Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Going to a church for the first time can be really scary. You don't know anybody and you don't really know what you're getting yourself into. And for a lot of church leaders, we've been doing church for so long that it's hard to have the fresh eyes that you need to have to know what visitors are thinking. So we came up with a list of seven questions that every church visitor is thinking, we hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast.
Speaker 0 00:00:36 You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Hey guys, welcome to the rich rights podcast, episode number 86. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host Dan
Speaker 2 00:01:11 Hyatt. What's up
Speaker 0 00:01:12 Thomas. Hey, not much man. Fun conversation today. We're going to be talking about what first time church visitors are thinking, uh, get to the bottom of that age old question. I think what happens in churches a lot is that we go week in and week out, especially as leaders of churches that we, we kind of are so used to it. We've been doing it for 5, 6, 25, 30 years, but walking in those same doors, every single Sunday that we don't have those fresh eyes to be able to really remember what it feels like and what it's like to be a visitor at a church. And so today we really did some brainstorming and we we've. We think about this kind of stuff a lot in our role, because this is our, our goal is we try to bring fresh eyes to churches all the time with the way they're doing outreach. And so we wanted to give you some fresh perspective on when people come to your church, physically, this is what this episode will be about. What are they thinking on their first visit? What are some of the things that are going through their minds when they first come to a church? I think it's an important conversation to have. What do you think?
Speaker 2 00:02:21 Definitely. And as you know, I, I talk about this daily with the churches that I consult, you know, and one of the, uh, the things that we offer here out of the mini offerings we haven't reached right, is a website design and consultation on website strategy, because we know that that is still the virtual front door where people will end up 85% of the time before they check out a church for the first time. And I can't tell you every day, every day I have this conversation and I see so many bad church websites, uh, to where they don't answer these questions. So, uh, no, so I think it is very important and, uh, still something that we can all improve on as a pastors and ministry leaders. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:03:02 Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, it, it is, we see it all the time on the web. Um, I think the web plays a big role in actual physical experiences, right? That's mostly the main thing we'll be talking about. There'll be some web, uh, I think, uh, application in this year today. Uh, but I think we're trying to hone in on what, uh, what people are sitting there as they walk into your place. But maybe I'll talk about the first one that kind of deals a little bit with what happens before. Uh, the first one, I think visitors are thinking, are there people here that are like me, are there people here that are like me? And I kind of wish people didn't think this, you know, in a perfect world, people would feel totally comfortable with people that are totally different from them. But the reality is, is that people have an easier time relating to people that they are familiar with are people that feel like them.
Speaker 0 00:03:54 And I know a lot of us maybe immediately go to people that are the same skin color as them. And that's not really even what I'm thinking, although that probably does play a part. If you're the only person of your skin color and your church, it might feel a little bit awkward for you. Sure. Uh, so, um, you know, this is something that people wonder, but I think are there people that are the same age as me or the people that speak the same language as me? Are there people that are in the same life place that I am, are there are people in the same kind of economic and like occupational stuff that I'm in are, are these people are people that same interests as me, are these people here at this church? And the more the answer to that question is, yes, the more comfortable someone is going to feel visiting your church. And so, like I was saying, this is one of those ones that I think we can do something about the website. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how we do that. I don't know if you want to tackle that.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 Totally. So what you'll see common on a lot of up-to-date modern websites now is once someone comes to the homepage because they're going to land there first, obviously most of the time, uh, and, uh, is these video backgrounds just kind of B roll footage, a loop of, of people, people, uh, I, and let me just pause before I talk a little more about this, we do not recommend, and this has been, uh, um, a church marketing practice that has been, uh, shunned and, uh, not appreciated for years now for a good reason, do not put just a picture of your building as the main image on your homepage. Again, if you have a great building, that's great. And we're not saying don't have a photo of your building at all on the website and or maybe even several photos of that, but people are looking for people like them, like you said, or just, they want to feel for the Sunday morning experience.
Speaker 2 00:05:43 So good photography of candid images of people, uh, kind of living out the values of your church. You know, this could be a hug in the four year kids having a good time in children's church shot of a baptism, you know, people seeing what's happening there, but particularly on a home page, you know, that opening image, uh, should either be a real actual photo of something that kind of sums up who you are and it's people oriented, or one of these little video backgrounds that shows people like them, uh, at your church. So we see that always being a really helpful strategy to take online. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:06:21 I I'll say this here too. So, um, I I'm from Hawaii, uh, is where I'm coming from here. I was born and raised here. Um, I've done ministry on the mainland, but I, I live here again now in Hawaii and there's no such thing as a non-diverse church in Hawaii. Like, so that just doesn't that wasn't a reality that I ever experienced or had seen in my life. Right. Every single church here is mixed. Now I know that there are places in other parts of the country where a diverse church is a very rare occurrence. Right, right. So it's where maybe they're almost all older or predominantly white or predominantly black or all Asian or whatever it would be. I know that's more common in other places. So I don't have that experience here in the world that I live in, which I think is a huge blessing.
Speaker 0 00:07:07 Yeah. But I think a lot of churches wrestle with this question of, so what do we do if we want to communicate that everybody is welcome at our church, we want everybody to be there. We want to be more diverse, but only white people go to our church right now. Right. It's only black people go to our church. Only old people go to our church or whatever it would be. There's any kind of person you want to put out there. I think the website and social media, they lend themselves to a lot of opportunity here. So yeah. But we, we can't, we can't lie. Right? So like, you, you don't want just, um, if your church has one black person in it, you don't want half of the pictures to be of that one person and have to be everybody else in your church. Right.
Speaker 0 00:07:49 You don't want to deceive people with that, but at the same time, we can, we can do our best to kind of paint a picture of where we're going. So yeah, it has to be kind of that happy medium, where we're not really trying to deceive people, but we want to communicate where the church is going. Websites really allow for us to do that as does social media, you can really communicate through photography. And as another thing to say too, is that as much as you'd like to write down the kind of church that you are and the kind of people that go there, nobody will ever read that. Right. You can't have a section. I mean, you could, but I don't think it would work to have a section on your website that says, what kind of people go to this church and then have people read it.
Speaker 0 00:08:25 No, one's going to see it. You're going to catch it by the instant judgements that we make by looking at the kind of people that their church had. Do they look like me? I can, I relate to these kinds of people. So yeah. Huge opportunity. But that is absolutely as much as we don't like it. That is absolutely something that people are thinking before they walk out. They might not even be like consciously thinking it. They're not looking at pictures on websites and say, are the people that looked like me here? No. Okay. Next we just, we subconsciously know that these are like me or there's people that don't look like me here. And we make our decisions in a second based on those kinds of views and the things that we see there. So, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:09:05 That's awesome. Well, I'll get the next one. And the next thing that visitors are thinking of are where are we supposed to go? Uh, you can't assume that, you know, someone just going to note a park and come in this specific door and nowhere to go whenever they get there. Um, you know, especially if you have a large campus and even if you have a small campus, people don't know, not just where they're going to go as far as walking in the door, but what's going to happen after they come in. Where do I take my kids? You know, uh, you know, where, where am I going to, to, to hear the message, all of these types of things. So you really do want to make sure you're very clear, uh, and map out easily, um, on your campus and online, I think it starts online.
Speaker 2 00:09:46 Like we just said, uh, you know, we do plenty of plan, your visit pages on websites that we build. And that's a very common page now, or an I'm new page that maps this out. But also when people get there, physically, you have a process, have something thought out that makes it signage, that steers a new visitor, where they need to go. I know at my church, we tell first time visitors to turn on their hazards so that we give them the best parking spot and get them where they're at. So that doesn't work for every church. But that's one, one thing we do at my church, but we also make it very clear.
Speaker 0 00:10:20 Yeah. Yeah. Your church has great. I I've been a visitor to your church and I still remember our experience. It was probably my best visitor experience I've ever had at a church because we did the hazards thing. And this is like 10 years ago now probably that I went there, but we did the hazards thing. They give us, it's not just the parking, it gives them the parking. But then on top of that, it's they basically see people that park there. And then you're assigned almost like, it seemed like we were assigned, we had a post and someone that walked us with us from parking to we had two or three, I don't know how many kids we had at the time. We had one was very little if we had a third. So we get walked over there to the, uh, uh, to the kids area.
Speaker 0 00:11:00 They stay with us. They help us get our kids all checked in. They give us a gift. They walk us to our seats, right. Where we're supposed to go right in the middle there. So we didn't stick out. It was a really great experience. So your church really, I don't know if it's still the same as it was 10 years ago, but it's something that I still remember to this day having been a visitor there before. But yeah, I think that that really goes to everybody is wondering that people do not know where to go. I think the host idea is a really good idea. Yeah. And one more thing is make sure people know where the bathrooms are, but that's even, what's kind of weird. And probably most people maybe won't use it during the service there. Right. But just say, Hey, in case you need it, the bathrooms are right there. Make a point of saying that. I think that that goes a long way.
Speaker 2 00:11:41 Yeah. And for the church that's saying, well, we don't have enough people or we're not a large church to be able to provide hosts and do that kind of a thing again. That's okay. Just make it clear as what we're saying, have, have a thought out process, you know, have signage signage at there, spell it out online, uh, ahead of time. Uh, and yeah, that's good.
Speaker 0 00:12:02 Good, good. Next one. I think this is a good one. Uh, how long do I have to sit there? That's the next one? There that's one thing that visitors are always thinking. I know this because I have thought this many, many times every time I visited a church that is there, I'm sitting there thinking that because churches can be so different. Yeah. I've been to churches that are 50 minute services. I've been to churches that are two and a half hour services. And I've seen everything in between, in a church service before. And sometimes we feel like maybe it's not a good idea to talk about this because it's going to make them, you know, kind of have expectations or I might not be able to fulfill it here. People are thinking it anyway, you are wondering, I am there sitting there thinking I'm hungry.
Speaker 0 00:12:47 I want to go eat after this. I want to get something in my belly. How much longer is this going to go? They're checking their watches. Whether you say anything or not. I think putting them at ease and say, Hey, we're going to end right at 10 45 today or whatever time that would be. Um, I tend to encourage people towards the shorter end of the range there, if you're asking me for my opinion, but right. That's a whole nother podcast. Maybe we'll do one about how long should your church service be. But, um, in, in most cases I think the shorter end is better and always communicating that. So what we did at our church is that we would say, Hey, thank you so much for being here as part of our greeting, if we're really thankful to have you, uh, we're going to be here together for about 75 minutes. Uh, and, uh, then we kind of went in with our service at that point there. So putting that out there at the beginning of every service, now you may wonder like, well, aren't our members going to be, they know it's 75 minutes, well do something in your services for visitors. It's one small thing. And it kind of builds that expectation that way. So I don't know, what do you have to add in
Speaker 2 00:13:47 You see me smiling, right? You know, that there's a memory coming to mind that we shared together. Uh, and, and, and, and I think, I think, you know, which, which memory it is, but, uh, w as we've shared on this podcast, you and I used to pastor together at a church you planted here in the Austin, Texas area. And we had a good, good idea and goal to go when we were, before we were launching, we wanted to go check out and see what other local area churches were doing, and just kind of sit in and get a feel for the experience. And, uh, boy, did we get trapped one day? Uh, we got to try, I think that's the way to put it. Uh, we got trapped and it was, I was one of those, maybe two, two and a half hour long experiences that we were not expecting.
Speaker 2 00:14:29 Had we have known that ahead of time. We may have not visited that church. Uh, but, uh, I, I do remember. And, and, and again, we, we, eh, there are church, we, we are all for, you know, churches going a little longer as the Lord leads and, and far be it from us to, uh, try to quench the spirit, so to speak on that. But, uh, but at the same time, uh, we were trapped for a good amount of time and had a, of sitting there getting text messages from my wife, where are the kids? And I'm sorry, honey. We can't get out of here. Pray for us, pray for us, uh, as we're trapped here. So I think, again, like you said, if you were to give advice, we, we would, uh, say to air on a little bit shorter, but, um, but I, that is a big question and someone may not show up because they had, I may not show up at a church if I don't know about that I had, and now if I ever changed churches, I do want to know about this because of that experience you and I had.
Speaker 2 00:15:24 So
Speaker 0 00:15:25 It was, it was that scarring for you to talk more about that service probably in one of these future points. I will pour on Matt to come. I think so. That's it. All right. Uh,
Speaker 2 00:15:37 That's the next one is who's in charge here. Um, you know, I think a lot of times, uh, pastors and church leaders miss this one, because we all try to be humble and say, it's, it's not about leadership. I mean, how many times do we have to consult churches to make it very clear who the leaders are, uh, ahead of time, uh, you know, on the, on the, on the websites, on whatever you're communicating online, um, and people do. And also when they physically get there, you, you want to make sure if there is, you know, part of the assimilation process, a certain pastor that they need to connect with for next steps, that they know who that is, uh, that they know who the leaders are. People do, people do want to know and get a feel for leadership ahead of time. Uh, and, and know who's in, in, in charge who are the point persons, if, if they do have more questions about the church or want to know more, who do they talk to? You know, if that's not clearly identified physically at the church, they're kind of not going to know where to go.
Speaker 0 00:16:39 Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with you yet on this. I think that, uh, I'm, I'm the furthest thing from a kind of a, trying to foster a pastor worshiping culture that exists. So I I've ever referred to myself as pastor Thomas before, and people do all that they did all the time. And I, I would usually, I would never correct somebody, but I would say, you know, just call me Thomas that's. Okay. And I would, I would minimize that. So I'm, I'm very far from that in my, in my actual ministry style. And I encourage churches to, to move away from that pastor worship kind of, uh, environment that, uh, some, maybe I, I get it. You want to honor our pastors and those things. And, uh, but I encourage her just to move away from it. But that being said, I think that there is a great value in the role of the pastor.
Speaker 0 00:17:28 And we have known for years that one of the primary reasons why people choose a church is because they feel some kind of a connection with the pastor or pastors of the church. Right? So usually that's going to be the lead pastor. Who's doing most of the preaching, but it could also be worship leaders or youth pastors or children's ministers, whatever it be. But, but building connections with them, uh, that is one of your key goals with a visitor. And they actually want that too. They want to know who's kind of, who's going to be speaking, who is this person? It makes them feel uncomfortable. Maybe if they don't know who that is. And they're probably pastor youth
Speaker 2 00:18:06 Pastor that, that my kid's going to be
Speaker 0 00:18:07 Under. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're probably wondering that already anyway. So I think you're making a point of every time someone gets on the stage introducing themselves and saying, Hey, uh, my name is Thomas. I'm one of the pastors here at this church, or my name is, uh, and I'm the youth pastor or whatever it would be. Um, but introducing yourself that way now, 95% of your church, everybody, who's not a visitor, they already know this. It's not like it's new information. And you may have, may feel like that's too repetitive, but I assure you that it creates a culture where people will start to understand that what we say here is for people that are not yet a part of our church, we are doing something that is very visitor minded. That's not to say we're a, like a seeker kind of a church. We're not encouraging that. I just think understanding that new people are coming in all the time and catering your service a little bit towards that understanding will create a culture where people are more likely to invite their friends and have more people come and visit your church that way. So, yeah, I think answering that question of who is in charge of something, a visitor is wondering, it's something that's really important to do. That's good. I think
Speaker 2 00:19:12 That's a good segue to the next one that you're tackling here. I think,
Speaker 0 00:19:15 Yeah. Next one is, what am I supposed to do next? Like now that I'm, I'm sitting here in my chair or, uh, I'm here at the service, what am I supposed to do? One of the worst things we can do is that if we just expect that everybody already knows all of our, kind of our, our, our order of service and how we do things. I think of like my time when I was a kid and I went to Catholic school for a while and part of Catholic school was Catholic mass, but I had no Catholic experience. So like, I would just kind of sit around and watch my friends. And then all of a sudden they would just get down on their knees and they'd be on the kneelers and then they'd be back up. And nobody said anything. They just knew that they say well, and also with you, and I didn't know, I was supposed to do the call and response when, when he said the Lord be with you and you say that back.
Speaker 0 00:20:00 And so it's, um, it's, it's something that every church has their things that they always do. And after 50 services, someone's going to know that we always clap our hands during this particular song or whatever it would be. Um, but your visitors don't know that. Right. And so anything we can do to talk to them about what's next. So, um, ma I think we're notorious on this with communion. If you're a church that, uh, I think most churches that we serve we'll do communion, the frequency, it changes from church to church. I'm doing weekly, some do it once a year and anything in between, I would say, but every church does community in a different way. And chances are people have a different communion experience than what your church does. So my wife, she famously, uh, well, she was on a missions trip and they did a thing where the, that you take your bread and you dunk it into the grape juice, and then you eat it.
Speaker 0 00:20:59 But she had recently been to a few churches where people, they do one shared communion cup that you pick up and you drink from the cup, and then you take your bread. You do both of those. And so she not knowing she picked up the dunking bowl and drank out of the dunking bowl. Communion, nobody explained how you're supposed to take communion at this church. They just kind of assume that everybody at our church already knows that. So that's a funny example, uh, pray that that doesn't happen at your church, but there are dozens of things that happen. Every single service that probably could use a little bit of explanation. So when to sit, when to stand, when the offering is going to happen, how we do communion, uh, what you do after service, when to, if you do a turn and greet kind of thing, which we might talk about later, but yeah, those kinds of things all need to be explained, and we need to take our time to do that for visitors. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:21:50 And you kind of touched on the last thing I was just going to mention is you also want to make it very clear what they do next after the message is done. And they're about to leave, especially if you're focused on assimilation, make it very clear to new visitor that, Hey, you know, don't just hope that they stopped by the, the, the guest welcome center on the way out, or someone flags them down, let them know, you know, Hey, we want to, I know at our church, we say, Hey, if you're new, you know, we, we, we want to put a gift in your hand. You know, we got more information on next steps, um, you know, in our process and blah, blah, blah. So I think you just want to make sure you spell that clearly out to, or that, and that's a good way to close the back door, which is, uh, something every church wants to do is close that back door for visitors.
Speaker 2 00:22:33 So make sure you're making it very clear to them what they do next in the assimilation process. So that's good now. Good. Next one. I'm very excited about, uh, and that is, uh, will they single me out because like you said, I think we can save, we saved a couple of, I have a couple of stories with this, but this is a good one. I think here is that, uh, people do wonder, uh, because a lot of churches have done this, you know, will I be singled out as a new visitor? And I think a lot of churches mean well that they, they mean well, uh, all of them mean well, uh, but it is something that is very awkward. Um, you know, to most people, if they're new, we already know that most people in culture today, and as we've seen a decline in church, uh, visiting and attending, you know, already have a lot of apprehension that keeps them, they already think it's going to be maybe weird, especially that unchurched person, um, that it's going to be weird. And if they have that question in their mind of, will I be singled out or made to be go up to the front, they may not even come. You know? So I think that this is something you want to spell out online ahead of time. Uh, and also make sure that when you're doing announcements and talking about first time visitors and welcoming them, that they know that they're not going to be singled out in the service. So, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:23:55 Yeah, yeah. There's there's um, so I've been guilty of this. I think this is something that churches were we're often guilty of as in times before. So, uh, again, I I'm in Hawaii. I grew up here and I remember my church and I, I get the heart behind this. Uh, but as is customary in our culture, what you do when you want to honor somebody in Hawaii is you give them a lay. Uh, and so what that did is it was, it was meant as a sign of honor for giving them a fresh flower Lei. And it's something beautiful. They get to wear it, but they also stick out like a sore thumb because who's the new guy here. Oh, it's the guy that's wearing that big flower play. It's kind of pointing all the fingers right at him. I went to another church and I actually did this for a while at our church.
Speaker 0 00:24:44 When visitors came for the first time, we asked them to slip their hand up and we'd give them a big, a big chocolate bar. And, you know, you tried to do something really kind of generous for them, but I was corrected lovingly by my staff for some of those blind eyes that I might've had that I was talking about about before that, you know, that might be something that maybe would make a lot of people feel uncomfortable. So we've moved away from that and let people voluntarily identify themselves as visitors. And we still gave them gifts, but they went after service or before service ahead of time, we'd try to get gifts in their hands that way. But yeah, I think that this is something that many churches are guilty of, especially if you've been doing the same thing for 20 years, chances are what we did 20 years ago is probably something that singled out visitors a little bit too much, but we got singled out once, right? We did.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 I want to talk about one example before that example, I've been to churches where they lock the doors. After we heard the, my wife and I went was before we had kids a little younger and, uh, we heard all the doors lock behind us. And then not only that and innocent, probably not a small church, not a huge church about a 300 member church or so, but so good chunk of people, uh, in, in, in the crowd and at the very end of the sermon. And my buddy was so excited. He was like, he was new at this church and we were new to faith and everything. And, uh, he was just, we'd love this. You're gonna love this church. You're gonna love this church. And, and so, you know, good message, good worship. People were definitely engaged, very end the pastor points at us and says to come up to the front.
Speaker 2 00:26:18 Uh, and so all the way to the front 300 people looking at me, I'm like, oh my gosh. And gives me a huge hug. Again, meant, well, Lee wanted to show love, but I was never so embarrassed. And it never had that kind of awkward moment ever that I had to end. Did I come back to that church? I didn't. So that was my memory in a impression there, but yes, we do have another example where you and I, uh, we're singled out. Yeah. Do you wanna, you wanna tackle that one or do you want,
Speaker 0 00:26:46 Yeah, you can just say we were, we were, um, I would guess incorrectly prophesied over, uh, in our first church service there and you and I are big fans of, you know, we, we believe in privacy, I would, you know, scripture teaches, it's the one gift we should be praying for the most. And so I'm 100% pro prophecy, right? Just 100% anti false prophecy on things that are so it's, I, we, we went to that service there and it was multiple hours and I remember being pointed out and prophesied over us. And I think it was that I, I had, he sent a keyboard anointing. So, you know, maybe I just misunderstood it. I was thinking a musical keyboard. Maybe I was anointed on a, a digital keyboard and actually what we're doing,
Speaker 2 00:27:32 What we're doing now.
Speaker 0 00:27:33 So blog writing and doing those kinds of things. Yeah. King of the keyboard. So maybe I misunderstood it, but then there was prophecies about our wives and I think mine was bad. Mine was something like that using your good mind was bad. And it was great a little bit much for a first service. So, yeah. Do you remember anything else about that?
Speaker 2 00:27:51 There was a lot I remember about that, but I think that, that CA I think I was David and you are my servant, even though you were the senior pastor and I was the associate pastor, and that was pretty funny. Uh, but, uh, yeah, so, uh, there was a lot, a lot that we learned in that, uh, that experience. So
Speaker 0 00:28:08 A lot of fodder for podcast episodes. It was great. We should go on or off and buddy,
Speaker 2 00:28:12 We should. Yeah, but we can go on and on, but why don't you lead us home? I think you have the, the next one here. So
Speaker 0 00:28:18 Yeah, the last one we'll wrap up with this is, uh, they're wondering if they have to give a visitor is always wondering if they're going to have to give, um, especially if they're, if you're a plate passing church or, um, uh, a, I dunno, what other ways there are to do it now, where you can, you know, I, I, I've been to churches where they have things on poles that they stick out a pole in front of a bucket, on a pole and they pull it back. There's been all kinds of ways to do it there, but when that offering plate comes by, they wonder, do I have to do that? Um, I ha I've heard all kinds of philosophies on this. I'll tell you where I land on it is that I would communicate very clearly that I do not expect. I might even say I do not want the visitors to give, we may come for the first time.
Speaker 0 00:29:04 Yeah. So that was the habit that I was in there for that I, I kind of took on as a pastor. I would finish my message. And that's when we did our offering time, we'd say, Hey, we also do offerings as we take communion here at our church. If you're here for the first time, don't put anything in there. There's not any kind of expectation for that. We don't want you to do that. We want this to be a free gift, and it's not because of your money that we want you to be here. So I think answering that question is really important because there is this innate guilt that comes over people when that bucket passes by, or when they go to that offering box. And everybody else is maybe putting something in. But I think especially now with digital giving options and those good things, and again, most churches, most of our income is coming in digitally. Nowadays, most people aren't putting something in the box or in the plate when it comes by. So maybe it's not as bad as it used to be. But I think just communicating that to people that it's not expected nor even really wanted this sure. From visitors when they come for the first time, that'll really help them to be put at ease.
Speaker 2 00:30:05 Yeah, that's good. No, I think I don't have much to add. It just reminded me of another memory that I'll maybe, uh, uh, we'll finish with and maybe provide a laugh. But whenever I was, uh, uh, new and being, uh, made a decision to follow Jesus, I was getting baptized. It was a special day. My family showed up and, uh, my, uh, my grandfather came to and we were, because I was getting baptized we're at the very front of the church, uh, sitting there and the, uh, offering plate was, was passed. And I remember just seeing this cold look, come over my grandfather. And he was not a church goer. He, he was Catholic when, uh, when he was young, but, uh, uh, stew kept far away from churches, but long story short, the offering plate was passed by. And I could see this just really smoldering angry kind of look, come over his face.
Speaker 2 00:30:56 He proceeds to open up his wallet and he's got a whole lot of cash in there and he's sifting through that. And he, must've taken about maybe almost three minutes and while that plate, and, and here we are that the ushers over here waiting for the plate to get back to them and, and, you know, any, after all that water cash and spending that amount of time, he pulls out $1 and puts it in the plate. Uh, yeah. So to just kind of spite the church, and I will never forget, you know, this has been a good podcast. It's brought back a lot. It brought out a lot of memories. So hopefully we've provided some, some humor to our listeners too. So
Speaker 0 00:31:34 I feel like I've heard all of your stories before. That's a new one to me though. He, and I love that. What about your
Speaker 2 00:31:38 Grandpa surprised he hadn't told you that one. Yeah. The
Speaker 0 00:31:41 $1 spite gift. Yeah. That went into the offering plate there. So, yeah, I mean, I suppose there could, maybe someone's going to comment in there that, you know, we think visitors, we don't say this because one time a visitor gave us a, a $50,000 donation or something like that, I guess that's all possible. And if that did happen to do, let us know in the comments down below, we'd love to hear those kinds of stories about how we're wrong on this. But yeah. I think all things being equal, you're probably better off to make it known that you don't expect nor even desire visitors to give on their first visit there to the church there. Yeah. So I think that's really something that, uh, you can, you can take home with you there. So I think we'll leave it at that for today. Hopefully this has been helpful in helping you think through some, with some fresh eyes, some of those things that visitors might be thinking when they're there at your church, if it has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate review, subscribe, drop a comment down below us here. Uh, we want to thank you guys so much for being a part of our reach, right family each and every week. Uh, we hope to see you next week and God bless
Speaker 1 00:32:44 God bless.
Speaker 0 00:32:48 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online at reach, right studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
