The Come Back Effect By Jason Young And Jonathan MalmSample

Day One 

Feeling Over Function

Scripture: Luke 10:38-42

Churches love to talk about serving. It encapsulates the concepts of humility, compassion, and going the extra mile. Serving is very action-oriented. But what happens when serving actually hurts someone’s experience at your church? No matter how over-the-top your service is to your church guests, if it doesn’t connect with the emotions of the guest, it isn’t hospitality. Hospitality is about the feeling. 

As a church, we want to remove the negative emotions that might get in the way of ministry. We aren’t trying to manipulate some happy feeling in the hopes someone will come back to our church. We’re trying to care enough for our guests to replace their negative emotions so real ministry can happen. That’s when you start seeing the come back effect—when you care enough about your guests to create an atmosphere where real ministry can take place. 

Hospitality is about caring for the emotions of the guest just as much as it is about serving them, if not even more. That means knowing when it’s time to go above and beyond the call of duty or when it’s time to walk away. Hospitality is about merging the function—the tasks—and the feeling. 

Every time a guest experiences our church, we should honor them enough to deliver the same level of hospitality. But that same level of hospitality might mean responding differently each time, because the experience is about the guest. It’s not about making ourselves feel good about the service we provided. It’s making the guest feel good about the hospitality we showed. 

Many ministries have been “doing” this serving thing for so long that all they worry about is “doing.” We need to reimagine what it means to be the guest and what it means to add feeling back into it. This means prioritizing the feelings of the guest over the tasks we perform for them. 

Life is hectic. What if church could be the place where a guest feels the least hurried? Where the relational moments could provide a safe environment—safe to process through the most difficult moments in our life? Hospitality—connecting feeling and function—is the first step in creating the come back effect. 

What would you say is the difference between serving and creating an atmosphere of hospitality? Does your church tend to excel in one more than the other? In what ways?