Church Hype

(Old Post 4/23/07)Unwelcomed Guest

This Sunday I decided to scout out a local church that I'd heard about, but never attended. It's been a long time since I've attended a church as a visitor, so I decided to take everything in from a visitor standpoint. It's good to see what other churches are doing as we can all become blinded to only what we are doing.

I parked on the West side of the building which was dedicated to visitor parking. I thought that was a good touch. Great idea to have the visitors enter through a specified location. This would allow the greeters and other volunteers to be more strategic to welcome their new guests. I walked through doors smiling at everyone who looked at me expecting someone to recognize that I was a visitor, but no one acknowledged me in that accord. So I stood there for a minute looking for someone who had a badge or something to indicate that they were there to help me. I never saw anyone.

What I did see was an unmanned welcome center. I walked up to the welcome center and stood a there for a few seconds to see if anyone would walk up and greet me. I just wanted some info on the church and what they offered. After about 30 seconds of feeling really awkward, I decided to leave the welcome center and go into the worship center.

I walked to the doors entering the worship center and there was no one there to hand me a bulletin. I was beginning to feel really bad about visiting this place. So, walked into the worship center and stood in an aisle surveying the layout. Finally I found a place to sit and parked my rear in the seat. I began to think, "maybe they don't have any worship guides at this church. Hmm. That's different." But then I saw several people walking in with worship guides in hand, so I knew that my perception was not true. I sat there a few minutes more and wondered if maybe there was a secret, members only place that the worship guides were located. Well, I wanted one. I wanted to fill out a guest registry card and let them know that I had visited. So, I walked to the back of the worship center and found an usher with a stack of worship guides in his hand. I asked him kindly, "May I have one of those?" He obliged.

Went back to my seat and perused the worship guide and read about what was happening at the church. The service finally began and I was happy because I just wanted to hide in my seat. I felt like a wedding crasher. I felt really bad about visiting, because it didn't seem like they really wanted visitors.

At the end of the service, the pastor asked all guests to fill out the guest registry form and place it in the offering plate. I couldn't. I don't normally carry a pen in my pants pocket and there were no pens, pencils, or crayons anywhere for me to fill it out. My guess is most people don't carry pens in their pants. Granted, most women carry pens in their purses, but my wife was home sick on Sunday. I didn't want to ask the person next to me for a pen, because I really didn't want to bother them or draw attention to myself.

After the service was over, all the guests were invited to meet the pastor and his wife at another location. I did and they were both very pleasant. I even got a coffee mug as a free gift for being a guest. So maybe they really did like visitors.

I believe this church really wants guests to feel welcomed. They had all the right things in place to do a great job of that. But it's the small things that count. A few small things they could have done to make their guests feel special:

• Have a team dedicated to welcoming everyone who comes through the visitors doors
• Clearly identify those people who are there to welcome people with badges, name tags, or shirts
• Have someone actually working the welcome desk
• Have the ushers there more that 10 minutes before the worship service
• Provide some sort of writing utensil to be able to fill out the guest registry-my guess is the number of cards turned in every week would be a lot greater

Maybe my experience would have been different if I had not arrived 20 minutes prior to the service starting. But as a first time guest, I felt the need to get there early just to find my way around.

They had one chance to make an impression on me. One chance to convince me that I could be a part of that church family. They made an impression on me, but not the kind of impression I think they intended.

This Sunday I decided to scout out a local church that I'd heard about, but never attended. It's been a long time since I've attended a church as a visitor, so I decided to take everything in from a visitor standpoint. It's good to see what other churches are doing as we can all become blinded to only what we are doing.

I parked on the West side of the building which was dedicated to visitor parking. I thought that was a good touch. Great idea to have the visitors enter through a specified location. This would allow the greeters and other volunteers to be more strategic to welcome their new guests. I walked through doors smiling at everyone who looked at me expecting someone to recognize that I was a visitor, but no one acknowledged me in that accord. So I stood there for a minute looking for someone who had a badge or something to indicate that they were there to help me. I never saw anyone.

What I did see was an unmanned welcome center. I walked up to the welcome center and stood a there for a few seconds to see if anyone would walk up and greet me. I just wanted some info on the church and what they offered. After about 30 seconds of feeling really awkward, I decided to leave the welcome center and go into the worship center.

I walked to the doors entering the worship center and there was no one there to hand me a bulletin. I was beginning to feel really bad about visiting this place. So, walked into the worship center and stood in an aisle surveying the layout. Finally I found a place to sit and parked my rear in the seat. I began to think, "maybe they don't have any worship guides at this church. Hmm. That's different." But then I saw several people walking in with worship guides in hand, so I knew that my perception was not true. I sat there a few minutes more and wondered if maybe there was a secret, members only place that the worship guides were located. Well, I wanted one. I wanted to fill out a guest registry card and let them know that I had visited. So, I walked to the back of the worship center and found an usher with a stack of worship guides in his hand. I asked him kindly, "May I have one of those?" He obliged.

Went back to my seat and perused the worship guide and read about what was happening at the church. The service finally began and I was happy because I just wanted to hide in my seat. I felt like a wedding crasher. I felt really bad about visiting, because it didn't seem like they really wanted visitors.

At the end of the service, the pastor asked all guests to fill out the guest registry form and place it in the offering plate. I couldn't. I don't normally carry a pen in my pants pocket and there were no pens, pencils, or crayons anywhere for me to fill it out. My guess is most people don't carry pens in their pants. Granted, most women carry pens in their purses, but my wife was home sick on Sunday. I didn't want to ask the person next to me for a pen, because I really didn't want to bother them or draw attention to myself.

After the service was over, all the guests were invited to meet the pastor and his wife at another location. I did and they were both very pleasant. I even got a coffee mug as a free gift for being a guest. So maybe they really did like visitors.

I believe this church really wants guests to feel welcomed. They had all the right things in place to do a great job of that. But it's the small things that count. A few small things they could have done to make their guests feel special:

• Have a team dedicated to welcoming everyone who comes through the visitors doors
• Clearly identify those people who are there to welcome people with badges, name tags, or shirts
• Have someone actually working the welcome desk
• Have the ushers there more that 10 minutes before the worship service
• Provide some sort of writing utensil to be able to fill out the guest registry-my guess is the number of cards turned in every week would be a lot greater

Maybe my experience would have been different if I had not arrived 20 minutes prior to the service starting. But as a first time guest, I felt the need to get there early just to find my way around.

They had one chance to make an impression on me. One chance to convince me that I could be a part of that church family. They made an impression on me, but not the kind of impression I think they intended.

Old Post - My Visit To The 6th Floor

A month ago, I accidentally deleted my blog...yep. The whole thing.  Over 100 posts gone. I went to the Way Back Machine and found a few of them. So, I will be reposting the old ones that I can find.

My little brother and sister were in town this week. While Jessica and my sister Shona spent yesterday at the mall, I took my brother Brandon to downtown Dallas to visit the 6th Floor Museum. It's in the old School Book Depository Building where Lee Harvey Oswald overlooked the JFK motorcade as they turned off of Houston and onto Elm. I'm a huge fan of the conspiracies so I won't put all the blame on Oswald...except to say that he was also involved in the staged moon landing. In fact, Oswald, Ruby, the mafia, the CIA, Fidel Castro, extreme right wingers, and LBJ are the first place to look for all of the world's unexplained events.

We had a great time and I love going down there to just walk around Dealy Plaza and the Grassy Knoll. All the great conspiracies start at the Grassy Knoll! It's really a weird feeling walking around down there. To know that a huge historic event took place on that ground. There are two x-marks on Elm street in front of Dealy Plaza. The first marks where JFK was first shot, and the second marks where the fatal shot happened. It's a bit eery to go stand on the 2nd x-mark and look back to the corner window on the 6th floor of that building. 

It's strange to see busy motorists fly by that historic place on their way out of downtown. Thousands of motorists everyday drive right through the same airspace that a president was murdered. And they are either not aware, or it just doesn't make an impact like it did the first time they saw it.

On a much greater scale, another murder took place with a much greater man than JFK. And there was another conspiracy involved...and the vantage point to the murder didn't happen on a Grassy Knoll, but on a hill that looked like a skull.

When I first learned of this murder, my life was changed. I was so grateful because this man's death was in place of my own. He stood in my spot. But I recognize there are times that I just act like I'm not aware of it. I don't act like it made an impact in my life.

JFK's death rocked the world during the 60's. The death of Christ rocked heaven and earth for all eternity.

Posted on Thursday, July 05, 2007 at 08:31 AM