Hospitality is Bigger than First Impressions
Introduction
If you're a ministry leader responsible for building a hospitality culture, you've probably invested real time and money training your welcome teams. In our own Hospitality Volunteer Training workbook, we spend four sessions unpacking how to prepare a place for the person walking through your doors for the first time. We call it “60-Second Shepherding” for a reason: those first sixty seconds matter enormously. They can open a door for the gospel or quietly close one.
But here's the danger for those of us who design these systems. If our entire hospitality strategy lives in those sixty seconds, we've built a culture that's warm at the front door and thin everywhere else — and discipled our people to mistake a first impression for the whole point.
First Impressions Were Never the Goal
The goal of hospitality, as we say in the “Hospitality Volunteer Training” workbook, is to shepherd people to Jesus — not just direct traffic or make someone feel comfortable for a Sunday morning. That's true for the guest in the lobby. But shepherds don't stop watching the flock once the sheep are inside the gate. They keep watching. They keep noticing. They keep tending.
The New Testament never limits hospitality to a welcome strategy for outsiders. It's one of the New Testament “one anothers” — the recurring commands that describe and prescribe what Christian community looks like lived out. “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” (Romans 12:13). “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” (Hebrews 13:1–2) — “Be hospitable” is a command aimed at a community of believers who already knew each other, reminding them not to let familiarity dull their care. “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you” (Romans 15:7).
Notice who these verses are written to. Not greeters. Not first-time guests. Churches. Believers who'd been walking together for years. Paul and Peter weren't worried the church would forget how to welcome a stranger for one Sunday — they were worried the church would forget to keep welcoming “one another.” Biblical hospitality is far more than welcoming the stranger with a first impression; it’s welcoming those who are known and feel like a stranger that morning for whatever spiritual struggle they are facing. Becoming overly familiar can be dangerous to Christian community. If we fail to entreat one another in being welcoming, overlook a burden our brother or sister are carrying, or become unapproachable and distant, we distance ourselves from a Christlike imitation and presence to others.
The Person Who's Been Here for Twenty Years
Remember the woman in Luke 8 who reached out to touch Jesus in the crowd. She'd suffered for twelve years, and by the time she found Jesus, she was worn down, overlooked, and easy to miss in the crush of people pressing in around him. Jesus stopped anyway. He didn't reserve His attention for people meeting Him for the first time.
Now, think about the person in your church who's been there twelve years, or twenty. They've volunteered, taught Sunday school, sat in the same pew through job losses and quiet seasons of doubt nobody asked about. They don't trigger any of the “new person” cues our training teaches volunteers to watch for. They know exactly where the bathrooms are — and that's precisely why a church can get remarkably good at “stopping to see” the newcomer while walking right past the member who's quietly drifting, grieving, or tired of always showing up and never being asked how she's doing.
Widening the Aperture
None of this means first impressions don't matter — they still do, and a church that welcomes guests poorly still has real work to do. But if you lead assimilation, volunteers, or discipleship, it's worth asking whether hospitality shows up anywhere in your strategy besides the front door. Does your culture ask the same question of longtime members that you train greeters to ask of guests — How can I best serve them? Do your shepherding structures — small groups, care teams, staff check-ins — extend the same attentiveness to the member who's been faithfully present for twenty years as they do to the guest who showed up last Sunday?
A church that only builds hospitality for newcomers has furnished a great front porch and left the house empty. As leaders, our job isn't just to train a welcome team — it's to shape a whole congregation around the New Testament “one-anothers”, so hospitality becomes less a volunteer shift and more the ordinary shape of how our people belong to each other in Christ.
Biblical hospitality is far more than a first impression. It’s welcoming faith family and reminding them of the grace extended to them through the work of Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus welcomes his bride with arms wide open. The Father warmly invites his children into his presence. We ought to do the same with Christlike hospitality to those who enter the doors of the church the first, second, third, and forever time we greet them.
AUTHOR
Adam Erlichman
CEO and Founder at Build Groups in Dallas, TX. Adam has served as an Executive, Groups, Young Adult, and Youth Pastor at several churches. Author of six best-selling books. See more about Build Groups consulting services to strengthen churches on the following topics:
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