Free Church Welcome Survey Template for Visitors

Why Use Church Welcome Surveys

Before we get to the church welcome survey template, let's take a look at why it's important to survey visitors.

Did you know that faith continued to remain strong among churches nationwide, despite the COVID-19 pandemic? Church's efforts to make visitors feel welcome, despite the loneliness of the time, made them a special place for people. Online services and surveys to connect people with the church helped foster this feeling of connectedness. 

Having great church visitor survey questions handed out by your church leadership is a great way to make new church members feel welcome from the beginning. Read on to help boost engagement for your church with our Church Welcome Survey.  

Church Visitor Survey Questions 

Building a community in your church is crucial to help members feel welcome and continue gaining the support that your church needs.

This template below will offer ideas to include when making a church guest survey or taking a youth ministry student survey template and tailoring it to your church's needs. Feel free to use the categories provided and change them accordingly to what you see as the best fit for your church visitors. 

Personal Information 

Name: 

Phone Number: 

Email:  

Church Location: 

Age: 

Church Questions 

How did you hear about the Church? 

• Noticed it by driving by
• Social Media
• Invited by a friend
• Internet Search 
• Other (Please list)
  

Which Service Did You Attend? 

• 9 am
• 10 am 
• 1 pm
  

Do you have any children? If so, please list each of their ages. We'd love to help them get involved with our church community.  

Your Experience Today 

Our hospitality ministry wants to ensure that each of our church visitors feels welcome and included from the moment they walk in the door. Please answer truthfully about how your experience today was.  

How did you find the building? Was it easy to find parking with assistance in the parking lot from one of our church volunteers? 

Did you feel that there was enough space for new church members to mingle in the foyer, as they were greeted by our church's members?  

Were you able to easily spot the guest/ welcome center to connect with our team there? 

Were you welcomed as you entered the worship center? Whether you were alone or with other people, did you feel comfortable in finding a seat? 

Any suggestions regarding the worship service or your overall experience upon entering the church? 

Questions about the building 

How did the entry foyer feel as you first walked in? 

• Uninviting 
• Overwhelming but interesting 
• Neutral 
• Interesting 
• Inviting
  

Were you able to easily locate the restrooms? 

• No, I had to wait until I got home 
• Eventually, I had to ask multiple people 
• I could not find it myself but someone walked me there 
• Yes, after searching for a bit 
• Yes, it was marked and easy to find 
  

How did you feel about the worship space where the service took place? 

• It was overcrowded and overwhelming 
• There were some seats, but I didn't know where to go 
• Fine, eventually I found a seat 
• Good, I asked an usher for help, and they walked me over to a space 
• Excellent- I could see where seats were available and found a spot 

Are there any types of church ministry you would like to get involved in? 

• The music groups (singing or band)
• The children's ministry
• The church coffee shop
• The new member welcoming team 
• Other (Please List)

FAQs 

What are the benefits of a church visitor questionnaire? 

Hearing what visitors think when they visit your church is incredibly valuable. You can plan and put hospitality practices in place, but unless you get feedback from those who experience them, you won’t know if they’re effective.  

The goal of welcoming visitors is for them to want to return and become a regular part of your church and a church visitor questionnaire can help you accomplish that goal. Additionally, a visitor survey can help you fine-tune your efforts so you can make future visitors feel as welcome as possible and help your church continue to grow and thrive. 

How often should a church conduct these surveys? 

While surveys can be a helpful tool, it’s important not to overwhelm visitors with requests for feedback or ratings on how your church did in different areas. When a new person visits your church and you want to send them a survey, keep it short and don’t ask too much of respondents.  

Expecting them to write detailed, wordy responses to open-ended questions will likely result in them not responding at all. Instead, send a short survey a week or so after their visit and ask them to rate your church’s efforts in a few key areas like friendliness, how easy it was for them to find information or places within the church and such, by clicking on a rating of some kind (stars on a scale of 1-5, etc.). Once you send the survey, a brief, friendly follow-up if you don’t hear back should suffice. Continuing to pepper them with additional follow-ups or reminders tends to come off as pushy and aggressive. 

What are the best practices for ensuring visitor privacy in questionnaires? 

It’s vital to respect the privacy of those responding to church visitor surveys. If you’re emailing a survey, you already have that information, so you don’t need to ask for it again. Try to avoid asking for extensive information that isn’t relevant to what you hope to gain from the survey. Since you already know their name and email, stick to asking for their thoughts on the areas of your church you’re surveying them about. 

Also, make it clear in the survey that their information will not be shared outside of the survey and that their responses will be kept anonymous – i.e., you won’t pull a quote from their survey responses and use it on social media with their name to promote your church. 

How can a church effectively use the feedback from questionnaires? 

As data comes in from your survey, evaluate it and listen to what respondents have to say. Whether you start from church survey questionnaire templates or develop your own survey, pay attention to what the data says. Even if you feel like your church is strong in one area, say providing good help and direction for visitors trying to find their way around your building, be open to what survey participants have to say. If a number of respondents provide feedback saying your church can do better in one of these areas, take a closer look at your efforts and see where you can improve. 

What are some common challenges in creating and distributing church questionnaires? 

Welcoming visitors in church matters and churches generally want to do well in this area, but crafting and sending out questionnaires can be challenging. For starters, most people receive a high volume of emails and texts requesting feedback or information from different businesses or organizations, so there can be communication fatigue. 

People can also have privacy concerns when responding to surveys and it’s important to address those concerns when sending out questionnaires. Keeping it simple is another common challenge – it's tempting to ask for a lot of feedback on a range of topics, but the more questions you send, the less likely it is that recipients will respond. So recognize the possibility of communication fatigue, keep surveys short and simple and make sure to affirm respondents’ privacy for any feedback they do provide. 

Every Church Survey Sample You Could Ever Use