Welcoming visitors

Our church buildings and churchyards are places of beauty, wonder and awe. These are places where people can feel a connection to God’s love and where they can share in community history, find inspiration, appreciate architecture and craftsmanship, and find companionship. Visitors to your church might include members of the congregation, local residents, tourists, or school children.

The Welcome Guide from Growing the Rural Church is full of ideas to help you offer a warm welcome. This doesn’t mean you need to do additional activities, or make big changes – there are simple things you can do to encourage more people to visit, to engage with your church, and to support you.

The Churches Visitor and Tourism Association promote best practice in welcoming visitors to places of worship. Their top tips for improving the visitor experience are:

• Have volunteers on hand who are approachable and know the history of the church and its key features.
• Provide information on your church – this could be as simple as a leaflet, or a QR code to access this information online, or you might have interactive displays or activities.
• Create a comfortable atmosphere that encourages people to spend time in the church building.
• Invite visitors back – make sure they know about upcoming events and services.

Encouraging new visitors to your church can help reach the wider community and attract new supporters. You should try to have your church building open daily (in fact many insurers recommend this). Remember to ensure there is a way that visitors can make a donation, see information from Mission Resources.

Consider recording how many visitors you get – this will help you know whether what you are doing is working and help you plan future events. It will also be helpful data if you need to apply for grant funding or permission for making changes to your church building. You can record visitor numbers with visitor books, hand held counters at events, or tokens in a jar.

For support on communications, marketing and your online presence, see Communications and Engagement and the Church of England’s Digital Labs.

Heritage Open Days

Taking part in the Heritage Open Days scheme is a great way to encourage new visitors to your church. These are events held across the country every September to celebrate history and culture.