Greeting Not Freaking

This past weekend we received this comment regarding one of our zealous greeters:

“I love his passion and energy, but the greeter that wants to shake everyone’s hand kind of freaks me out a little. I keep thinking about the germs! I know some of that is my problem, ha. Maybe he can just smile and say hello?“

It is a great comment. This is a great example of why we do comment cards in the first place. We learned something that we were not aware of. These comments are our eyes.

But how do we respond? Do we say, “Sorry, but we are a friendly church. Deal with it!!!” Or “Just shake his hand and carry some hand sanitizer in your pocket!!” That is not exactly our response. Here is what I said:

“I read your comment from the weekend regarding an aggressive greeting issue. I want to say that I agree with you and am sorry that we made you feel uncomfortable. I think it is an issue of training, and I am going to work on that. As you know, we try to make Hope as welcoming a place as possible without making people feel uncomfortable. We do not slap name tags on folks. We do not make visitors stand up during the service. We do want people to feel welcome and yet, be as anonymous as they want to be.

With that in mind, our shaking hands policy has always been to shake the hand of someone who reaches out to shake your hand but to not initiate the hand shake.

Thanks for pointing this out. We are going to spread the word so we don’t freak people out”

Each church has to come to their own conclusion as to what best fits their culture when it comes to welcoming and greeting people who walk through their doors. As for me and my church, no shaking unless shaken upon — or something like that….