near the sidewalk because down there in Southern
California, there's a lot of people that that most people are not going
to church. So they they tried to actually make that coffee ministry not only
fellowship, but also a little a little bit of an evangelistic focus
because they made it open to anybody who was walking. Where
their church was was on, like, near a main street,
(39:29):
so lots of foot traffic just from the
community people near they were near a park, people walking their dogs and things on
a Sunday morning, and that was pretty cool. Just, you know,
the church people were interacting with guests and one
another, but also passersby saw it and, you know,
the the coffee and refreshments were very clearly,
(39:51):
like, open to anyone being able to come up and and
enjoy it. Not even that Sunday that I was there, I I saw two or
three people just walking by, come and get a cup of coffee. And,
so I I was impressed and maybe just challenging you.
That might not be your context. You not might not be right on a sidewalk
where that would make any sense or the weather would be too poor or whatever.
(40:14):
But, don't just shove your coffee
back in a corner somewhere where it's an amenity. Like, if you're
gonna do this, bring it out. Like, use it as a
tool to to for edification
and for, you know, and maybe even evangelism.
Yeah. Don't buy the coffee equivalent of
(40:37):
single ply toilet paper. So Yeah. Have good coffee.
Yeah. That's right. I've, you know, I went to a church been to
a church that, they had a great coffee set up,
like, before the service started.
And, you know, and I was like, oh, this is I mean, it's really nice.
They a lot of coffee stations, donuts, and all that stuff came out of the
(41:00):
service. This is like a second service. And it was
gone. Like, you know, the elves came in during church service and just
put it away. Every volunteer is gone. I mean, nothing but,
you know, a crumb is like, how the Grinch stole Christmas. You know, the there's
not even a crumb left for a mouse. And it was like,
oh, wow. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here kind of
(41:22):
a thing. It was it was a little shocking. Like, dang.
They really want you to leave at this point. So, you
know, consider these things. Can what does it what does it look like? What's what's
the vibe we're putting out? What's the you know? What does what does it communicate?
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Last one. Last one. Last question from
guest experience. What do I do with the communion
(41:44):
elements? So this is turning into a long episode. We've got a you know, you
start talking about guest experience. You and I have a lot of opinions on things,
but Lots of feelings. Yeah. Communion elements. This is this
is another one, especially well, you know what? I was gonna say especially non
believers. That's important. It's it's equally as important to
believers. People that have come from another another church or had, like, a
(42:05):
childhood experience. Maybe, you know, they've been out of church for a long time and
they're trying a different denomination. Just make this
stuff clear because this can be really
nerve nerve wracking, I think, you know, when you don't know
what's happening here. Well, I mean, it certainly takes you out
of the moment. Like, you're not reflecting on
(42:26):
That's a good point. Yeah. You're thinking about doing it wrong.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean,
yeah. If every if if you're, like, everybody goes up kinda thing, you know, and
you're sitting in the middle or the back, you know, you're, like, looking
up, what exactly are they doing? I can't tell. You know, they're blocking blocking my
view. I don't know what they're doing. Are they dipping? Are they, you know are
(42:47):
we sharing a cup? You know? What's the deal? Yeah.
And and are we taking both elements at the same time? Are
we taking them to as a group altogether? Am I supposed to hold on to
it? Are we doing it on our own, on our own time? You
know, is this open to a believer, you know, or is it only for your
membership? What you know, all of those
(43:09):
things, it doesn't have to be complicated and it doesn't need to be a bunch
of instructions, but just have the instructions.
I attend a church where we take communion every Sunday, which I absolutely
love that, but I think a
tendency, you know, in our tradition, is to forget
that there are people there each week who who don't know what the routine is.
(43:32):
And so if you're like our church, you know, it's it's all the more important
to just have that awareness and go, okay, here are the
instructions, you know, and but that's true even if your church takes it once a
month or once a quarter, you know, be sure you give clear
instruction. It's just one of those things that's easy
to forget to get it lost in the mix.
(43:53):
So as just a reminder that guests,
if there's gonna be communion and it's a guest who is
a believer, they they maybe will know that they'll know the deal
a little bit, but if you're if they're not a believer, all the
more reason to be clear with them that this is only open to believers
because you don't want them drinking
(44:15):
and eating judgment on their own head as the scripture says. You
know, not there is not that there isn't grace for the that mistake,
but you're not serving them well. You're not serving
a non believing guest well by allowing them to take communion when they're
not inconvenient. So, maybe even give them
something an alternative, you
(44:37):
know, suggestion for, like, use this time, you know, in contemplation or
prayer or read over the material that we gave you when you came in. There's
a there's a paper in there. We'd love for you to review that, you know,
and and hear about what a relationship with Christ looks like. You know, give them
something to do besides, like, just stay there.
If you've got if you've got guests if you if you are able to give
(44:58):
someone to guests when they walk in and you do take communion every week
like we do or, you know, it happens to be a communion Sunday,
having instructions about communion even just in there would be would
be good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff.
Okay. Hey. You know what? A lot of this stuff that we've talked about today
can be handled on your church's website. Sounds like I'm about to start we're going
(45:20):
to an ad for, like, a church website company, but no. Which we don't know.
There is no ad here. No. There's no ad. The ad is go to
healthychurchestoolkit.com or to malpracticegroup.com/toolkit. Yep.
Take advantage of the Easter stuff. That's the ad. That that's the only pitch
today. But, you know, give give your website
another look because a lot of these things can be handled there. And
(45:41):
everything that we talked about today, it can be handled by
good signs, good printed information, and good
verbal communication. And the the common denominator is the
word communication. Everything that we talked about just needs to be
communicated in one form or another. Intentionally. Absolutely. I think that's
the big thing is, like, it's just so easy to
(46:03):
get stuck in that
comfort and assuming. You know, remember
every Sunday is someone's first Sunday. It's new. It's the
first time for somebody every time. And I know some of
you were thinking, well, that's not true for our church, like, because we we know
we're small and we don't have guests. Well, start acting
(46:25):
like you're gonna have a guest this Sunday and see see how that changes.
I've I've had more than one church I've I've worked with.
We've probably talked about this before, AJ, on the on the podcast.
I'm not saying if you build it, they will come. I'm not saying that. But
it is a little bit surprising that when you start preparing for guests, how the
Lord brings them. I give the same
(46:48):
advice every single time a church is like, Oh gosh, I don't know, we had
like five guests last year. It's been months since we've had a guest. I'm like,
You need to start pretending like there's a guest here this Sunday.
So totally agree with that. And it and and it's the
Lord. You know, it's not magic, but I I do think the Lord honors that.
And you'd be surprised when you start getting ready for the guests, they start
(47:10):
coming. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. So, yeah, take some
time. Have a fresh look at your facilities, at your processes, at your
signage, everything, and just be guest
ready and take these things into account. It's a worthwhile
investment, and it might lead to some really great discussions and
some some really positive changes in your church. Yeah. And don't don't
(47:33):
wait till don't wait till April 1 to start
working on this. You know what I'm saying? That's why we're talking about it now.
Yeah. Some of this might take a little bit. You know, if you're gonna
change some signs, it takes time to design them and to order them and
you know what I mean? Take the take take some time out of your week
this week to to do a bit of an audit, do a little bit of
(47:54):
a walk around. Are we ready? There you go. This has
been episode two seventy seven of the Church Revitalization podcast.
Today's show notes are at
malfordgroup.com/270seven. The,
video version of this will be up on the YouTube channel,
right now as you're hearing this. Comment over
there some of the best examples or worst
(48:18):
examples that you might have experienced or that your church has in
any of these areas. Know about your bathroom. We wanna know
drop in the comments how how many ply your your your
toilet paper is. Informal pull.
Alright. Thanks for being with us, everybody. Be sure to go to
malfordgroup.com/toolkit or
(48:38):
healthychurchestoolkit.com and get registered for your free account
now and, begin enjoying and using all those resources.
They're there for you. Thanks for being with us. See you next time.
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