The job is especially hard if you loved where you were before.
Sometimes, when you visit a church, it seems like the people there don't have any interest in you at all. The only thing worse than gross indifference is when they have no interest in getting to know you, but they do announce multiple ways you can give them an offering, over and over.
We are veteran church goers. We were raised in church. We expect to get up and go to church on Sunday morning. We love Jesus. We long for Christian fellowship. We want to worship God, study the Bible, and connect with other believers for mutual encouragement and accountability. If we find it uncomfortable to walk into a new church, imagine how an unchurched person must feel.
I think most churches want to grow. As far as I am aware, every church I have attended has wanted to grow. But sometimes church members don't seem to have a very good idea of how to simply welcome visitors.
We have visited seven churches so far. Of them, we might go back to two or three.
If you are currently in a church, and you wonder what you could do to make visitors feel welcome, here are some of my thoughts as I lag, discouraged, in the middle of this process.
(1) Pray for visitors to come. Ask God to send to your church the people He wants in your church. Pray faithfully and expectantly. When people do come, ask the Holy Spirit in you to guide you as you welcome them. If you can say, "We've been praying that God would lead you here," honestly and naturally, it could be a good thing to say. However, do not memorize the phrase and use it as a pick-up line. That would be repugnant.
(2) Beware of formal Greetings. The meet-and-greet, or time to stand up and shake hands with the folks around you, is not generally favorably received. Personally, I am gripped with fear when a meet-and-greet is announced, even when I am in a familiar church amongst people I love. I cannot tell you the turmoil it causes my constitution when I have to endure this ritual as a newcomer.
(3) Beware of formal Greeters. Sometimes these people are fantastic. We visited one church and spoke with a lady at the information desk, and she was incredibly kind and helpful. During the service, she wrote out a whole sheet of information for us, and even included her personal phone number, inviting us to call any time if we had questions. She made a point of finding us after the service and pressed this paper into our hands. It meant far more than the plastic bag of packaged treats and glossy advertising pieces they handed us. We won't be going back to that church because it turned out to be much too far away, but if it were closer, we would go back at least once, 100% because of that kind and friendly lady. In contrast, at a different church, we walked in to a line-up of four people assigned to meet and welcome visitors. They stood by the door with wide smiles. We had a pleasant conversation with them. However, when the service was over, they huddled up with their friends and did not look at us, speak to us, or even offer a simple wave good-bye. If people have an on-duty/off-duty approach to greeting newcomers, they are missing opportunities. Worst of all is when people at a church wear the official church t-shirt that marks them as a person who could be sought out for help, but they ignore their duties and gossip with their friends, making unkind comments about someone not present, within hearing of visitors. Leaders: be careful whom you put into your church's shirt.
(4) A good website is worth nothing if the real life experience doesn't measure up. Don't try to create an online presence that makes you look better than you are. People will figure it out instantly and be bitterly disappointed. A good website is fine, but the bulk of your efforts should be in cultivating the Spirit-walk of the people in the church community so they know what it means to love, and they know how to love effectively.
(5) Be real. Just be real. Do you want to grow, or don't you? Do you believe that each assembled body of believers is a group of people designed and put together by God, with special spiritual gifts that God designed to be used together, in synergy, to accomplish His Kingdom work? Because if you do, you should be eager to find out who He brought through the doors of your church on a given Sunday. A new person is like a wrapped gift, and you should be excited to unwrap it and find out what God has bestowed on your assembly, and how He wants to use and grow you as He continues the process of refining everybody's gifts in service to His Kingdom.
(6) Food is good, if it fosters fellowship. At one place we visited, a lady by the door hushed us as we entered, and told us they were in the middle of a business meeting. We asked if we should leave, if we had come at the wrong time, "No... no," She said, "You're fine. Just get some food. It will be over soon." She neither asked our names nor shared hers. There was a laden table of food in the back of the seating area. Rather than spending a little time getting to know us, she gestured towards the table. When we didn't eagerly grab a plate to load up, she seemed impatient, and gestured again, indicating that we should entertain ourselves by eating alone in the back of the church while the meeting proceeded. Please hear me: the best thing about food is that it fosters lingering and conversation. Rather than serving it hurriedly before a service begins, consider making it available after a service, so people will mingle and chat, and get to know one another. People long for true connection, an antidote for loneliness, a place where they are loved and wanted. If food fosters this, fine, but do not try to use food as a substitute for authentic connection.
(7) Practice Sabbath. These days, everybody is in such a hurry. What if we came to church with the idea that this is, indeed, the Lord's Day, open to whatever agenda He may have for us? What if we weren't always rushing off to the next meeting, errand or sports event? When we lived in Illinois, many times when we visited a church, people would invite us to go out for lunch after the service. Other times, people invited us to come eat at their homes later in the week. At one lovely church we visited here, the pastor's wife explained to us that their church always brought food to share for lunch after the service, and then they stayed to discuss the Westminster Catechism for Sunday school. She smiled right into our eyes and said, "I hope you'll stay. There's always plenty of extra." I really liked that church. It was a little bit far, and a little bit small, and they didn't use any instruments when they sang, and I'm not sure if they actually had a nursery, but it was absolutely real. They were there to connect over the Word of God, and live life together, and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get home.
There are other things a church needs to be: Scripturally sound. Gospel centered. Prayerful. Full of the Spirit. Full of love and compassion.
Personal pet peeves:
- I don't like when a pastor says he's going to pray, but then he gets everybody's head bowed, and he doesn't talk to God at all, he just keeps talking to the people while they have their eyes shut. If we call it prayer, we should talk to God.
- I have lupus. I get headaches, bad headaches, pretty easily. Therefore, the snazzy sound-and-light shows are a big turn-off to me. I could get into an endless, messy debate about the ethics of certain music styles, but at the end of the day, I'm just not going to attend a church where the music causes me physical pain because the of decibel level.
- I don't like invitations where someone tries to get people to walk up to the front of the church for some reason or another. Once we visited a church where the pastor was preaching out of James 5. He ended by asking anyone who needed to receive salvation to walk to the front. Nobody went. So he invited anyone living with secret, unconfessed sin to walk to the front. Nobody took him up on it. Then he asked for anyone who was dealing with anger to come to the front. Again, no takers. Then he said, "Anyone who has ever been angry, come!" I stood there, and I got angry. Of course I have been angry. Hasn't everyone been angry at some time or another? And here we were, in a church for our first time, and this pastor was demanding that if I had ever been angry, I should walk up to the front of the church in confession. I was forced into the position of either making a spectacle of myself on my first Sunday in a new church, or living a lie that indicated that I had somehow, possibly, never in my life been angry, which I knew was absolutely not true, because I was even angry right then. But nobody else went forward either, so it seemed to me that he was forcing us all to live a lie. Shawn and I left, drove through a terrifying green tornado on our way home, and never went back. I am opposed to manipulative invitations.
Things I love:
- Deep scripture teaching. Expositional preaching.
- Lots of scripture reading.
- Kind people.
- Honest sharing.
- Meaningful discussions.
- Faithful prayer.
- Reverent worship.
- Relationships that extend beyond Sunday morning.
- Help; the confidence that we care about each other, we have each other's backs; we weep together and we rejoice together.
