Churches Hire Secret Shopper

By Chris Howell, NewsOn6.com

TULSA, OK -- When you attend your house of worship, you may not pay attention to the person next to you. But, the stranger in the pew may just be paying attention to you.

"There are certain things people expect when they come into church: warmth, genuineness, cleanliness and a spiritual encounter with God," said secret church shopper, Thomas Harrison.

Thomas Harrison is constantly seeking those things and he goes to different churches across the country trying to find them. Thomas is hired by these churches to visit them as a secret church shopper.

The corporate world for years has used the secret shopper experience to better customer service, now pastors like Dick Read of Asbury United Methodist Church are calling on Harrison for his detailed reports.

"We used Mr. Harrison's services here. He visited a couple of Sundays in 2007. He gave us some good feedback; some things that we learned about ourselves, some things that we were doing right and some experiences that he had and also some of our guests had previously," said Dick Read of Asbury United Methodist Church.

"When I finish that secret church shop and mail that report off and I get a phone call, there's just a great feeling inside of me. The pastor and the people did all the work to make that happen," said Harrison.