Changing a church one conversation at a time – 18 ideas

How do churches grow? Great preaching, interesting programmes, good music? All of these are hugely important but what sort of conversations we take part in before, after and perhaps in services changes the culture of the church and makes a big difference as to whether they are likely to stick around, settle in and grow up in their Christian lives.

How can we as individuals and as churches ensure that our churches are places where the new-comer is made to feel welcome and community functions through our conversations.

A state of mind

1. Make it your business, a stated prayerful intent, to make a difference to someone else’s life at each church meeting, service or event. Pray that God will use you to speak words of life and hope into someone else’s life.

2. Adopt a deliberate mindset of looking out for others, thinking who’s new, who’s sitting on their own, who looks weary and be strategic in your conversations.

3. Plan to be there early. In your mind think of the church service as starting at least 5 minutes before the service start time rather than 5 minutes after the service start time.

Meeting someone for the first time

4. Look to meet someone you’ve not met before. Don’t leave it to others. You don’t need to be an extravert or have profound things to say you just need to care. If you’re the shy type then try and involve someone else in the conversation.

5. Greet people with a friendly smile and a ‘hello’ even if you can’t stop at that moment to speak with them.

6. Don’t assume someone you meet for the first time is a Christian or even a regular church-goer.

7. Do be discreet in how you ask someone what they believe. Maybe ‘do you have a faith?’ is better than ‘so are you a Christian?’

8. Once you’ve chatted for a few minutes with someone new why not introduce them to someone else and after a brief introduction leave them to it.

Meeting someone a second time

9. When you meet someone a first time try and jot down their name and one or two details. Use that to pray for them in the week.

10. A second conversation, maybe a week later, is often of greater value than a first. The fact that you’ve remembered a name and gone to speak to someone again communicates a great deal about the value you put on someone.

11. Maybe try and introduce them this time to someone who you think that they may have something in common with or appreciate meeting.

General conversation

12. Promote a culture of deeper conversation by remembering a key point from the sermon and one thing that you learned from it. Rather than simply asking ‘what did you think of the sermon’ offer to them instead one way in which you were helped by the sermon and only then ask what they got out of it.

13. Don’t hide behind the fact that if you are in a larger church you may not know the individual

Making it last

14. If you’re hosting church people for lunch why not leave one or two places to be filled after the morning service. That way the newcomer gets an invite to lunch.

15. If you a part of a good social network in the church and there is space for others to join eg group cinema trip or Frisbee in the park why not look to include and involve someone who otherwise might face a quiet weekend.

Church activities

16. Organise a bring and share church-lunch on a regular basis to extend hospitality and welcome. We have one once a month after the morning service and approximately 60% of the congregation stay including a surprising number of visitors.

17. It can be a bit awkward and may not be something you do every week but why not include an opportunity in the service to ‘talk to someone you don’t know’ along with an encouragement to carry on the conversation afterwards.

18. Whether or not you have anything as formal as a welcome desk or welcome team at least ensure that there is someone at the door to offer a friendly greeting as people arrive and a friendly goodbye as people leave.