by Eddie Pipkin

Image by David from Pixabay

My wife and I took a little excursion over to SeaWorld to ride the new roller coaster, Penguin Trek.  It’s always a thrill to ride a new ride for the first time, and beyond the experience of the coaster itself, part of the fun is always checking out how they’ve themed the area and the queue. The last 50 yards of the waiting line included a bridge over the coaster tracks and a descent down some stairs to an open loading area between the bottom of the stairs and the gate area to board individual coaster cars.  We watched as people got to the bottom of the stairs and froze.  There was no direction to stop, no signage to stop, no reason to stop; but since there was, in fact, no attendant there giving people specific instructions (at a point where there traditionally is one), they were stumped.  People could not figure out how to cross the open area and get on a roller coaster when it was their turn.  What seemed obvious . . . was anything but.  Local churches miss this truth all the time.

My wife and I have been on a thousand roller coasters in all sorts of theme parks.  We were looking down on the paralyzed tourists and laughing: “Omigosh, they’re just standing there.”  That is, we were laughing at first, until we realized this hilarity was holding everybody up in line.

Although, most of these people had undoubtedly been on roller coasters before, they probably had never been on this roller coaster before.  They’d never experienced exactly this loading orientation.  There were no clearly painted arrows on the floor, nor blaring repeated announcements about how to proceed, or politely pointing personnel, as would normally be the case.  It wasn’t so much a matter of people not being able to figure out what they should do as it was their concern about getting it right without breaking any rules.  They didn’t want to do the wrong thing.  They just needed a little guidance.

If we’ve been involved with a local church for a long time, we can get frustrated when people seem to be frozen in these sorts of ways.  How to proceed looks obvious to us, so we’re rolling our eyes at people who can’t quite figure it out.  There are several reasons we may possess the ‘secret knowledge’ that makes us dismissive of the hesitation of others:

  • We’ve been part of a local church community our whole lives, so we’ve been signing up for things and participating in things our whole lives.  We’re church life natives!  We know the rhythms and the routines, so we’ve lost the ability to see things with fresh eyes.  We don’t know what it’s like to be a newbie.
  • We are the people who designed the process for signing up or participating, so, of course, everything makes sense to us.  We know what we meant when we wrote the descriptions and directions.  We struggle to read those items with fresh eyes, so we fail at anticipating where people will get off track.
  • We’re OCD personalities who pay close attention and absorb all the details of how and when to do what needs doing.  We love paperwork!  And sign-up apps!  Not everybody does.  It’s just inconvenient white noise to some people, and other people have a lot going in their lives right now that is demanding their attention, so they may not pay close attention to our instructions.  This is not a moral flaw.  It’s just a fact of life.  We can judge people or help people.

If people are not signing up for things, or if people aren’t participating in things, It’s easy to accuse them of misplaced motives, to assume people are lazy or are being intentionally uncooperative.  An alternative interpretation is that they were confused about how to proceed, and that confusion, paired with normal participation anxiety, is enough to derail people’s best intentions.

And there’s also the distinct possibility – it happens! – that people actually tried to sign up or join in and were thwarted in the process.

We owe it to our ministries to be attentive listeners and express our gratitude when someone takes the time to share a process that is not working well.  If we blow off the concerns of those people or make light of them (or, heaven forbid, communicate that they are whiners for mentioning it), we are training people to never share that kind of valuable information with us again.

As for those folks at SeaWorld who were struggling to get aboard their roller coaster, it was pretty easy to analyze the benefits that would have been gained from better floor markings and other directional signage (even though what needed to happen appeared obvious – the signage would have confirmed people’s assumptions and given them permission to proceed in accordance with those assumptions, as would have repeated broadcast announcements).  A big part of the confusion in this case was that the setup was different from what people were used to seeing.  They’d been navigating that theme park all day, ride after ride, and this was the only scenario that looked the way it looked.  Our brains read that difference as a reason to pause and reassess.  Keep that natural response in mind, church leaders: If you’re changing the routine, even in a way that appears obvious, give people some extra reassurance and direction.

What are ways we can be more sensitive to giving people the guidance they need?

  • Lots of easily accessible written instructions, available on multiple platforms.
  • Instructions and descriptions written in clear, straightforward language.
  • Lots of announcements of varying styles, some straightforward and boring, some down with pizazz and excitement.  It’s important to mix it up!
  • Great signage when signage is called for.  Easy to read.  Clearly written.
  • Do everything we can to look at our communications and our sign-up and participation schemes through fresh eyes, from the viewpoint of a community member who is getting connected for the very first time.  It’s very important to make people feel comfortable and to feel that we value their time.
  • Do not assume that people know what churchy terms and expressions mean!  Explain them (half the time, regular attendees only think they know what something means).  Provide a glossary if necessary.  You can make a habit of defining terms, phrases, and names of programs as a kind of celebration, reinforcing their purpose and power.
  • Give people a way to ask questions. Encourage people to ask questions without hesitation if they need to.  Provide a human if necessary!  Invite their questions.  Don’t make them feel bad about asking – think of it as a prime opportunity for personal engagement.
  • For goodness’ sake, test your sign-up processes and be sure that they work correctly.  Review your online and printed informational paragraphs and make sure the facts and figures and dates you are sharing are correct.  If you have sign-up sheets on a table, be sure there are plenty of working pens.  Don’t let small functional details derail the execution of a great idea.

How do you and your team do at ensuring that sign-ups and participation procedures make sense for people and are intuitive to follow?  Do you have a great system in place for reviewing and testing your processes?  Do you ask people how easy it was to get involved or if there are things you could do to streamline the process or make it easier to follow?

You want to do everything you can to make sure they get on that roller coaster ride of ministry with you!  It’s hard enough for folks to work up the nerve to climb aboard; don’t let a little procedural chaos be their excuse for chickening out.

Share your own challenges and earned wisdom in the comments section below.