Avoiding ‘the cringe’: 3 ways to make your church ‘invite-worthy’

I can easily think of two disastrous first visits I've made to Baptist churches, neither of which was welcoming (to say the least) to visitors:

1. I was invited to a friend's baptism at his church. As I drove up to the building, it looked abandoned. A window had several cracks, the paint was peeling, the concrete of the front sidewalk & steps was crumbling, and the lawn was patchy, overgrown, and filled with weeds. Furthermore, I found the front door to be locked. It turned out that everyone at the church always used the door around back.
2. I drove up to this church & parked. As I walked in the front doors, the two young girls who were apparently greeters simply looked at me in silence. Neither said a word, even after I said "Good Morning." I sat down in a pew toward the back of the auditorium, only to have someone come over & sternly tell me to move someplace else. I was sitting in someone's "saved" seat. In my new seat, a man wearing an "Usher" badge walked over to me. I thought to myself, "Well, at least somebody is going to greet me." Nope. He proceeded to scold me for not being "properly dressed" for church. (I was wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt, a long-sleeved pullover sweater, tailored dress slacks, and dress shoes. My offense?: I lacked a jacket & tie.) Looking back, it's a wonder to me that I didn't stand up & walk out then & there.

And as Larry notes, one of the key things to watch out for is the cultural assumptions that are so ingrained in our culture, we hardly think about them anymore. Then you've got the signs--poor lawn and property care, no greetings, etc..--that tell you that your church is just getting tired, and you need to re-evaluate so that the important things get done.

To illustrate, my step-dad's uncle was a VP of quality at GM, and he related a story of visiting a wheel manufacturer where the lawn wasn't mowed, all the streetlights were out, etc.. He then went inside and found that the lights were half out, half covered by grease, to the point that nobody could really see what they were doing--and the rest of the plant was a pretty bad mess as well.

So he stopped the tour and told all the managers and principal engineers to go to the conference room, where he related the factory's poor performance at GM, and noted that he hardly had to go inside the plant because the outside showed that nobody there cared. You can do the same thing with your church.

But don't let it stop with the externals; my relative's next visit saw the lawn and lights immaculate, but once he stepped inside the facility, it was exactly the same. Like it or not, people notice these things.