Don't Waste Your Welcome Center

I’m a firm believer in First Time Guest tents. I think there are strategic, guest-focused, practical reasons for keeping them outside year-round, making them highly-visible – and highly-useful – to guests before they ever walk in the door of your church. But there are a few reasons a First Time Guest tent may not work in your context:

Cost. Yes, it’s an expensive expenditure. But I promise you it will be worth it. Start budgeting for next year right now.)

Location / facility. Perhaps you’re in a rented building where the landlord won’t allow outside tents, or zoning laws frown upon temporary structures of any kind. Or maybe there’s no “good” place to put a tent outside.

Tradition. You’ve never done it that way before. (I say this with love: that’s an excuse, not a reason.)

But perhaps the biggest factor for jettisoning the tent and bringing things inside is weather. What do you do when the weather works for 40 weekends out of the year, but the other dozen it’s the snowy season? Worse, what happens when you live in a very cold / hot / rainy climate, and an outdoor option is all but impossible? That’s where an indoor welcome center becomes a necessity. But as many of you have experienced, a station that is inside can quickly get forgotten. Read More