Thom Rainer has become the guru of all things local church. This book, another of the small, attractive, hardback volumes published by B&H Publishing that he has turned out over the last few years, teaches us how to become a welcoming church. It’s not so much a book of suggestions as one of necessity because all of its recommendations are drawn from real data from church visitors.

Rainer explains that visitors often don’t rate our friendliness, facilities, or services in the way we do. Our friendliness is often in “holy huddles” that excludes visitors, our facilities are laid out nicely only because we’ve had years to get used to it, and our services are not as geared to visitors as we have allowed ourselves to believe.

Chapter 1 chips away our determined belief that we are welcoming and asks us to be willing to do a true evaluation. He warns us that we may be in for quite a shock. In this chapter, he explains what consistently bothers visitors (hint: it has nothing to do with doctrine or gospel faithfulness) and what makes for happy visitors. As I read over these lists, I marveled that there was no spiritual element, just practical things that we could work on. Chapter 2 goes on and give us what he calls a confidential report where he digs deeper into how our churches are viewed by visitors. Chapter 3 looks at the practical items of signage, parking, and websites. Chapter 4 describes how visitors expect a safe and clean church and what is most important on that list. Chapter 5 explains greeters and welcome centers while Chapter 6 is a concluding chapter. There is an appendix with a church facility audit and secret guest survey.

If you are familiar with Rainer’s work, this book is classic Rainer. I happen to be blessed to be a pastor of a friendly church yet see several things on these pages that we need to shore up. This book is a practical, top-notch work and I highly recommend it!

I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.