The Open Source Church

I posted yesterday about 5 things that I thought were the key to Google’s innovative environment, and I wanted to continue that thought process today with a look at a different company.

Alaska Airlines recently opened a redesigned terminal in Seattle, their busiest hub, to the tune of a cool $28 million, a far cry from the $500 million it would have cost to build a completely new one. But in doing so they were able to cut check in time for their passengers down to 8 minutes or less. Let that sink in for a minute. When have you ever been in a busy airport and had to wait less then 8 minutes to finish check in? I have been in an empty airport and had to wait longer then that.

How did they accomplish this? Well it all starts for them with managing expectations.

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“People come to the airport expecting to stand in line. It’s an indictment of our industry.” - Ed White, Alaska Airlines VP
They did everything they could to change peoples expectations. They moved self check-in kiosks to the front of the lobby. They designed the check-in counters to maximize the agents time by ensuring they don’t have to move around to do things. They took a team to Disneyland to study how they move people so efficiently through their parks.

So how does this apply to churches? Think about your visitors, what expectations do they have before they ever set foot in your church. Are they good, bad, indifferent? Are they expecting to come in and be ignored? Are they expecting to come in and be offered cheap coffee and stale doughnuts? Or do they expect to come in and be greeted, be introduced to to people and leave feeling refreshed.

You see expectations can run both ways, some of them are going to expect less, while some are going to be expecting more. What are you doing to manage those expectations? How are you setting people up for a “wow” experience?

There is a story in the article I read about this of a woman coming into the lobby and stopping in her tracks as she looks around kinda confused. “It’s the new check-in thing,” another woman says, “Don’t worry it’s really fast.” That woman had a “wow” experience. She had an expectation and then was blown away by what she saw.

How are you going to create an environment in your church that causes visitors to walk in to your church and stop in their tracks to think, “WOW!”

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