Resources e-letter 25:5 - September 2025

NEW: How to become a welcoming church

This is the sixth DIY Workshop to be published on this website and sets out the training I have led on this topic over many years. My plan is to make my former training events available to everyone with guidance for a leader/enabler and a set of handout sheets for participants.

This new workshop offers a three-hour training session for welcome teams at church services or even for the whole congregation. This event has always been great fun! It is based on a number of practical exercises with a certain amount of input too. There are six sessions.

1:  What would a visitor make of us?
Three case studies of newcomers who arrive for a service

2:  Does everyone here feel at home?
But what would they see of the welcome we give each other?

3:  God welcomes each one of us
Bible input from the story of the Lost Son and instructions from the book of James

4:  The Good Welcome Guide rep arrives
A number of tests to show how welcoming we really are

5:  Two ideas to enhance welcome
Take-away literature and the idea of a specialist Newcomers Team

6:  Always speak to strangers
The main exercise: words to use and avoid, principles to follow and errors to avoid

Using this material and its handout sheets any church can lay on a great training morning for all their welcomers or for the whole congregation.

DIY Workshop W6,  How to become a welcoming church, is now available without charge on the DIY Workshops index page of this website.

The new DIY Workshop series now has six items

W1:  How to read the Bible out loud (training for all who do this in services)

W2:  How to run a church vision day (purpose and planning from a clear vision)

W3:  How to get a message across (all forms of communication)

W4:  How to work with volunteers (enabling every-member ministry work in practice)

W5:  How to manage yourself (for Ministers and leaders on handling time and stress)

W6:  How to become a welcoming church (fun training for all welcomers)

These are all available from the DIY Workshops index page – see the link in red above. All six consist of guidance notes for a workshop leader/enabler plus a set of handout sheets to copy and give out to participants. Most have links to other material on the website for greater detail if required. The materials can also be used for individual study, but this is not their main aim.

The plan is to keep the series growing in an effort to put most of my former training material into print and available to all churches.

Please ensure all these materials are widely promoted in your church.  Thank you for your interest in my website.