10 Things You'll Learn by Visiting Other Churches

Great post by Michael at Oak Leaf Church at his blog:

Over the past four weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to check out some other church plants. A couple of times, I was able to take some people from our launch team as well, which was really cool. I wanted to post an overview of some of my thoughts in no particular order and not necessarily reflective on one particular church.

1.Ridgestone wins the award for best setup in a movie theater. Mill Creek did a great job at creating a children’s environment in a movie theater, and their children's pastor was awesome. Lake Point was very friendly in a school environment...friendly and helpful. Center Point Church in Lexington was doing a great job of spreading the word about the church.

2.Start on time. Get in the habit of starting on time no matter what and your people will get in the habit of being on time. Have something great right off the bat, so if people are late, they miss it. I’ve heard from a couple of different places that people make their decisions to come back or not to come back VERY early.

3.Put friendly people at the doors and on your stage. We went to a couple of churches that really didn’t come across friendly right from the beginning - it took a while for them to welcome us. Your people that are just welcoming and friendly and friendly looking…they need to be greeters. Where's the rule that the pastor always has to do the welcome? You can’t put a price tag on creating a welcoming environment. It takes a lot of work, but there's a big payoff.

4.Lighting helps creates environment. A couple of the movie theater churches I attended were just too dark. This was great for video and worship, but not so good for the message. It’s hard to write things down in the dark. Shoot some par lighting at the ceiling, I don’t know…I’m not a lighting guy. But too much darkness (or too much daylight) can really affect the atmosphere.

5.Coffee and fruit and muffins and bagels at several churches were really nice touches. They were done with excellence nearly every time, and it looked like some sharp volunteers were all over this. This went a long way towards creating a welcoming environment and increase the “hang-out factor” before the service. Rigdgestone had a great coffee area. Mill Creek had Krispy Kreme donuts.

6.Look for some little ways to create wow experiences. Maybe it’s a sticker on a baby’s diaper that says “I’ve just been changed.” Maybe you make pens available (that’s not all that exciting, but if you ask people to take notes or write things down, give them a pen). Make your bulletin and signage match your series. We’re going to take a staff meeting and just talk about the little things we can do to create wow experiences. (Share yours.)

7.I’ve got lots of thoughts to post later about words on the screen. But if you have a special song that the band plays, always put the lyrics on the screen. It’s hard to understand words to songs you don’t know. And you should never have more than four lines of text on one screen.

8.Signs are important. Figure out how many signs you need to direct people to parking, childcare and bathrooms, and then double that number. Put signs outside and in hallways and in front of rooms. Signs aren’t that expensive and they make things a ton easier on guests. If you’re meeting in a rented facility that already has signs up (school signs, movie posters, etc.) you need bigger and better signs that really stand out.

9.Make sure you have enough stage lights. Setting lights only at wide angles creates distracting shadows. Again I say unto you, lighting is important.

10.Relevance and truth are not mutually exclusive. I know modern, post modern, emergent, contemporary, etc. churches often get a bad rap about this, but these two words are not polar opposites. Most of these churches were relevant as well as being true to God’s word. Lots of scripture references. Lots of sharing God’s truth not just man’s opinion. When this is done in a relevant, excellent way, it really hits home. It’s possible to throw truth out there and make no difference because people don’t understand it.

11. Bonus: I’ve got a pretty short attention span. Unless you’re Andy Stanley, you probably shouldn’t teach more than 45 minutes. (And if you ARE Andy Stanley, thanks for reading my blog.) That’s just a long time to teach and people tune out and forget everything you say. I'm not saying you need to teach for 20 minutes, but you cannot talk for an hour and expect to keep people's attention.