My wife and I just returned from Disney World. It was a great trip as we have three in our family with birthday's the beginning of February. Celebrating a child's birthday at Disney is magical.As we drove home, we had the time to think about how well Disney handles crowds, how welcomed we felt when we arrived and how pleasant the experience was, regardless of the crowd, weather or line.
The church could learn a lot from Disney. Here is the brief list we compiled:
1) As people enter the church lot and find a place to park, why not have an area and an entrance dedicated to parents with children that will need to be checked in? Parents with children have some unique needs and special consideration. If we tailor the experience to them, it will be better than if we had to have them find their way through the crowds.
2) Speaking of parking, while many churches have gotten larger and parking more expansive, only a few churches with large parking lots have shuttles and golf carts to transport people in from the outer regions. I'm not going to recommend we name the lots "Goofy" and "Mickey" but "Matthew, Mark Luke and John" could be interesting location names.
3) Rarely is the church as crowded any Sunday as Disney is on an off-day. However, we could learn a lot about crowd management from Disney for our Easter and Christmas services. Moving people from the lobby to the auditorium in a queue or at least with smiling people pointing the direction may be a little too "Disneyesque" but likely would work. Also, filling the seats from the front to the back and blocking off areas that are not needed only makes sense, which is likely why we resist it so much in the church.
4) Disney didn't build a park or a ride to be able to accomodate 100% of the people that may want to experience it. They expect that the park or ride will be utilized over and over, and that people would be somewhat indifferent if they got a chance to ride it now or 30 minutes from now.
While many churches have decided to offer multiple services so that they better utilize (i.e. be better stewards of) the resources they have, many churches continue to have expensive and over-sized auditoriums. Many churches unfortunately have entire buildings that are utilized no more than a few hours on Sunday and perhaps a Wednesday evening.
5) Disney ensures that every greeter, every attendant, every security officer, every retail employee wear name tags. I found out that 'Monique' was from my home town because her home town was also printed on her name tag. Disney calls all of their employees "cast members" and all are trained to be knowledgable, courteous and helpful. If people don't know the names of the cast members that work at Disney, it has little downside. However Disney believes names are important in creating community.
Conversely, how many people attend church on a weekly basis with virtual strangers? They see many of the same people weekly and may smile politely but have no name to go with the face. The opportunity to use name tags is an important start with those that we call ushers, greeters and volunteers. Wearing name tags can apply as well however to literally everyone that attends on a regular basis. If we want to be a community, it likely starts with a name.
