Michigan Camp Meeting 2025: He Must Increase

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Becoming a Visitor-Friendly Church

Cody Francis

01 A Winning First Impression

02 From Greeting to Serving Part 1

03 From Greeting to Serving Part 2

04 Guest-Friendly Worship Services

05 Guest-Friendly Follow-up

You're about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2025 Michigan Conference Camp held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

So let's go ahead and let's begin with prayer.

Our Father in heaven, we are grateful that you brought us together.

We thank you for each of our churches and for the ministry that they are in our communities.

We want to see our churches more effective in ministry for you.

And so we just pray that you will bless the ministry of our churches, teach us how we can be more effective in reaching souls for your kingdom.

All right, so we are today looking at guest-friendly worship services and we've talked about first impressions and how our website, our Google presence, our physical appearance, the signage in our church, how all of that can be attractive or detracting from people coming to visit us.

And so very important, we looked at kid-friendly churches because we need to have kids in our churches.

And so it brings more interesting things.

There's more food to clean up after the fellowship meal when there's kids.

There's more things get broken and more things that get out of place and things can be noisier during the service, but praise God for that.

Because we are ministering to our kids as well.

And then we looked at the ministry of greeting and how we're to be not just greeters but servers and how that is we should really look at greeters as frontline evangelists for those that are coming to the church.

And it's a different mindset, but it's important.

So I wanna go through today, and I wanna kind of assess and think a little bit about how we are, when our worship services, what it would be like for a visitor to come in.

And most of our worship services are going to be very similar.

What are going to be common components probably in all of our worship services?

Okay, so there's probably going to be a couple prayers.

There's probably going to be an invocation, a pastoral prayer, or an opening prayer, and a benediction.

Sometimes more, but probably at least that.

What are some other common things we'll have?

I think that essentially every Adventist church I've ever been to regularly has a sermon.

And so there's going to be a sermon or the proclamation of God's word.

Okay, so there's going to be some music, right?

It'll almost always there'll be at least a congregational song.

That could be special music as well, or it could be more than that.

Also, can be broader, but there's almost always going to be some special music, or some music.

Not always gonna be special music, but some type of music.

Are there churches here that do not have a children's story?

Okay, so we have, and remind me Alma, that's what I was thinking.

And what's the reason you don't have a children's story?

So that is, there are churches that don't have children's story.

Primarily the reason is because there's no kids.

Now it is interesting after COVID, collecting offering is not always something that happens in every church.

Yeah, so it's not that it used to be that there was always going to be at least 1 offering and but now that there might be or there might not be.

So traditionally, there would be a Sabbath school offering, there'd be 1 envelope that drove for Sabbath school, another envelope that drove for mission offering, and then there'd be the church offering, and then there'd be children's offerings.

So traditionally, there could be up to 4 offerings many times at church.

The Brian Church does not have an offering per se, but they do have a box in the back of the church where you can drop your 5 dollar roll for them.

Yeah, so for churches that don't take up an offering as part of the worship service, there's almost always an opportunity to give in some way, shape, or form.

And I've seen now some churches will have an offering call but not take up an offering.

So they will tell what the offering is about, mention there's a plate at the back, you can do online giving or you can place your offering in at the back and this is what it would be for.

So what else would there be do you think?

Okay so we have some churches that have a health nugget, not very many probably, but some would.

Okay, so a personal ministries focus or something like that, that's not something that is uncommon, Probably not, probably more or less, it's probably the majority do not have that at this point in time, but certainly it's something that is not uncommon.

Okay, you almost always have announcements, yeah?

Okay, so sometimes there's going to be, depending on the size of the church, a time where There's some praise and some prayer, some interaction from the congregation.

Okay, scripture reading, so most churches are going to have a scripture reading.

And you can pretty much guess what that order is going to be, because we're familiar with the Adventist flow of worship.

Now, when you look at, how many of you, was anybody raised Methodist?

What is the, If you compare the Adventist worship order to the Methodist worship order, what would you say?

So in most, and this wouldn't be universal, but in traditional Methodist churches, it's going to be a very similar order because the Adventist worship style kind of was based on Methodism.

And so Methodism came first, and there were obviously Ellen White was a Methodist, and there were other Methodists, and so it's a similar liturgy.

And just to comment, that's why I was so comfortable in the Adventist Church, as a visitor for the first time, is because it was exactly like my church that I was attending.

So you were comfortable there because of that.

I was aware of that, but when we were up north, my wife somehow or another got connected with somebody that she was the pianist, organist, musician for a Methodist church.

And so, but she wanted to go on vacation sometimes, and so she asked my wife to fill in, which she did, and she was talking with the pastor, and was like, yeah, we came out of the Great Awakening and that, and our service is very, very similar to yours.

And so, and there were other similarities that they were talking about as well.

Now what would you say, I haven't done this yet, but I think I'll go ahead since there's a whiteboard right here and we'll see if the markers work.

What would you say are the non-negotiables in worship?

Now we haven't even talked about Sabbath school.

Maybe we should talk about Sabbath school and say what are some features of Sabbath school.

Okay, so There's almost always going to be a lesson study, right?

OK, there can be a few songs at the beginning.

We have a praise and prayer time in Sabbath school as well.

OK, a praise and prayer time in Sabbath school?

We also do a mic kind of, or we can share, just raise our hands if you have any comments on what we've been reading or you have questions.

You know, it's interesting, if you, nobody said superintendent's remarks.

So, it's, when I came into the Adventist Church, which was about 35 years ago, something like that, There was a superintendents, there was a song and mission report that you would read.

You're shaking your head, you remember this.

And then there's superintendents remarks, and then you broke up and you went to lesson study.

Yes, and also in lesson study, there was everybody raised their hands.

How many times did you sit at the lady of the house?

Series

Becoming a Visitor-Friendly Church

04 Guest-Friendly Worship Services

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

03 What are the Challenges?, Part 01

1h

Preach the Word

05 Delivering the Message

59m

Plenary

Seven Times Washed

1h 11m

Market Gardening Track

Starting a Farm without Experience

1h 4m

Personal Ministries

Special Forces Training - Part 5: Supper Club

56m

Spark Training: Public Evangelism

Spark Training: Public Evangelism- Part 1

57m

What Kept You in the Church

02 What Kept You in the Church

56m

Christ and the Heavenly Sanctuary

04 The Day the Devil Dies

1h 4m

Preach the Word

02 Preparing the Message

59m

Preparing Your Church for Evangelism

01 What is the Church? How Do I Fit In?, Part 01

1h 4m

Stewarding God's Gifts: Faithful Planning for Life & Legacy

03 Making Sense of Savings and Investments

58m

The Sanctuary, 1844, & Why it Matters

02 Doing the Math

1h 3m

Sound Doctrine