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Today we interview Debi Hullinger the connections director from The Chapel in Akron, Oh and we great some great tips and resources.

Make Your Guests Feel Welcome

First things, they are not visitors. Visitors are those people that show up unannounced. You prepare for a guest (bake a cake? clean the house? etc).  But you can make them feel special in many ways such as:

1. Give them assigned parking (then you don’t have to guess if they are a visitor or not).
2. Give them a gift (like the book Anchor for the Soul), and have them fill out a card.
3. Have people designated to greet them.
4. Have a PLAN to DO SOMETHING with that card you have them fill out.

That guest to makes a first impression in as little as seven seconds. At that point they decide if they want come back again (before a song has been sung, a sermon has been preached, etc.).

The Attitude of the Chapel

Debi explains at how its nice on Sundays when they “bring the Church inside.” During the week the congregation is the church as they are “out there.” They occasionally hold classes on evangelism using the curriculum “Just Walk Across the Room” ( I just bought this audio book from Audible and its awesome). They have a library (why not pool all your Christian related books so your congregation can have a constant stream of knowledge).

It Was Nice to Worship With You

One thing you can do (regardless of your church size) is to look around you at the end of the service and find someone you don’t know. Go to them and say, “Hi I’m ___ I don’t think I’ve met you before. It was nice worshiping with you. Then take a few minutes and chit chat. Now next week you have a new friend. Find another person you don’t know. Maybe introduce your new friend to the person you met last week.

Music

Green Bananas by the Rev. Jimmie Bratcher

I had the pleasure of meeting Jimmie in California at a podcasting convention. This song is great fun with a great message. We don’t know when Christ is coming back. It might be a year from now, it might be tomorrow, so don’t sell me no green bananas.

Coming In the Future

In future episodes I will be talking about the book Fusion, my Connection Power demo, your website, and more.

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