The Art of Church Hospitality

This workshop will be live online via Zoom. A Zoom link will be included in an email sent to you after registration. Not able to attend on this date? Ask us how you can access a recording of the webinar.

Hospitality isn’t just a nice idea to grow your church numbers, it’s a vital function, and doing church hospitality will take extra creativity in the near future because of COVID. The importance of hospitality is repeatedly referenced throughout the Bible, and is a key teaching of Jesus. Too often church hospitality is simply greeting a new person at the door. But how can a church best welcome guests into a service? And as those faces become more familiar, how do you continue to welcome them into broader church life? And what changes need to be made since the pandemic?

This workshop will help you learn to guide your congregation to better understand the need to be hospitable and what that looks like in practice.  We will discuss short-term hospitality as well as long-term hospitality – to warmly welcome a new person and then continue building the relationship to introduce and involve them in your congregation. True hospitality is a relationship that may change the greeter as much as the one being greeted.

Hospitality is not a one-size-fits-all science. It is an artform that requires creativity and adaptation. We will discuss techniques and ideas that can be applied in-person or online. This workshop will be helpful to those on the front-lines of hospitality (ushers, greeters, hospitality committee, etc.), your average congregation member who wants to appropriately welcome guests, and church leaders with the bigger picture in mind. Learn to position your church as the people someone will want to be around when this is all over!

Misty Wintsch is the lead pastor at Lancaster Church of the Brethren. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Management and Development from Eastern Mennonite University and a Master’s degree in Church Leadership (MACL) from Eastern Mennonite Seminary. She was ordained in 2010. Misty is an amateur quilt-maker, a mystery lover, and her favorite color is brown (a fact which amuses her 4 granddaughters to no end).