I began with the top five and in this post I will be looking at the final five.
6. Poor Signage. Not only are we, what some would consider, small in numbers, but our building is also small. In fact, we are looking at expanding. Therefore, it is somewhat easy to find all of our various classrooms, kitchen, etc., but we have placed signs in the various main areas to help guest find their way around the building.
7. Insider Church language. The author of the article used this example, "The WMU will meet in the CLC in the room where the GA's usually meet." I agree, this is bad. We don't have that many classrooms so they are not named other than maybe the Nursery. I think the only abbreviation we use is YCC when we refer to our name. Other than that I can not think of another one. Now maybe we can get a little Christianeze with some words but all in all I think we do try to be understanding of our guest or even new Christians.
8. Boring and bad service. If you ever come to one of our services, I don't think you'll classify it as boring. On the contrary! Our worship leader does an amazing job at leading us into a worship time through music that just makes you feel God's grace. And then the Preacher, well he can get so excited sometimes while preaching that you want to be sure to not miss a thing. I have always told him that he can explain the scriptures better than anyone I know. He has a way of making them more real and so much more relevant for your life at the place that you are right now.
9. Members telling guest that they were in their seat or pew. This is terrible if this truly has happened! Granted we have members who gravitate to the same seat/row every Sunday morning, but if they are late and someone has gotten there before them, never have I seen anyone in our church tell someone that they have to move! No, they just find another seat/row to sit in and are very content where they are sitting that day. Every seat in the house is a good seat. You're not going to miss anything.
10. Dirty facilities. Our building is an old building and at first glance you may think that it will not be a comfortable place to worship. We try hard to make sure our church is clean and ready to go before every service or any activity that is taking place here. We have a lady who takes pride in cleaning the church and she is very careful to come early on the days there may be an activity that evening. But, one of the complaints in this survey was the cleanliness of the pews and how there were stains on them. Yes, we do have some chairs that have stains and we have discussed having someone come in to clean them. There will always be spills and accidents made either by children or adults (especially when we invite you to bring your coffee back in to the worship area). I think when the members help with some of the clean up, either after a service or an activity, it goes a long way in showing our guest that we do take pride in our facilities and we treat it as if it were our own home.
Have you been a guest at one of our services? If so, I would love to hear what you thought. Good or bad, it will help us to strive to be better. We do want our church to be a comfortable, loving, safe place to be.
Love from the Preacher and I
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