A More Educated Church Guest

“THANKS TO THE WEB, WE ARE CONSISTENTLY SEEING A MORE EDUCATED CHURCH GUEST”

In a growing church, one of the tough dynamics is connecting to and following-up with guests. As the “buzz” surrounding a church increases, the stream of first-time guests will also increase. This fall at St. Paul’s Collegiate Church we have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about and working on a plan to increase the number of first-time guests who will become repeat guests who will become occasional attenders who will become regular attenders, etc etc.

Part of our plan includes weekly New Guest Receptions after each service, a free gift given at the reception (we give a “branded” Nalgene bottle filled with St. Paul’s stuff including a pen, a St. Paul’s chocolate bar, etc), an email from the lead pastor Sunday night (among other things, asking for first impressions feedback) and then a hand-written card (with a $5 Starbucks Gift Card enclosed) sent out within a few days of the visit. All of this is in addition to our newly revamped “First Impressions” team which includes greeters, shuttle bus hosts (for the shuttle bus we charter to pick up students from campus–bus2church.com), our hospitality team, and our facilities team.

It is too early to tell how successful our New Guest Follow-Up strategy is being; I think it will be at least 3-6 months before we can really evaluate how it is working.

But one of the interesting things I have discovered is that often we are connecting with a much more educated guest than I’ve experienced in the past. By educated, I mean “educated about our church”. In other words, a very high percentage of first time visitors have been on our website, listened to a sermon or podcast, read our blog, and checked out our statement of faith, mission statement, and other resources.

Church growth gurus have always suggested that most first-time guests will decide whether they are coming back within the first five or ten minutes of their visit — before any music, before the message. It’s interesting to see how this dynamic changes when people come already knowing about the church, having already heard a message or seen a video we’ve produced. Thanks to the web, we are consistently seeing a more educated church guest Sundays at St. Paul’s.

My gut is that it makes the first-time visit a very different and better experience. People ask better questions, have a better sense of what to expect, and we have already passed the “smell test” of sorts.

This is just one additional area where our website has become an indispensable tool for us as a church. It is our primary “marketing tool” as well as one of the best tools we have for connecting with guests and new attenders. The website allows folks to check-out and explore the church on their own terms without pressure–and I think this is a really great thing!

A couple of interesting statistics from St. Paul’s:

- 73% of first time guests indicate that a FRIEND is the primary reason they first came to the church.

- 15% of first time guests indicate that the WEBSITE is the primary reason they first came to the church.

- 12% of first time guests indicate another reason (Facebook ads, campus ads, Yellow Pages, referred by campus parachurch group, email campaign, etc) for their first visit. All of these COMBINED are less than the WEBSITE.

- Additionally, Over 60% of first time guests who come as a result of being invited by a FRIENDhave already been on our website by the time they first visit.

Given this experience, it baffles me why so many churches still have either no web presence or a (frankly) poor quality web presence. In today’s world, churches need to be on the front-edge in this area if we are going to successfully connect with the people God has called us to connect with.