Are You Losing Track of What’s Important? Part I

Melanie Smollen, Project Manager

Routines can be a great comfort to us. There is familiarity in the procedure of our worship services – we know when to stand, when to sit, when to sing along, and when to show our appreciation to a speaker. We even become familiar with our church family and work to make our congregation a place where we are truly comfortable. These routines become so ingrained that we don’t feel a need to spell out every little detail of the service in the bulletin because, of course, we all know how our church works.

Several months ago, a mother of four visited a church on behalf of Faith Perceptions. As many do, this particular church holds a “gathering of children” time when children are welcomed to the front of the church for a special message and then they leave the main sanctuary for children’s church that lasts the remainder of the service. This woman, familiar and comfortable with other children’s ministries, allowed hers to participate. The service ended, the congregation went their many ways, and this woman was alone.

Without her child.

Any parent who has been separated from their child – no matter how brief the time – can understand that panic that creeps in. It happens in supermarkets, clothing stores, playgrounds, and any other place where children and their parents go. One blink and they’re behind a tree or hiding in the coat rack or have wandered down the next aisle.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The woman wandered around until she eventually found the room where her child was waiting to meet her. It took more than a blink; it took her more than ten minutes to find her child. There were no signs directing her to the room, no information in the bulletin stating where the children were gathering, nothing on the about the children’s ministry she had viewed on the website before visiting the church, and no one offered to help her as she searched.

Whether you have a children’s ministry that works like this church or one that is far more robust, we all are guilty of omissions like these – after all, we’ve been doing it our way for years. The location of the children’s room was a detail that everyone knew and they had likely forgotten that newcomers don’t have the same long experience and so they don’t have the same perceptions.  Consider how your programs work – are you losing track of what’s important?

Talk with parents who have school and pre-school aged children and they’ll tell you just how important child security has become. Schools must take every precaution to ensure that they do not release a child to an unauthorized adult. Evil abounds and children’s ministries that are caught unawares risk endangering children that have been entrusted to them. That was not the case here, but I’d understand if various scenarios were occurring to this mother as she searched. She eventually reached a happy conclusion, sure, but she’ll not soon forget how this experience made her feel.

Is your church reaching out to new people? Are you encouraging friends and strangers alike to worship with you? Great! Put yourself in their shoes: What part of your routine isn’t obvious to someone outside of your church? What can your church do to make them truly comfortable?

P.S. The sermon that morning was about the hopes and dreams we have for our children.

Stay tuned for Part II of this blog…

To learn more about Faith Perceptions, contact us:  573.335.1782 or info@faithperceptions.com

Friendliness Is Not Enough

Melanie Smollen, Project Manager

It is absolutely true that a friendly wave and hello are very important to getting visitors who are not familiar with your church to come back.  It is also true that friendliness alone just isn't enough of a reason. Our research shows that there are three main drivers to making a person comfortable with returning for a follow up visit:  music, message, and hospitality.  Fail in any of these areas and the likelihood of seeing that person, or their family, again, drops significantly.

Let’s take, for instance, a recent visit by one of our mystery guests to a church in Michigan.  She said, “I was very impressed with the overwhelming hospitality and friendliness of several congregation members who came up to me after the service. They all knew that I wasn't a ‘regular’ attending person but let me know how happy they were to see a new face in the crowd. They invited me to come back anytime and to bring friends and family.”  Later in the survey she again lauded the friendliness of the church with, “The congregation members were extremely welcoming to me, even though I was significantly younger than all of them. This was a pleasant surprise!”

It’s obvious this church family is living out the commandment to love thy neighbor. You’d expect that this young lady will be back next week to hear more of God’s Word from these welcoming people, wouldn't you?  Well, she won’t.  Here’s what she said about the likelihood of a repeat visit: “I would not return to this church. The music was way too traditional for any ages below 60.”  She went on again to extol the “happy and friendly attitude of the pastor and attendees,” but stated that it was not enough to overcome the lack of multimedia support of the pastor’s sermon or how “bored I was during the music and most of the rest of the service.”

We've found that it’s a pretty common thread among folks of all ages that if you have good quality music, your message makes an impact on the guest, and you’re friendly, then the likelihood of seeing that guest again is high.  Miss the mark on any one of those and that likelihood drops significantly. If you fall short on two or more it drops even more.

In this instance, our mystery guest - a young woman in her early twenties - mentioned that the music was “too traditional.” That’s a fairly subjective term that differs from person to person.  The commonality we've discovered is that in most cases, regardless of age, it doesn't make much difference if your music is traditional hymns played on the organ or contemporary praise music played by the house band. It’s all about the quality and the level of engagement from the congregation. People want to sing about things they agree with.  If the people leading worship and the church body aren't engaged, then your visitor won’t be either.

Along the same lines, a flashy multimedia presentation slipped into a sermon isn't the right answer in every situation. It’s more about making such a presentation relevant to the message and that it supplements the passion and conviction communicated by the speaker about the message.  The TRUTH is what compels people, not a flashy multimedia presentation for the sake of having a multimedia presentation.

In Mark 16:15 (NIV) it says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Often, the world walks right through the door of your church, just to see what’s going on.  Don’t miss the opportunity to share the gospel. Also, remember, if you don’t preach it as if you believe it, it’s unlikely a visitor will be back to hear more.

To learn more about Faith Perceptions, contact us:  573.335.1782 or info@faithperceptions.com

You PAY People to Go to Church?!?

Melanie Smollen, Project Manager

Yes we do. Now, before you get all upset and think that we’re trying to commercialize church or buy new believers, let me explain: We are a market research firm that helps churches see themselves from their visitors’ points of view. Those data are hard to come by and it is our experience that people are more honest and unbiased when an impartial third party asks for their opinion, and they’re more timely when they're being paid for them. Here’s how Faith Perceptions got its start:

I started working for a business consulting firm in 2008. The firm had clients who were concerned about why their number of customers was decreasing. They hired us to help them better understand their customers’ experience. Programs like that are commonly known as “mystery shopping” or “secret shopping” and it got me to thinking – churches of all denominations throughout the United States are charged with reaching new people…could they benefit from understanding the first time guest experience as well? I remember hearing a pastor say, "I know why someone visits our church and stays because I get to ask them. What I don't know is why someone comes and they never come back. We need to know that." The truth is, buying an expensive digital sign out front to attract people is a waste of money if, once inside, no one connects with them.

So we sought the advice from some trusted church leaders and church revitalization experts. We learned that having unbiased feedback from first-time visitors could be a game-changer for them. We took our knowledge of market research in the business environment and adapted it to the church world. That was almost five years and 1,200 worship services ago. Today, church leaders rely on us to provide them with the information about what the “unchurched” think about their experience on Sunday morning. We’re not in the church member recruiting business and we don’t have any hidden agenda. Our mission is to help church leaders gather reliable information they can’t get on their own, and then use that information to create a better experience for someone new to their church. It’s true that some hearts have been changed while they’re on assignment for us…but that’s God’s work, not ours. When our mystery guests attend a church, they’re hired to give us information that churches need to grow. Again, the answer to the original question is yes: So that we can gather accurate and timely information about the first-time church visitor’s experience, we pay people to go to church.

Our intention in creating this blog is to highlight and discuss actual experiences that our mystery guests are having every weekend so that you can benefit from their insights. Since we have clients of all sizes and denominations in various parts of the United States, we hope you’ll find something relevant to your life or ministry.

For more information:  Contact Faith Perceptions at 573.335.1782 or info@faithperceptions.com