Sharla Bender, daughter of Timothy C. Mitchell, believes in the power of hospitality. She considers some of her greatest outreach experiences gained through serving as a hostess. The deciding factor for returning visitors is often a direct result of the genuine warmth from the hostess. Creating or improving a hostess department is a must if you want visitors to return and become members of your local church. In today’s world of colorful advertisement and demands for quick results, a pastor and his outreach team will greatly benefit thru the initial personal contact between a hostess and a guest. This session instructs potential or returning trainees on how to make a good first impression of the church, how to obtain visitor information, how to keep returning visitors from falling through the cracks, and how to handle visitor inquiries.

About the Author

Sharla Bender began serving on the Hostess Team as a young person and quickly found her niche. She found this service to be an outlet for her enthusiasm of meeting new people and ensuring returning guests were remembered. After serving for several years, she volunteered to be the department head after the position was vacated. Although her local church had basic hostess training material, she found it was not enough to cover the issues and situations that arose while being on duty. With the approval of her pastor, she began to write a manual that would be comprehensive yet presented in an easy-to-understand format. The current presentation is a result of five years of study in the world of being a hostess as well as input from the pastor’s perspective. These guidelines have been proven to raise the number of returning visitors in our local assembly. In fact, the church hostess department was so successful that Bender was able to hand off the reigns of leadership to a fellow hostess while she pursues a doctorate degree and career in music at the University of Alabama. She is also the founder and owner of Sharla Bender Studios, a private teaching studio focusing on piano, violin, and voice instruction.