One Opportunity
It was our anniversary so my wife and I decided to go out for dinner. It was a last minute thing, so we didn’t make a reservation anywhere. I suggested we go to this one restaurant in town on the main drag – a place we’d driven by hundreds of times but had never yet tried in our nearly ten years of living here.
The starter and the mains were average, if not underwhelming. But the dessert was where this restaurant’s game fell apart. We both ordered Sticky Date Pudding, an Australian classic. “Pudding” here doesn’t refer to a gelatinous goo, but what’s supposed to be a soft and moist cake. Except my wife’s wasn’t. It was an impenetrable mass of dough akin to a hockey puck. While Rose was chipping her dental enamel on that, I waited and waited for my SDP to arrive. It took until well over 20 minutes after Rose had received hers. I was about half-way through mine (which was soft and moist) when I suddenly realized that the ice cream the menu promised was missing from both of our SDPs. When the waitress came by the collect our plates, we complained about the issues. She said she would knock the desserts off our bill. I said to Rose, “That’s how you avoid getting a negative review on TripAdvisor.” But when I came to the counter to get the bill and pay (as you do in Australia), the waitress told me I was going to have to pay for one of the SDPs. When I reminded her of what she said earlier, she argued with me, “But you ate the whole thing.” She finally agreed to only charge me half the price for my SDP. Walking out, I said to Rose, “That’s how you still end up getting a negative review on TripAdvisor.” We will never go to this restaurant again.
The restaurant had one opportunity to make a good impression. With their average meal, poor dessert, and even worse service, they blew it. They could have redeemed themselves at the end still, but they dropped the ball. Now they not only lost us as customers, but many friends and family we’ve talked to about the experience, as well as those who will read my review.
It got me thinking about church. How many times does it happen that a visitor has a really unfriendly experience their first-time at church? You could have the best “meal” on offer in the city, the best preaching of God’s Word, but if a visitor isn’t welcomed in a friendly way that first impression can turn them right off and they won’t come back.
To be clear, I’m not saying that churches need to make all kinds of liturgical changes to cater to visitors. I’m not saying that churches need to adjust their preaching to focus on visitors – though it is a good idea to be thoughtful if visitors are present and don’t assume everyone knows the lingo you’re using. What I am saying is that some friendliness goes a long way in making a good first impression.
In his book Surprising Insights from the Unchurched, Thom Rainer emphasizes the importance of first impressions. He did research which showed the importance of friendliness and welcoming facilities. He wrote, “Ninety percent of the formerly unchurched indicated that some factor about the people or the facilities impacted their decision to return for another visit. Most of those indicated that their decision to return was made within a few minutes after they arrived at the church” (p.93). Now, Rainer is frank about his initial bias against the importance of first impressions. Any consideration of first impressions might be symptomatic of consumerism. But he writes, “When I begin to see the first impression issue as one of excellence more than pleasing an insatiable consumer appetite, my perspective changes” (p.94). First impressions matter because of who we represent. We should pursue excellence, also in friendliness, because the church represents Christ in this world.
A business like a restaurant is typically only concerned for its bottom line. Our concerns are for something far greater – the honour and glory of God served through the advance of the gospel. We have all the more reason to try our best to give visitors a good impression by being friendly. They might not appreciate our preaching, they might not enjoy our liturgy or our songs, but no one should ever be able to legitimately claim our church was unfriendly. So, if you see a visitor at church next time, just shine a smile, say “Hello, are you new here?” and show the friendly love of our Saviour.
