What are your first-time guests talking about on the drive home? Pastor Victor Ehiemere says his whole goal is to "hijack" that conversation, and it's helped The Well Church turn a flood of first-time guests into friends who stay. I sat down with him to unpack his simple, fun "Party With the Pastor" and how any church can use it to connect new people and fill their next steps.
By Josh Roberie
Here's a question I can't stop thinking about after this conversation: when a first-time guest pulls out of your parking lot, what are they talking about on the drive home?
Because according to Pastor Victor Ehiemere, that drive home is the whole ballgame. His goal, in his words, is to "hijack the conversation on the way home." He wants the kids in the backseat talking about how fun kids church was, and the parents up front saying, "You know what? We should go back next week." And he has built an entire connection strategy around making that happen.
Victor is a trained medical doctor from Nigeria who felt God redirect him from medicine into ministry. He and his wife, Pastor Amby, planted The Well Church in Maryland in 2022 with around 470 people. Today they're averaging 1,300 to 1,400 every weekend, and this past Easter they had 2,800. But what struck me most isn't the size, it's how intentionally they connect people. This church is obsessed with connection, and it's working.
"Nothing makes a person stick to a church more than just finding a friend. So we're going to do everything possible to make it easy for someone to find a friend."
The centerpiece of Victor's strategy is something he calls "Party With the Pastor." Once a month, after the second and third services, first-time guests are invited into a room across from the auditorium. There are round tables, snacks, drinks, music playing, and a team of small-group leaders ready to host. It feels less like a class and more like, well, a party. And that's the point.
"That room should be the most fun in our church," Victor told me. They literally named it "the party" to put pressure on themselves to make it fun. They want laughter, warmth, and people who have a hard time leaving because they're thinking, "I want what these people have."
Here's what I loved: the party is intentional without being stiff. The active, planned portion is just 15 minutes, broken into a simple 5-5-5. Five minutes for guests to mix, grab a snack, and start talking. Five minutes where Victor and Amby share a little about the church, including the story behind their name from John 4, and encourage people to invite others. And five minutes of helping everyone take the next step, filling out a card together and signing up for Growth Track, which happens the very next week, right there in that same room.
Do it well, Victor says, and you barely have to announce Growth Track at all, because every first-time guest is naturally ushered toward it. That's the dream for a lot of pastors who feel like they're constantly begging people to take a next step.
None of this works without feeders, and Victor has thought through every one. In person, guests are celebrated during the service and pointed to the first-time guest area afterward, where Victor and Amby are intentionally stationed. As he puts it, "We're here more for the first-time guests than we are for you." Guests fill out a tear-away card, keep an invite to the party, and go home with a gift, a water bottle that says "drink from the well," designed to keep the church on their minds.
Then the follow-up kicks in. Every guest gets a short, personal video text from Victor or Amby thanking them for coming and inviting them to the party. Online guests get pulled into the exact same pathway with a code and a personalized video. By the time the party rolls around, they've been warmly, personally invited, more than once.
"Our job as staff is to make it easy. We're going to keep looking at the systems until it is very easy to take a next step here at The Well."
If there's one thing to take from this episode, it's that fun and warmth aren't the opposite of a good system, they're the fuel for it. Victor and Amby will drop everything to walk a kid to the snack bar or kneel down to meet a family. They make people feel special, and that feeling is what people talk about on the drive home, share with a friend, and come back for.
So if you've been struggling to move people from the crowd into your Growth Track or your groups, maybe the answer isn't a better announcement. Maybe it's a better party. Pick a room, add some snacks and some music, train a few people to host, and make it your goal that every guest walks out having made a friend.
There's so much more in the full conversation, including how Victor went from medicine to ministry and the resources he's building to help people grow. Watch the whole thing below.
