I received a question this week in my email:
To make a positive first visit to a church visitors home, our Evangelism Team wants to take a loaf of bread and have a meaningful conversation, do you have a script for Evangelism teams to assist in making a positive impact? Are there topics you want to stay away from? Thanks, Jimmie
In the video, I give my thoughts about this practice for churches that choose to use it.
The home visit after the first visit has been a staple of church growth tips for a long time, but since our culture has changed so much, we need to think about it here in 2009.
After watching the video, one thing I forgot to mention was to be sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. It might be one of those kairos moments where the conversation can go into deep spiritual things. Other times, it might simply be a brief information visit.
Your teams need to be open to deciding on the moment how far to let the visit happen.
After watching the video, what do you think?
What advice would you give Jimmie?
Share with us your thoughts.
Tony says
We do not do home visits for the following reasons:
1. The culture of the city where we live includes the idea that religion is private. There is the thought that “I will come to you if I have questions, but don’t come to me.”
2. There are two church groups in the area that do door knocking and most people wish they wouldn’t.
We have gift bag with a church coffee cup and information for all visitors. We are working on ways to invite them to something – lunch, small groups, events, classes.
EvangelismCoach says
Tony:
Like you, I’m not a big fan of home visits in many areas. I think it had it’s place in our culture, and may still have a place in certain pockets of the US.
In the countries I visited in Latin America, I don’t see this practice happening in the churches I’ve visited. Contact information is usually not acquired until a person stays around for a while, and that presumes the country has an address system.
Chris.
Johnny says
We try to visit every first time visitor. We are Baptist and most Baptist at least in our area expect a courtesy visit when they visit a church. But like you said in the video the visit is less than three minutes and we do not go into the home unless the people insist and we feel lead by the Holy Spirit to lengthen the visit and go into the home. I think most people like to know you care and appreciate their visit to your Church.
EvangelismCoach says
Recently, I was the first time visitor in two different churches, and each more than one time.
Church number 1 and 2 never sent a letter, acknowledgement of my visit, home visit, cookies, nothing.
Even after they made all the effort to make sure I filled out their connection card or visitor contact form.
Even if your church decides not to make a personal visit as talked about in the video, churches should still make some follow up contact.