Posted on 11/11/2014 9:44:11 AM PST by fkabuckeyesrule
If you attend a church regularly, you’ve probably noticed the phenomenon. A guest shows up for a worship service, but he or she never returns. It is, unfortunately, a common issue in many churches.
I did a Twitter poll to ask these first-time guests why they chose not to return to a particular church. While some of the responses were anticipated, I admit being a bit surprised with some of them.
Though my poll is not scientific, it is nevertheless fascinating. Here are the top ten responses in order of frequency.
1.Having a stand up and greet one another time in the worship service. This response was my greatest surprise for two reasons. First, I was surprised how much guests are really uncomfortable during this time. Second, I was really surprised that it was the most frequent response.
2.Unfriendly church members. This response was anticipated. But the surprise was the number of respondents who included non-genuine friendliness in their answers. In other words, the guests perceived some of the church members were faking it.
3.Unsafe and unclean children’s area. This response generated the greatest emotional reactions. If your church does not give a high priority to children, don’t expect young families to attend.>P>
4.No place to get information. If your church does not have a clear and obvious place to get information, you probably have lowered the chances of a return visit by half. There should also be someone to greet and assist guests at that information center as well.
5.Bad church website. Most of the church guests went to the church website before they attended a worship service. Even if they attended the service after visiting a bad website, they attended with a prejudicial perspective. The two indispensable items guests want on a website are address and times of service. It’s just that basic.
6.Poor signage. If you have been attending a church for a few weeks, you forget all about the signage. You don’t need it any more. But guests do. And they are frustrated when it’s not there.
7.Insider church language. Most of the respondents were not referring to theological language as much as language that only the members know. My favorite example was: “The WMU will meet in the CLC in the room where the GAs usually meet.”
8.Boring or bad service. My surprise was not the presence of this item. The surprise was that it was not ranked higher.
9.Members telling guests that they were in their seat or pew. Yes, this obviously still takes place in some churches.
10.Dirty facilities. Some of the comments: “Didn’t look like it had been cleaned in a week.” “No trash cans anywhere.” Restrooms were worse than a bad truck stop.” “Pews had more stains than a Tide commercial.”
There you have it. The top ten reasons first-time guests said they did not return to a church. I can’t wait to hear from you readers. You always have such good additions and insights.
Around a year ago, I went to a service with my daughter, because her friend was ringing bells and she wanted to watch.
First thing (I have encountered before at another church)...although I was a one time visitor, the Pastor did not know that...and, as he greeted people on their way in, he paid special attention to me...in a ‘used car salesman’ type of way. Its understandable - to him I’m a potential new parishioner, but its awkward.
Next, I had a hard time figuring out the music - there was more than one hymnal and everybody else instinctively knew how to switch back and forth - I was clueless as to how the system worked.
We did do the meet and greet thing, which I have always been uncomfortable with...growing up Catholic I’ve learned to deal with it, but not a fan.
The oddest thing, though - the Pastor had all the guests stand up. I dutifully stood up...but was not comfortable.
The entire time, we were there with another family (the family of the girl playing the bells). If we had been there without any ‘support’, I admit I would have been nervous the entire time. I think the main reason is that this is a very small church - and everybody knows each other. So I very much felt like an ‘outsider’.
The people were all very nice, and it was a good service. The bells exemplified a theme...my daughter’s friend is a teenager, but the rest of the bell crew was looked like retirees. This article is interesting to me though, because so many of the ‘complaints’ ring true to me, as a recent visitor to a church.
I too am on side with the dislike of the forced meet and greet. It seems contrived and artificial, even when the ones you meet appear sincere. The sad thing is, many don’t even attempt to fake pleasure at meeting someone new.
Then there are those who ignore the visitors, but that’s another story, related by others.
Reminds me of another incident when I was an usher at my Catholic church...family came in and sat down before Mass, young teenage boy had a baseball hat on...I went up to him, ‘Uh, son, could you please remove your cap, we’re in church’...he looked right at me and said ‘F*u*c*k You’!
I dislike these items so badly (especially the meet and gree) that I only attend a small group/home study where we try to have genuine relationships. Going to Church for me was very lonely.
“I always liked the meet and greet moment if I’m seated near a bunch of hot women.”
Great idea. You have to strategically pick where to sit going in to make that strategy work.
Our pastor suddenly started the hand shaking thing recently, after the second week, I got the cold the family near me has, and I still have some symptoms after two weeks. I am insulin dependant and getting ill affects my blood sugars. I avoid sick people like they have O’Bola. Forced hand shaking with sick people alarms me.
I spoke to the assistant pastor about it, since every church member I talked to after week two of the hand shaking during services was very upset about spreading colds and flu this way.
I hope that this Sunday the sharing of the germs will no longer be going on.The assistant pastor had no idea why the pastor started doing the sharing of the germs during services.
Ours is a very close and friendly congregation and we always have felowship time between services. The forced contact during services is the only thing I have ever found objectionable at our church. I hope the pastor will stop this germ spreading. No one likes it.
I have, too. I love the meet/greet activity. I am 70 so I have been to a lot of them. It is a chance to meet the ones I know and the friends I have not met yet. I hope I can get back in church after my eye muscles surgery on the 7th. I do not see double anymore! PTL. I sincerely hope I never, ever go through that again. She said 2 muscles had been torn. My very first black eye!
I use the “Grip & Grin” as a time to go potty...even if I don’t need to pee.
Interesting article. Quite honestly, the sharing of the peace is one thing I look forward to. We are a small church so it is much easier to do, but we get out of our seats and go around the whole sanctuary making sure to greet visitors. Almost like a chinese fire drill at times. :-) The main reason is because there is nothing worse than being new and no one greets you during this time. We have been in that position many times and it is just awkward. I tend to not greet the long time members who just stand there waiting for someone to come and spend the time reaching out to visitors instead.
So I would say that if you can’t “do it big” dont do it at all.
The proper response to that is turn around, say 'I may be poor, but you are an *******" and walk out at that point.
++Stand-and-greet is a formal part of the Mass ...So I guess it’s impossible to come to a Catholic church if you’re not comfortable with that.++
**There is no requirement that you must shake hands or say anything you don’t want to during the entire Mass.**
WOW! Two differing, private interpretations of what Mass is all about!
All I see is a copout list for people who do not want to worship the LORD.
A possible response to that:
“The Bible says women wear hats in worship. Are you practicing to be a girl?”
As a rule, introverts hate meet and greet, and some of them really, REALLY hate it. Extraverts tend to like it. Supposedly the majority of Americans are extraverts, which if true means meet and greet likely works more often than it doesn’t.
Our church has greeters at the door who just say “good morning” or whatever, and generally direct new people to the guest book, and to coffee downstairs after the service, but they don’t necessarily shake hands (the smart ones wait to see if someone offers a hand first).
Ours too. Everyone knows to greet them which I do. I am blessed to be an extrovert so I enjoy that.
Wow. Our church has experimented with dropping the collection entirely. Just an announcement at the end that anyone with a special gift or offering should stop by the ushers on the way out. A lot of the folk in our church have our tithes set up to happen electronically. I imagine it looks funny to newcomers when the baskets come around and not a lot of people are putting anything in. We went back to passing the baskets because some folks would get distracted by other folks on the way out and would just forget. I know that would happen to me, which is why I prefer to not have to worry about it.
***Obviously humiliated, she never went back.***
Often people will give in private or when they are in the Sunday School class.
Mark Twain told a joke in THE LIBRARY OF WIT AND HUMOR in which a NEGRO BARBER tells why he does not go to church any more. It is a long joke so to cut to the chase it goes like this.
When business was good he gave lots of money to the church, and they called him “Brother Brown”.
Then his kids got sick and he could not give as much because of doctor bills, they then called him “Mr Brown”.
When his wife came down sick, and the barber himself got sick he could not give any to the church so the people said...”Dere goes dat old nigger Brown!” So he quit them.
The situation seems to be a bit different in my church. What keeps visitors from coming back is the language if they don’t speak Vietnamese. We do have visitors from time to time and a few have liked it because they liked the people and they have become permanent. They read the readings before they come to Mass and there is an English language essay on the readings on the back of the bulletin which they substitute for the homily that they don’t understand. It helps that in a Catholic church there is a lot more than the “sermon.” One fellow who has been coming for years actually goes to St Dominic’s across town on Saturday evening and then comes to us on Sunday morning. It helps that the Vietnamese babies don’t cry during Mass and cell phones are all turned off or left in the car.
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