9. Too Many Specific, Insider-Focused Announcements Instead of a Few Church-Wide Announcements.
I would add that many churches waste announcement time telling me about all the logistics of what their people could be doing instead of leveraging that time to communicate the “why” behind the activity.
They use the time to say, “Small groups will start next week, at 7 p.m., in room 202, which is up the steps and down the hall.”
What would be more meaningful? Share a personal story about your small group and then challenge people who aren’t connected to get in one.
And really, just stop announcing so many things altogether. Point people to your website.
10. The Feel of the Church—the Interior Design—Feels Like Nothing Else I Experience Outside the Church.
It’s brown. There are bulletin boards, plastic flowers in the restrooms, churchy banners that mean nothing to an outsider, and sometimes worn out carpet, furniture and funky smells.
The church members and staff have been nose-blind to it all for years, but a new person who steps through your front door will instantly notice all of it.
Your first thought reading that list might be that having an outsider attend your service and point all of these things out would be discouraging.
Oddly enough, the opposite tends to be true. This experience is one of our clients’ favorite phases of the whole planning process.
Why? Because as I said at the beginning, once you SEE what an outsider SEES, you can’t UNSEE it.
If you want to reach new people, start trying to see yourself the way they see you.
And, start looking at them the way Jesus looks at them: with a willingness to leave the 99 for the one.
If you’d like some more insight on this topic, I dug a little deeper in a recent episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast (5 Ways to Impress Your Church’s First-Time Guests | Episode 45).
In that episode, I give some suggestions for how to prioritize tackling these issues, where to start and why.
You can listen (and subscribe) here: The Unstuck Church Podcast
Final thought: This matters. Let’s not make it difficult for those who are taking a step toward God. Let’s do everything we can to meet them where they are.
This article originally appeared here.
