Question:
I thought of this while reading and responding to the "congregation where you lead" thread. How does your church incorporate meet and greet time? Ours has been immediately following the praise set (which is first and last about 20-25 minutes) and has been a walk around the entire church hug, shake hands, visit sort of time that has gotten out of control time-wise. The board talked about this Monday night and has decided to change to a 360 degree turn around only. Some want to do away with it all together. We are having a few issues with flow throughout the entire service and this is one attempt at streamlining things a little.
Answer:
Our church usually puts it right after/before a song. We'll start off with an upbeat song to wake people up, and then have the "meet and greet" time. This usually lasts about a minute at most. We get the congregation back into worship by starting up the next song in the set (also usually an upbeat song...but not always). We usually don't announce that we're starting again because we just start playing the song (maybe with an extended intro). The worship leader may give a few verbal "hints" that we're singing, but it's usually just a phrase or too like "and now let's sing" or something like that.
Answer:
Yeah, we generally start with an upbeat song and go into the welcome/meet and greet.
Answer:
Our church leadership decided to do away with it. People are all milling around socializing after Sunday school and before the service starts anyway as there is a 15 minute gap for the music team to warm up/tune up. As far as visitors, we have people whose role it is to welcome them when they are walking in and hog tie them on the way out (just kidding). The pastor also goes to the main door during the closing song so that he can be ready shake hands with everyone on their way out and he also pays special attention to visitors. The meet and greet had just gotten to be more and more of a loud chaotic distraction than anything else.
Answer:
We, too, have a "greet your neighbor" time directly following the music and preceeding the announcements, offering and sermon.
It lasts about a minute.
Answer:
Ours generally happens after the main portion of congregational singing and lasts a few minutes. It's one of my favorite things about this church, that people are actually interested in greeting each other with more than a quick handshake and smile.
Answer:
Usually for us, it's a song, announcements, and then we call it "hug your neighbor" Usually it takes a long time, but they start to cut you off by just starting to talk into the microphone, and people make it back to their spot.
Answer:
We traditionally do this during our opening song. Our typical Sunday opens with a fairly fast song. After we sing the first verse, I encourage everyone to "greet one another", at which time folks begin to mingle about the church while we keep playing an instrumental interlude.
After a verse or two's worth of instrumental, I encourage everyone to "resume singing" once again at which time everyone returns to their respective seats and we go from there.
I have mixed emotions about this tradition. I like it and I feel like it helps to make guests feel welcome (I hope!), but I sometimes worry that it's breaking the "flow" that we're always trying to achieve. So we don't do it every service, particularly if we start with a more meditative, worshipful song.
Rick <><