DON'T VISIT MY CHURCH...

I am HUGE on first impressions. If you ask any of our people at DAG they will tell you that I talk alot about how important first impressions are to me. I just read a series of posts from Herbert Cooper. He's the Senior Pastor of People's Church in Oklahoma City. He took a look at first impressions from a different perspective. I'm sure after reading this...you'll want to make some changes this week:)

Every Sunday, many churches have guests visit their church. Either we are ready for the guest when they arrive, or we are not. We never get a second chance to make a first impression. I want to share some ways to ensure guests have a horrible experience at our churches.

1. Don't have anyone in the parking lot to greet them or to assist them.
2. Have greeters at the front door who never smile and never brush their teeth. Be sure they give guests the impression that they wish they would have never shown up.
3. Don't have large, easy-to-read and understandable signs in high traffic areas of your building.
4. Make sure your bathrooms stink, the trash cans are full and you are out of soap and paper towels. It's very important that you don't tidy up the restrooms in between services.
5. Make sure your ushers sit all of the first time guests in the front row of the church. Every guest loves to parade down the aisle in front of the entire church.
6. Be sure to start the services late. Who really cares that the service was supposed to start at 10AM but begins at 10:17AM? Guests really do love to sit in an auditorium wondering what's going on and when is it going to start.
7. Make the guests stand up and introduce themselves during the service. When I visit a church, that's my favorite thing to do. :)
8. Make sure you don't have any children's ministry. After all, a five-year-old kid enjoys listening to a sermon on "Reasons Why Jesus Will Return By 2010 Because These Are The Last Days And The Mark Of The Beast Is On It's Way And Somebody Just Spotted The Anti-Christ."
9. Let praise and worship go for an hour and a half and then be sure to preach for two hours.
10. It's very important that you spend 45 minutes taking up the offering. Be sure to use gimmicks and manipulate people into giving.
11. Take time to announce everything going on in your church from birth to seniors. If you really want to make an impression, have four or five people pass the microphone to make all of the announcements.
12. Start studying for Sunday's sermon on Saturday night at 10PM.
13. Be sure the sermon does not apply to anybody's daily life. The sermon should be full of revelation but have no application.
14. Don't have worship practice. Just have the worship team show up 5 minutes before service starts and let the Spirit take over.
15. Let people in the audience play their own musical instruments and then sit all of your guests right next to them.
16. It's very important that you do not do any follow-up with your guests. Keep everybody so busy that nobody takes time to send a letter, email or make a phone call to all of the guests.