How your Church can Effectively Engage with Visitors

If your church doesn’t have an effective plan for engaging new visitors in your community, your church will become stagnant and insular. And really, it will stop becoming what Jesus wants his Church to be — a place where more and more lost people are finding belonging in his kingdom.

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So how does a church start engaging visitors more effectively?

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Your Church Website

The most important way, in our opinion, a church can start engaging more visitors starts with a great church website. Before someone ever steps into your doors on a Sunday morning, just about always they first find themselves on your website learning about your church.

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This is where you have a precious opportunity to engage these visitors by showing what your community is all about. And when you have a great church website, not only does it reflect your church personality and beliefs, it also makes it seamless to find all the right information that a visitor is looking for.

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But the stakes are high. studies say you have about three seconds to engage someone when they visit your website. In those vital three seconds, people are deciding whether to keep scrolling and learning more about your church or to go back to their google search or wherever else they’re coming from.

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When people don’t find what they’re looking for on your church website, they are quick to search somewhere else to find it.

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So it is vital that your church has a website that quickly engages visitors, functions great on all devices, and implements an effective strategy for displaying the right information at the right time. Otherwise the odds are low that they will choose to visit your church on Sunday.

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Your Sunday Experience

After your compelling church website does it job and gets people to visit on Sunday, it’s important to find ways to engage visitors before, during, and after Sunday services. These visitors went out on a limb to try out a community where they probably don’t know anyone and are likely intimidated, it’s your job to meet them where they’re at and help them feel seen.

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Before and after services, it’s important to establish a culture amongst your church staff, volunteers, and even entire community to look for people who look lost or alone and to start a conversation with these people. These small acts will go a long ways for a visitor who’s hoping to belong in this new community.

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Additionally, don’t forget to greet and recognize visitors during your services as well. It’s a great rhythm for a church to set aside five minutes in each Sunday service to speak to visitors and highlight an action step for these visitors.

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When presenting this action step, it should be very clear and straightforward what you're asking visitors to do. It should be either a simple URL that they should head to on your church website, scanning a QR code, or asking them to head to a connect table after service.

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One more pro tip, don’t give visitors too many options when presenting an action step for them. Really it should be one or two options for them otherwise they will begin to feel overwhelmed. Since they are brand to this environment, they are already taking in their surroundings and overstimulated as it is. The last thing they need is five potential options to consider and try and decide what to do. Instead, give them one or two options, make it simple, and they will be more far more likely to take an action step.

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Your Visitors Class

What is the primary action step that you should invite visitors to? We’d recommend some sort of visitors class where someone can learn more about the church, it’s leaders, and get a chance to ask some questions. This class should also provide some next steps for belonging.

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In addition to the class itself, one of the most vital things is the timing of this visitors class.

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When someone is checking out a new community, there’s a short window available to continue to engage these visitors. They’ve made the step to check out a Sunday service, which is a big hurdle within itself, and now you get a chance to present another step they can take to find belonging while there’s some momentum.

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It’s crucial to provide an action step in the near future for these visitors where they can continue to find more belonging at your church. Your visitor’s class shouldn’t be months away, but within two or three weeks away. If you don’t have the means to have a class this often, provide another way to create a personal connection with these visitors. — that could be through a phone call or a coffee.

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Lastly, during this class make sure to provide more next steps for these visitors to continue to find belonging in your community — make it clear for how to join a group, a volunteer team, or to check out specific ministries. You want to keep that momentum going as they slowly find their place.

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And to be clear, you’re not forcing or manipulating them to take these next steps, but you’re just continually giving them a clear, simple invitation to engage deeper and deeper with your community.  

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Conclusion

When your church makes intentional steps to engage visitors, you're creating a wide open door for people to start finding belonging in your church and ultimately giving them opportunities to find Jesus.

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It first starts with your church website and then spreads to your in-person experience on Sundays as well as other touch points throughout the life of your church. These strategies don’t guarantee that visitors will engage, but you’re making it as seamless as possible for visitors who want to take their next steps.

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How We Can Help

At Sunday Best, we believe great digital touch points will lead to more life-changing, in-person relationships. Our team has over a decade of experience in helping churches transform their websites into outreach tools that turn curious, online observers into excited, in-person visitors.

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Each of our websites are custom-made to best reflect the heart and personality of that church, with a special emphasis on engaging and connecting to visitors. Every church is different, so we’ve made sure our model is flexible to fit your needs. You can view our different packages here.

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Want to figure out if your website is actually working? Get our ultimate church website checklist.

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