the gospel doesn’t need disney. your church might. (part two.)
Now before anyone gets nervous, let’s be clear:
The gospel doesn’t need Disney, and I’m not trying to usurp the OG 10 commandments.
The church is not a theme park. We are not selling churros and Lightning Lane passes. We’re proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.
But Disney has spent decades learning how people experience environments, process information, navigate change, and engage with stories. Those are things church leaders think about every week.
So what can the local church learn from Disney Imagineering? Quite a bit, actually.
In 1983, Disney Imagineering president Marty Sklar developed what became known as “Mickey’s Ten Commandments”—a set of guiding principles for storytelling, design, and guest experience. Originally created to help Imagineers carry Walt Disney’s vision into new parks and attractions, these principles were later outlined in Sklar’s book One Little Spark and continue to influence Disney experiences around the world today.
You’ve been at your church so long that everything feels obvious. That’s a problem.
You know where to park. You know which entrance to use. You know where the bathrooms are. You know how to check your kids in. You know when to stand, when to sit, when to sing, and when to awkwardly shake the hand of the person sitting next to you. You don’t even think about those things anymore. But I promise you, your guests do.
That’s the second of Marty Sklar’s “Mickey’s Ten Commandments”:
Wear your guest’s shoes.
Put another way:
Stop experiencing your organization as an insider. Start experiencing it as a first-time guest.
It sounds simple, but it’s incredibly difficult.
The Curse of Familiarity
One of the greatest challenges in leadership is that the longer you’ve been somewhere, the less you see it. Your eyes stop noticing. You become nose-blind.
- The faded paint.
- The confusing, or missing, signs.
- The bottleneck in the lobby.
- The smell coming from the restroom, that Pine-Sol just isn’t quite taking care of.
- The microphone that cuts out every third Sunday.
- The awkward transition from worship to announcements.
- The acronym that everyone uses but nobody explains.
Church members are used to it, or will forgive it, because their relationships at the church are more valuable to them than their preferences. Familiarity is a wonderful thing… until you’re trying to welcome someone who isn’t familiar.
Disney understands this better than almost anyone.
One of the practices inside Disney Imagineering is regularly evaluating the parks through the eyes of a guest. Leaders walk the park. They wait in lines. They observe traffic patterns. They pay attention to where people hesitate, where they look confused, and where they naturally gravitate. Because Disney knows something church leaders often forget:
You are not your customer. Or in our case… You are not your guest.
Every Sunday Is Someone’s First Sunday
Imagine a young family pulling into your church parking lot:
- Maybe they’ve been burned by church before.
- Maybe they haven’t been in years.
- Maybe this is the first time they’ve ever attended a Christian church.
Before they’ve heard a single worship song or sermon, they’re already asking questions:
- “Did we park in the right place?”
- “Which door do we use?”
- “Where do our kids go?”
- “Are our kids safe?”
- “Are we dressed appropriately?”
- “Is someone going to talk to us?”
- “Are we going to look stupid because we don’t know what we’re doing?”
By the time they walk through your front doors, they’ve already spent a tremendous amount of emotional energy. And then we make them work even harder.
“They’ll Figure It Out”
Church leaders rarely say those words out loud.
- But our systems often do.
- Our signage says it.
- Our volunteer training says it.
- Our campus design says it.
“They’ll figure it out.” Except they don’t.
Or maybe they do, and then they never come back, because confusion isn’t neutral.
If your guest is confused, they will feel they don’t belong, and they won’t return. It feels like:
“This place wasn’t designed for someone like me.”
Disney Doesn’t Point. Disney Walks.
One of my favorite Disney leadership principles has nothing to do with rides. If you’ve ever asked a Cast Member for directions, you’ve probably noticed something. They rarely point. They walk.
Ask where the nearest restroom is, and instead of saying, “It’s down there on the left,” they’ll often say, “Let me show you.”
That’s a tiny difference, but it communicates something enormous.
“You matter enough for me to interrupt what I’m doing and walk with you.”
Now compare that with the average church interaction. “Where’s the kids’ check-in?”
“Oh… just head down that hallway, take a right, go through the lobby, and it’s the second door after the drinking fountain.”
Perfectly accurate, and completely unhelpful. We’ve solved the information problem, but haven’t solved the anxiety problem.
Directions answer questions, but presence removes fear. Jesus seemed to understand that. He rarely shouted directions from a distance. He walked with people. Maybe we should too.
Guests Are Carrying More Than You Think
One of the biggest mistakes church leaders make is assuming guests are only navigating our buildings. They’re not. They’re navigating disappointment, shame, doubt, church hurt, marriage problems, financial stress, a diagnosis they haven’t told anyone about, a teenager who’s making destructive decisions, an addiction they desperately want freedom from. They’re carrying all of that while trying to figure out where the nursery is.
Let’s not make the logistics harder than they have to be.
Secret Shop Your Church
Here’s one of the healthiest exercises your staff can do. Ask someone who has never attended your church to visit. Tell them to pay attention to everything that feels confusing.
- Where did they hesitate?
- What questions did they have?
- What assumptions did your church make?
- What verbiage did they not understand?
- What do they wish they had experienced?
Then—and this is the important part—don’t defend anything, just listen. You’ll probably discover things that have been hiding in plain sight for years. Because the people most qualified to evaluate a first-time guest experience…are first-time guests.
Hospitality Isn’t Coffee
Churches often reduce hospitality to coffee and donuts. I’m not against either one, in fact, I partake on the regular. But hospitality is much bigger than refreshments. Biblical hospitality is making space for someone else. It’s removing unnecessary obstacles, helping people feel seen, anticipating needs before they’re voiced
That’s why a smiling volunteer who walks a nervous family to kids’ check-in is doing something profoundly spiritual. They’re saying, without words, “You don’t have to figure this out alone.”
One Simple Challenge
This Sunday, pretend you’ve never been to your church before.
- Park where a guest would park.
- Walk the route a guest would walk.
- Read your signs.
- Visit your restrooms.
- Check in a child.
- Sit in a section you’ve never sat in before.
Pay attention to what feels obvious. Because chances are… it isn’t.
Final Thought
Disney assumes people are intelligent but unfamiliar. Churches often assume people are unfamiliar but should act like insiders. That’s a costly mistake. If a first-time guest has to work hard to feel comfortable, your church isn’t welcoming, you just think it is.
The gospel is challenging enough. Let’s stop making the parking lot challenging too.
dc.
