Calling People That Visit Your Class

Last week I posted about calling visitors to your church in order to invite them to your class.  Today we'll talk about calling people that visit your class for the first time.

It takes a lot of guts to visit a small group study for the first time.  Strangers, new surroundings, questionable coffee...all reasons to be on high alert.  If all goes well, the visitors should feel welcomed and feel comfortable enough to let their guard down a little.  The teacher undoubtedly prepared well and delivered a relevant message.  Maybe they even smiled and laughed a little, walking out the door with a good feeling about the class.

But that isn't the final impression that we leave with them.

Most visitors expect that their visit will be acknowledged by the teacher or class leadership.  We are safe to assume that people that visit a small group atmosphere want to be known, even if they hold back at first.  Ignoring their visit is tantamount to ignoring their existence.  And that's just not what visitors expect from dedicated followers of Christ.  Calling and saying, "Thank you for coming" is a way to express that we consider them valuable.

So now let's talk about the nitty-gritty.

1. Have all visitors fill out a visitor's slip when they visit your class.  You may get visitor slips from the church or have to make up your own.  The slips should ask the visitors to give, at the very least, the date of their visit, name(s), phone number, and email address.  Additional useful items are home address and the name of the person that referred them to the class.
2. Decide who's going to call each visitor.  I taught a single adult class, so I chose to ask one of the men to call male visitors while I called the female visitors.  You may rotate the task of calling visitors each week.  Or you may assign the visitor to a care group and let the care group leader make the call.
3. Call them the week of their visit if at all possible. If they give phone numbers for home, work, and cell, call their home phone first.  If you don't reach a live person, leave a message.  If you can't leave a message for some reason (wrong number, no answering machine), you could try the cell number.  But whatever you do, DO NOT CALL THEIR WORK NUMBER!  It may not be a direct line.  Or they may not be allowed personal calls.  Or maybe they're just busy, you know, working.  It's safe to say that they will consider a call to their place of work an intrusion, which will not leave them with a good impression of your class.
4. Identify yourself, say, "Thanks for visiting" and ask if you can answer any questions.  If comfortable doing so, you may want to ask them if there's anything that you can pray about.  You may be surprised to find that the person that was shy during class completely opens up one-on-one.  Or they may just say, "Thanks for calling, nice meeting you," and you never hear from them again.  Let the conversation flow or end, whichever is more natural.  But if the conversation does flow, don't let it flow too long!  You don't want them to avoid answering your future phone calls because they're afraid that you'll keep them on the phone too long. 
5. Send an email if you don't have a phone number or weren't able to leave a message. 

Go ahead and call.  It may be the deciding factor for the visitor between visiting another class or becoming a member of your class.