What The Church can learn from The Ritz

The leadership of The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company once did a study to find out what people wanted to get out of staying at their hotels. Their goal was to make their organization better, to give people more of what they wanted, and to be better at serving the people who stayed with them. What they found was pretty interesting:

The study showed that people want to feel at home.

Now, maybe that could be expected, but when they dug further they found this:

People want to feel like they are in their mother's home.

That was an astounding find. If you're not sure why that's a big deal, this is it: At a person's mother's house, everything was done. Everything was taken care of. If their was a problem, it was fixed. If they were hungry, they were fed. If they asked for something, they received it. They were taken care of completely. So The Ritz Carlton made that their goal.

Because that is their goal, Ritz Carlton is a leader in hospitality. They are getting it right.

What does that have to do with ministry?

Simply put, hospitality and ministry go hand in hand. Ministry means to attend to the needs of a person. To be hospitable is to be friendly and generous. To minister well, we must be hospitable. We must make people feel welcome and loved.

As leaders and pastors, we should be actively seeking the needs of our congregation. If you don't know where to start, take a page out of the Ritz handbook - make people feel at home:  be friendly, be generous, attend to their needs, and go above and beyond.