Recently I have had the opportunity to visit several churches. When I visit a church, I always look at information on bulletin boards, pamphlets, flyers and things with information, especially regarding children and youth ministries. Here are some things I saw as I visited churches:
I looked at an Awana brochure. I was flattered that it was one I had designed and used over a decade ago. The information was still relevant, however the web site address on the flyer was no longer a valid link!
On an informational flyer, one side had Awana information and on the reverse was information encouraging people to sign up for their summer activities during this past summer!
On the men’s ministry bulletin board where the shared about a wonderful ministry which included the dates they would be meeting. The dates were from 2012!
As I sat in the “pew”, I looked for the visitor card to fill out. One side had a nice graphic, the other side was blank. The one next to my seat was the same. If I would have gone one more seat over, the visitor form was complete, printed on both sides, but the ones in front of me were blank on one side so I did not fill out a visitor card. They wouldn’t know I was there visiting.
The failure in all of these was not in the effort to communicate, or gather, information – rather it was in the attention to detail. In the first few cases, it was putting information out and not keeping it up to date and fresh over time. The last one was attention to detail. Not checking the items as they were printed and then distributed in the seats.
In all of these cases, I am not looking to be critical of the churches. I am able to walk in with “fresh eyes” and see how the church is presenting themselves to other visitors.
When was the last time you walked through your church, or ministry area, to see what a visitor would see? Is the information up to date, or from months ago and irrelevant? Do you pay attention to detail, or are somethings incomplete?
Take a moment and walk through with the eyes of a visitor, or even have a “visitor” walk through and give you honest feedback on what they see. You might be amazed.
