What if Starbucks Marketed like the Church?
// April 30th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Chaplaincy, Spiritual
When was the last time you felt nervous on your way to a Christian meeting? If you can’t remember, chances are you have been at the same church for a long time. Whist there is nothing wrong with this, there is a danger of forgetting what it is like to be ‘the new guy’.
As someone who had a position as an itinerant speaker I have been in my fair share of churches. I regularly felt apprehensive on my way to visit an unknown church. Some questions that went through my mind – am I dressed appropriately? will there be any rituals or practices that I will be unfamiliar with? what will the people there be like? The thing that struck me the most was that I was feeling this apprehension and I was the guest speaker, imagine if I was someone who was going along to church for the first time!!!
In my experience I have found a large percentage of churches, youth groups and school lunchtime groups have had attendees for so long that they have a limited ability to put themselves in visitor’s shoes. They are used to the same format, familiar surroundings and familiar faces. So much so that they have lost touch with how daunting a visitor might find the meeting and how ‘cringe factor’ many of our practices are.
This video shows how so many people feel when visiting a Christian meeting for the first time.
Here are some examples of common things that make a visitor feel uncomfortable:
– Partaking in parts of the service where protocol is assumed not explained. The most common time for this is communion. The number of times I have been in a new church and had to try to observe someone else to know whether I take the bread and grape juice and drink it or hold onto it or dip it??? A bit of explanation and direction from the front please.
– Getting new people to stand up in the service. It is well known that people hate standing up and being the focus of attention so why would we make new people do this? Is it too hard to make a general announcement such as ‘if you are new here today welcome’ and then have some deacons or leaders notice the new people and go and say ‘hi’ after the service to see if they want any info about the church.
– Christian lingo. There is a risk that we can speak with all this Christian lingo that sounds plain weird if you haven’t been a Christian for years (can happen in worship music lyrics as well). How often have you heard something like “Lets all stand and give thanks for the blood, the blood is what enables us to defeat death.” People will think they have joined some weird cult! Lets try and use language that can be understood by most and where necessary explain terms for those who don’t understand.
– No one smiles, says ‘hi’ or comes over for a chat. Obviously the Pastor or leader cannot be everywhere at all times. There must be a culture of welcoming which comes from educating regular members the importance to look beyond your ‘clique’ of friends you sit and chat with. All regular attendees need to be on the lookout for new people in order to make them welcome.
– When the worship leader says abruptly ‘everyone raise your hands to God’ or ‘everyone you look half asleep lets jump up and down and praise God’. You should give people an option “If you want to lift your hands to worship God feel free”. It just gives visitors or those who are having a bad week and actually don’t feel like dancing an option to not join in and not feel guilty about it. If we want people to be real and not fake, then we should let people worship God how they feel comfortable worshiping or just be happy to allow visitors to observe others worshipping.
Lets do our best to ensure that our meetings have as little ‘cringe factor’ as possible and educate our students and leaders on the importance of looking beyond ourselves and our own familiar cliques. Who knows, it may mean the difference between someone coming back or never returning at all.
