One HUGE Opportunity Most Churches are Missing in Their Greeting Every Week
So your church has a website and a Facebook page. The adventurous have perhaps added Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
Or maybe you’ve gone all out, even podcasting your messages or building an app for iOS or Android. (The links are to Connexus Church sites, where I get the chance to serve!)
We’re still in the early days of social media and everyone’s trying to figure out what ministry online means.
Whatever your church might be doing, my guess is you’re trying to connect with people online in some way, which is awesome.
Here’s the question though.
When you welcome people to your church, do you still behave like it’s 1999?
Strangely, most churches do.
I’ve been to very large, high budget churches who have a digital presence everywhere and—for whatever reason—still greet people like it was back in the day when the cassette ministry was booming.
I even caught myself doing this earlier this year.
The good news, the fix is quick simple and free for all of us.
> Is My Glaring Omission Yours Too?
So what do you say when you welcome people to your church?
For years, our hosts (including me) have said something like:
Welcome to Connexus! We’re so glad you’re here. If you’re new here, we’d love to connect! Drop by our guest services desk. We’d love to connect with you there.
Today, we’ll be here for about 70 minutes, sing some songs together, open up the bible to see what it means to us today and pray together. (Then we share one or two announcements we want everyone to know.)
See what I missed there?
Did you catch it?
I said ZERO (as in nothing at all) about our online presence.
Nothing about our social media. Nothing about our app. Zippo about our podcast. Nothing.
Yet 80% of the people (or more) are sitting there with their phones in their pocket.
During the week, we try to behave like it’s 2014. But Sunday morning, I was behaving like it was 1999.
> This is the Opportunity You’re Missing
If it was actually 1999, people would have to drive to your church or to someone’s home to connect with someone else from the church. Or they would have to buy (or pick up) a cassette or CD to listen to a message or series.
For the most part, in ministry you would show up in peoples’ lives occasionally at best. Now, you can show up in a person’s life every time someone checks their phone courtesy of social media, email, your app, your podcast and more.
I realize that’s a double edged sword. There are definitely people you don’t want showing up in your life every day. But I’m guessing there are some people you’d really appreciate hearing from regularly.
What if your church became one of them? What if people were genuinely thankful to hear from you during the week?
See…you and I have moved from a world in which we had the ability to encourage people once or twice a week, to a world in which we can connect daily.
This isn’t just a promotional thing (don’t miss our big cheesy dinner Tuesday night!), it’s a discipleship thing.
Seriously, you can gain permission to speak into people’s spiritual journey regularly.
Publish helpful, useful content, and people will sign up to follow you. Don’t, and of course, they’ll unfollow you. The online world gives you instant feedback on whether you’re helping people or not. Just check your stats.
> The Fix is So Simple
So don’t miss this simple fix.
If you’re publishing helpful, online content (and I realize we’re all growing in this and trying to figure out what that means), then just make sure you mention it Sunday morning.
Behave on Sunday morning like you can help someone during the week.
And the easiest way to help them, encourage them, inspire them and inform people during the week is via social media and your online presence.
So talk about that. This is what we say now when we greet people at Connexus:
Welcome to Connexus! We’re so glad you’re here. If you’re new here, we’d love to connect! Drop by our guest services desk. We’d love to connect with you there. Today, we’ll be here for about 70 minutes, sing some songs together, open up the bible to see what it means to us today and pray together.
We’d love to stay connected with you this week. The easiest way to do that is by following us on social media. You’re welcome to take out your phones right now and follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram (we show the links on the screen as we say them). We also love hearing from you and this is great way to keep up the conversation.
Then, during the week…help people. Encourage, inspire and occasionally inform.
If you hand out a program or bulletin, make sure you include how to connect with you online.
And if you have a website, have a prominent place to follow your church on social media. People will connect with you 100x more on your social media platforms today than they ever will on your website.
Bottom line?
If you’ve got any online presence, talk about it on Sunday morning. Strangely, so many churches still don’t.
The change is free, easy, instant and everyone can do it. Just change what you say when you welcome people.
> We’re All Learning
Want more? I’m not sure anyone has cracked the code on how to optimally use social media. But here are some resources that have helped me and some churches I like to follow online:
Casey Graham and I also talked about how to connect with people using email marketing in Episode 3 of my leadership podcast. (Subscribe for free here to hear feature length interviews with Andy Stanley, Perry Noble, Casey Graham, Kara Powell, Jon Acuff and more.)
Finally, nobody writes better stuff on church announcements than Rich Birch. Make sure you mine his site at Unseminary.com for posts like this that will change your announcements from a few minutes people tolerate to a few minutes people will anticipate.
So…what are you learning about connecting with people online during the week?
How do you highlight your social media on weekends?
Tags: Attention, Awareness, Carey Nieuwhof, church apps, greeting guests, social media in church, welcome guests
