Everybody needs a Sherpa when we enter the unfamiliar. It is extremely valuable to know what to expect when you step into something new. Here are a few simple steps you can take to ensure your guests know what to expect.

Over the last year, I have discovered a new hack for making sure no one visiting our church gets forgotten. Whether they are first time guests, just made a decision for Christ, just checked in the kids for the first time or gotten baptized, I can count on this one hack to connect with them all.

In this post, I am going to create a short photo scrapbook from a location in Israel to demonstrate something I call The Power of Place which I believe can make or break your engagement efforts with people at church.

One interesting way to mark the journey of a relationship might be the important questions asked that brought the relationship to new levels. 

I believe the questions we ask guests at our church also have the power to take the relationship we are building between them and our church, and between them and God, to a deeper level.

Here is a list of 8 questions to ask your guests, and great places to ask them: 

If the definition of insanity is to do the same things over and over again but expect different results, then it follows that sanity would be to start doing more of the things that give us the results we want. 

That's what we started doing in 2016 in our assimilation ministry at Eastside. It was a bold move.

Your Yelp app is pointing to a new reality in how guests at your church make decisions about where they are willing to spend their time and why. So here's what I'm learning about promoting our assimilation environments…

I have learned something about entertaining in my home: people don't always sit where you want them to. But when I dragged 2 $17 chairs to the edge of the lawn, my guests started to bee-line for the best view in the house—the one they would consistently forfeit before.

That’s when I learned that the key to changing behavior is actually changing your environment—and I see 2 principles we need to keep in mind when it comes to the guests of our church.

There is an episode of "Friends" where Monica and Phoebe are desperately trying to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's cookie recipe. It is beyond words. 

This scene from America's favorite friends shows us that sometimes the most elegant and powerful realities boil down to a simple recipe.

Have you ever taken a "free" vacation to a time share resort? You go because you feel the need for a break, have the need for a deal, and are willing to pay the price which is sitting through a presentation and a pitch for a few hours-one that could result in your buying-in to the "resort lifestyle". If you are like me, you have been willing to pay that price as long as they a willing to hear a "No" at they end of it. 

Despite our aversion to this experience, this is unintentionally how we treat guests when they want to become part of our church.