Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Becoming a Visitor-Friendly Church

Cody Francis

01 A Winning First Impression

02 From Greeting to Serving Part 1

03 From Greeting to Serving Part 2

04 Guest-Friendly Worship Services

05 Guest-Friendly Follow-up

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp, held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, we're grateful for your goodness and we thank you that you have given this day to us and the opportunity to study together.

We pray for your blessing now as we look at having becoming a visitor friendly church in Jesus name.

So we have looked at some various different things.

We looked at having it so people can find you.

All right, so we looked at a first impressions.

By the way, how long do you have to make a first impression?

Yeah, maybe a little bit more than a second, but not much more than 30 seconds.

So that is, and 5 seconds is what, I mean, like individually interacting, you have about 5 seconds to make a first impression.

Still change a little bit within the first minute or so, but not much after that.

And that's a generalization, obviously, but that's why we want to be representative.

We want to have greeters that are thinking of being servers, not just bulletin dispensers.

And then we want to have guest-friendly worship services.

So that does not mean that we are going to go the way a lot of mega churches have gone and be totally immersed in pop culture and not be sharing the message.

But we think about what would it be like for a visitor to come here?

How can I interact with them that they would be the most comfortable?

And there's going to be people that are going to come and are not going to be comfortable no matter what.

I may have, but I had a lady 1 time and she came all the way through evangelistic meetings and then was coming to church.

And as she came, she says, I just can't handle your church.

And so I hope, I tried to, I said, well, I couldn't change that, obviously.

We put a lot of emphasis in our Sabbath schools and we had families up front leading song service and things like that.

So we had emphasized that, and we had a lot of positive energy there.

And so, but you know, I said, you know, maybe here's another church.

Maybe it's not gonna, maybe there's gonna be more your comfort level here.

I actually think what she meant though was that she was just trying to get away from keeping the Sabbath.

So we want to, we want to, there's all, what my point is there's always going to be some people that are not going to respond.

We don't need to think that we have to have, that everybody, if we're visitor-friendly, that everybody is going to flock into our churches.

But we wanna not hinder people in their journey.

So I wanna look at guest-friendly follow-up now.

Not only do you need to make a good first impression, but you also need to make a lasting impression.

And so how do we make a lasting impression, and how do we follow up?

Now I would say that our, the contemporary Christianity, Sunday churches, particularly the kind of the non-denominational churches, are really strong in their follow-up.

And there's a reason for it, because you have a hundred churches you can choose to go to on Sunday.

You generally have 1 or 2 that you can choose to go to on the Sabbath.

And so they have to make a good impression.

They have to win people through friendship and through community.

We want to win them through love and through friendship and through community, but we need to win them to something stronger and a message that is unique and different as well.

So if somebody was only coming because they're our friend, that's not enough.

They need to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

But it is also true that only friends win friends.

So if you don't become somebody's friend you're probably not going to win.

So it goes hand in hand the message and the community.

Sunday churches focus heavily on the community.

Adventists most of the time focus heavily on the message and we've got to bring both together where we're focusing on the message and the community that we have as well.

And these are just questions to ask right here, right now.

Does your congregation seek to engage visitors after the service?

By that I mean, although that's broad, it can be more than just this, but you know, everybody's filing out into the foyer area or something like that.

We should have our people trained so that they're not, oh, hey, hey, Sue, how are things going?

And da-da-da-da-da-da, all of, so they're talking with 1 another.

Now, it's okay to talk to your friends, but we should be focusing on What about the new people?

I've been in churches where first time somebody came to church and you're standing there shaking people's hand and whatever, and as you're shaking their hand and all of that, then the guest is standing there by themselves.

Everybody else is in little groups talking among themselves.

And so maybe not only when they come in, and sometimes guests leave so soon that you can't engage with them.

It's they're flying out the door before the last verse of the closing song, and they're gone.

And you can't force people, so we recognize that.

But we want to, if at all possible, engage and do what we can with people.

And so we need to be focused on, okay, ministering to them, engaging them, and multiple people.

Some of the research says that you need to have 7 friends, and when you have 7 friends, then you'll end up staying.

Now there are those that have no friends and end up staying, And there are those that have 20 friends that end up leaving.

And I have seen where there's people that have developed a close friendship.

And I'm talking not here just about first-time guests, I'm talking about new people, people that have just been baptized, and that real close relationship took them through trials and difficulties that probably would have taken them out if there hadn't been that close relationship with someone in the church.

And so very important that we are fostering that.

And so if we want them to come back, what should we do?

We want them to know, and once again, not just to church.

Maybe you name it, maybe they have an interest in something else and you have something going on that would fit into that interest.

Whether it's the Pathfinders doing a biking thing the next day or landscaping the church work be and the landscape in the front of the church or whatever.

There's things that I've had people that have come and said, oh, they just wanted to work in this area and do this.

Hey, will you be able to make it back next week?

Series

Becoming a Visitor-Friendly Church

05 Guest-Friendly Follow-up

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Preach the Word

01 Giving the Message

1h 1m

Preach the Word

05 Delivering the Message

59m

Seven Keys to Effective Evangelism and Church Growth

04 Would They Even Know?

1h 4m

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

02 What is the Church? How Do I Fit In?, Part 02

1h 1m

End-time Finance

05 Weeping Merchants: The Final Economic Collapse

58m

Reasons to Believe

03 Evidence of Old Testament Archaeology

1h 1m

Principles for Succesful Soul Winning

Interpersonal Relationships - The Art of Hospitality Part 1

42m

Spark Training: Public Evangelism

Spark Training: Public Evangelism- Part 1

57m

Studies in 1 Corinthians

04 Foods Offered to Idols

53m

How to Be a Missionary Without Moving Anywhere

Reaching Specific People Groups in Michigan

1h 10m

What Kept You in the Church

02 What Kept You in the Church

56m

Preach the Word

04 Building the Message

59m

Sound Doctrine