3095 Will They Come Back? Creating a Culture of Hospitality
Congregational
Assessment Handout 
District Services Staff Group, UUA
Speaker: Rev. Peter Morales
A full house, with standing room only, testified to the interest
in this question. How can we encourage visitors to come back?
Most UU churches have more visitors per year than they have
members, a total of 250,000 visitors per year throughout the
denomination, yet few come back. Other relevant statistics
are:
- 1% average growth among all UU congregations;
- 10% growth in about 1/3 of the congregations;
- 10% decline in a different 1/3 of the congregations;
- 25% of households, nationwide, are single-person households;
and
- 42% of new members felt at home on the first day they
visited.
“We come into our full humanity only in relationship
with others,” Rev. Peter Morales told us, “and
for us not to be warmly hospitable is morally equivalent of
not feeding the hungry.”
How would your church respond to the survey question: “Our
church feels like a close-knit family”? Churches where
the answer is “yes” have more trouble retaining
new visitors. It may feel close-knit to members, but it feels
closed to newcomers.
“How many of you here today have visited another church?”
Morales asked. Most of us raised a hand. “How many of
you ever felt ignored?” No hands were lowered.
We have forgotten how frightening it is to walk into a church
for the first time. In a small-group exercise, we tried to
recall a time when we felt welcomed and to describe how we
felt. Most of us could not resist telling stories of how we
were not welcomed at UU churches.
Greeters at the door are not enough. There has to be a welcoming
culture in the congregation. It is especially nice to be recognized
a second time, and this takes more commitment than occasionally
signing up to be a greeter. Some suggestions were as follows.
- Wear name tags.
- Say your name when sharing joys and concerns.
- Greet people when they arrive and when they
leave.
- Assign a mentor.
- Assign someone to introduce the visitor to the congregation.
- Suggest how the visitor could help the church; we all
have a need to serve.
This culture has to permeate the congregation. It is unacceptable
to deny religious community to any person. “I am not
the most outgoing person,” Morales told us; “but
if I push myself, it changes me.”
Reported for the Web by Mike McNaughton
Web Design by Paul Hughes |
