Here is a recent 5 Star Review of Church Greeters 101 for Kindle posted on Amazon (here is the link)

As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. And your greeters deliver that first impression to everyone who visits your church. All the work you put into flyers, your Web site, teaching your people to invite friends – it can all be for naught if the visitor isn’t welcomed warmly. Good greeters, however, communicate the love of Christ, and your visitors feel it.

Rev. Walker has put together a very practical guide that will take your greeters to the next level. He asks the questions you need to ask and gives you the checklists you need to check. Many greeters fail at the task simply because they don’t know what to do. This book will tell them what they need to do in ways they will appreciate. As a pastor, one of the hardest things to convey to your own people is that they aren’t being welcoming enough, because they think they are. This book will lead them to be more effective without making them feel badly about the well-meaning effort they’re already putting in. And the value of one extra visitor “sticking” has got to be worth 100X the cost of this book.

Now Available in Kindle and Paperback

Order your copy

• Church Greeters 101 in Paperback
• Church Greeters 101 for Kindle

In Church Greeters 101, I intentionally focus on recruiting and training church greeters and ushers: the volunteer side of your church’s hospitality ministry.

This book is intended as a manual and reference for greeter coordinators, hospitality committees, and greeter volunteers.

I’ve provided appendices to print out and use for training material.

This particular text does not go into

• marketing to get visitors,
• general first impressions ministry, and
• assimilation strategies.

My other eBook (PDF Download only), which is found at http://www.WelcomeChurchVisitors.com, focuses more on the big picture of hospitality ministries–creating a good first impression (presentation of the building, the visitor experience and wow factor).

It has one small chapter on greeters.  Church Greeters 101 now elaborates more in depth about these important volunteers.

This information has developed and refined after years of reading, research and conversation with many church pastors and hospitality committees around the United States and some in Latin America.

This material also reflects the cross cultural work I do in Latin America and Spanish language churches.   As I experience church in two very different cultures, I see differences that often provide insights into why we do things that we do.

Order your copy:

• Church Greeters 101 in Paperback
• Church Greeters 101 for Kindle

Now Available in Kindle and Paperback

EvangelismCoach.org announces the release of Church Greeters 101 in both paperback and kindle formats.

Author Chris Walker has wanted to help churches improve their hospitality ministries and Church Greeters 101 targets the specific ministry of church greeters.

“Over the years, I’ve seen a lack of current and practical material for the recruiting and training of greeters for this vital hospitality ministry,” says Chris.

“People search for my website every day looking for information on how to identify new greeters, as well as provide some practical training for volunteers who might be a little nervous.”

Church greeter ministry is a vital part of welcoming visitors to your church.  They help shape that first impression which in turn, may very well shape a visitor’s journey to Christ.

Sadly, greeting ministry gets neglected, overlooked, or relegated to auto-pilot.  Church leaders end up begging for unmotivated volunteers who fill a space.

Church Greeters 101 leads you forward in starting or relaunching the greeter ministry of your church, covering such topics as:

• how to recruit church greeters,
• ideas to train church greeters, and
• ways to cast the vision for ongoing hospitality ministry.

Kevin Cunningham, former Pastor of Welcome Ministries at a Baptist church in New Hampshire wrote:

I couldn’t possibly recommend a book or author more highly.

For the past 8 years, I’ve lead the Welcome Ministry Teams in my church. I’ve benefited from the author’s resources and training immensely. His work has always been top quality and very helpful to me and those the greeting teams I’ve lead.

Church Greeters 101 is very well written and is filled with practical help to recruit, train and lead the Greeting team(s) to effective and fulfilling service.

Even if you only implemented a couple of the suggestions in the book, it would be worth at least five times the price of the book!!!

Get a copy for yourself. Then send copies to the rest of your team.

If:

• You’ve been asked to recruit greeters for your church greeting ministry.
• You’ve been asked to organize your church greeters, but aren’t quite sure where to start.
• You’ve been asked to train your current greeters but can’t find any adequate training material available.

then Church Greeters 101 is for you.

If you have the responsibility to lead the your church’s greeter ministry, Church Greeters 101 can help you start organizing this ministry to

• improve your church’s welcome experience,
• identify and recruit new volunteers,
• cast a renewed vision for hospitality ministry, and
• take your welcome experience to new levels.

Your church can’t make an impact if your visitors don’t come back. Church Greeters 101 will help you make sure your greeters are NOT the reason visitors stay away from your church.

Where to get Church Greeters 101

Get your copy of Church Greeters 101 direct from Amazon:

• Church Greeters 101 in Paperback
• Church Greeters 101 for Kindle

Church Greeters 101, now available for the Kindle and it’s free reading apps for PCs, tablets, and smartphones, got it’s first 5 star review.

Thanks Kevin for your comments:

I couldn’t possibly recommend a book or author more highly.

For the past 8 years, I’ve lead the Welcome Ministry Teams in my church. I’ve benefited from the author’s resources and training immensely. His work has always been top quality and very helpful to me and those the greeting teams I’ve lead.

Church Greeters 101 is very well written and is filled with practical help to recruit, train and lead the Greeting team(s) to effective and fulfilling service.

Even if you only implemented a couple of the suggestions in the book, it would be worth at least five times the price of the book!!!

Get a copy for yourself. Then send copies to the rest of your team.

Now in its 3rd edition, the Kindle version has been worked over by a proof-reader and pastor to make sure the book is of great quality.

Be on the lookout for the release of Church Greeters 101 in Paperback later this month.

Church Greeters 101 is now in it’s 3rd electronic only edition, released this evening.

Updated with some new lessons learned, plus a section on the following question:

Why bother with Church Greeters?

Some churches I’ve consulted with can’t seem to recruit enough volunteers, people drop out after one or two weeks, some don’t ever want to do it again, and some church haven’t even started a greeting ministry. I hear stuff like

• I can’t find anyone to serve.
• There are not enough volunteers.
• I don’t know how to talk to a visitor.
• Getting volunteers to take the plunge.
• We don’t do it because it’s everyone’s job.
• People say yes, but don’t show up for duty.
• I’m afraid that we will mess up God’s work in someone’s life.

With all the challenges to recruiting and training greeters, we come to the question of why bother?

Why put up with the organizational efforts and human resources it takes to manage such a challenge?

An additional 12 pages have been added to address issues of

• Are greeters necessary at all?
• How to train greeters who think they don’t need training

 Check it out.

A greeter does more than shake hands on a Sunday morning.

Greeters are the front line of your church’s hospitality ministry.

They are a vital part of your organized friendliness that helps members and visitors connect with each other.

Don’t settle for whosoever

Too many churches simply recruit warm bodies to fill this role.

That those jobs are filled without much thought, training, or planning indicates the failure to recognize the special role that greeters have in welcoming your guests and members.

Why another book on church greeters?

After

• six years of writing on church hospitality issues for EvangelismCoach.org,
• reading several different books on greeting ministry,
• conducting live workshops on church hospitality, and
• interacting with users of ChurchGreeterTraining.com,

I’ve noticed the following holes in the information:

• How to organize a greeting ministry
• How to train your greeters / ushers
• And the big one: Greeters want to know what to say.

After all, there are only so many ways one can say “Good morning” at the entry door greeting line.

Take your church greeting to the next level

As part of my work, I’ve talked with several church leaders around the United States who are at the point of organizing some kind of greeting team.

They have ushers at the sanctuary doors, but no greeters at the entry doors.

These churches consider themselves to be friendly, but want to take that friendliness to the next level.

Other churches simply ignore this blessing of hospitality because they either fail to see the need to greet visitors, lack the know-how for how to greet visitors, or simply don’t care and prefer things the way they are.

No other resources like this

According to anecdotal surveys that I’ve done with leaders of greeting ministries, it is clear that currently available material for greeter training is not specialized enough.  The information on the market now is not answering the questions asked of me.

With the exception of two books on the market as of late 2009, much of what I have read contains outdated practices that are not even relevant for today.

Misses a majority of churches.

Some books I’ve evaluated are focused on large campus churches in the American suburbs.

However, nearly 80% of churches in the US see fewer than 100 in worship attendance on a regular basis.

One recent statistic pushes this further, claiming the average worship attendance in America is only 53 people.

These books miss the general church audience.

Not specific enough.

Some resources are focused on the overall picture of hospitality and first impressions that greeters might only get one or two pages of mention.

These books don’t fill the gap in recruiting or training.

Order your copy of Church Greeters 101

This book, in contrast, seeks to fill in that gap and give you some practical steps in training your greeters.

This book’s target audience is greeters, hospitality committees, and those who want to ramp up their greeting process to the next level.

Order your copy of Church Greeters 101 and start taking your welcome up a notch