Male Bonding?

Brilliant cartoon. Like the man in the tie, sometimes church is completely unaware of its man-repelling actions. While we earnestly wish for more men to join, the very things church does can have the opposite effect.

As a side note, the cartoon uses holding hands as an extreme and obvious example of something to NOT do. Whilst there are also other things to also look out for, if you're a church that forces men to hold hands, please stop now.

I once attended a service where the church all held hands for the final song. As a (then) young single man, there is almost no-one it is appropriate to hold hands with for 3 minutes. Definitely not the grandfatherly figure who sat on my left, or the 12-year old girl on my right.

Looking back, I wonder what it was like for married folk. Apart from having your 12-year old daughter hold hands with an unknown man (me) you're holding your spouse with one hand - and someone else's spouse with the other.

No-one benefits from this situation. Except may be the music team. Musicians avoid the awkwardness by playing an instrument. For those 3 minutes they are the envy of all the men in the congregation.

How to turn away 8 in 10 visitors

We know a church's website is important - if the church is looking to connect with the community. Now we know exactly how important it is.

8 out of 10 people visit your website before attending
Some churches work on 'greeting' newcomers that arrive on a Sunday - and that's fine. But if a church really wants to create a good first impression, the website is even more crucial. For 80% of people, the first greeter is not the person at the door - it's that page on your website.

In 7 seconds they decide to stay or go
At first this stat surprised me. 7 seconds seems so short. But then I thought of my own browsing experience. Particularly when googling something. From a list of search results, there might be a few that look interesting. We'll click on one, have a quick look, and either stay for longer, or go back to the google page and click something else.

Some of our church websites could do with improvement in these areas. Firstly, to have a site that doesn't repel people in under 7 seconds. Secondly, to make it simple and intuitive with relevant information easy to find.