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Visiting Churches 6 (end) – Don’t take it too seriously – VOTD.10.24.17

I wanted to visit you, so that we might both receive a blessing.  2 Corinthians 1:15
I was a stranger and you invited me in. Matthew 25:35

This is God
My kids told me the little girl had been staring at me through the early part of the service before being shuffled off to the children’s program. But she was back after the service dragging her reluctant mother by she hand. I smiled as they came up and the little girl said, “There he is, Mommy. This is God.” She was pointing at me. The mother, terribly embarrassed at this point, apologized to me, a visitor, and explained to her that I was not God. But the girl was not to be so easily dissuaded. She’d apparently seen illustrations of God in her Sunday school material and I guess I looked close enough. I hurried to agree with her mother that I was not God, said a few more words about how wonderful God is, and her mother dragged her away, still apologizing to me over her shoulder.

My point? You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to be a good visitor. Things will go wrong. Mistakes will be made. Unexpected opportunities will present themselves, too. Graciousness is a good habit at any time, but especially if you’re visiting a church meeting. This is THEIR meeting after all. And you are the guest.

Sometimes it’s ‘grin-and-bear-it’. As a visitor, I’ve managed to be trapped in a few after-church congregational business meetings—the kind where the leadership won’t let anyone leave the service until a business meeting has occurred. Not a good place to be for a visitor who really doesn’t belong there. I suppose that if they allow a few visitors to slip out, it would embolden some of the cowed church members to sneak out with them. So I became privy to information that no outsider should have heard. I wonder how the congregants feel about being told that no one can leave the sanctuary until the business meeting is over? (more…)

Continue ReadingVisiting Churches 6 (end) – Don’t take it too seriously – VOTD.10.24.17

Visiting Churches 5 – It’s Gotta be Real – VOTD.10.23.17

I try to please everyone in every way. For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many. 1 Corinthians 10:33

While doing research for this topic of visiting churches, I came across 2 web sites back-to-back. One gave a list of 10 things visitor-friendly churches MUST do, and the other was 10 ways to drive introverts AWAY from your church. The two lists were very opposite…almost point for point. And that’s believable. As a visitor not everyone is looking for the same thing. In fact, an extrovert and an introvert might prefer to be treated very differently—just like you would treat anyone you met for the first time… you don’t follow a script, you pick up on their cues and treat them accordingly.

Problem is, churches usually enlist their most gregarious people as official welcomers. And that can bowl many more reserved people over. It might be worth looking for some more empathetic people to do your greeting tasks… people who are good at picking up on signals like voice, body language, etc., and treat people where they are at. (more…)

Continue ReadingVisiting Churches 5 – It’s Gotta be Real – VOTD.10.23.17

Visiting Churches 2 – VOTD.10.10.17

And to godliness, warm friendliness, and generous love. With these qualities actively growing in your life, you won’t be unproductive and fruitless in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:7

In a Twitter poll, first-time visitors were asked why they chose not to return to churches they visited only once. ‘Unfriendly church members’ came in second to the top in reasons visitors never return (Number 1 was ‘Having a stand up and be welcomed in the worship service’—no surprise there!)

Since as I said last time, I’ve been on the road all summer and visited a lot of churches, I wasn’t surprised that ‘Unfriendly church members’ rated so high. But the enlightening thing was the number of respondents who included ‘non-genuine friendliness’ as what really bothered them. In other words, the visitors could tell the ‘friendliness’ of some of the congregants was a sham.

In contrast, at one smallish church on the east coast we visited, two different people getting out of their cars saw us arrive in the parking area and came over to welcome us and offered to help us find where we needed to be, and to answer any questions we had. They weren’t the welcoming committee. You couldn’t pay staff to be that friendly. (So I ask myself if I would be that friendly if our roles were reversed. Would I even notice?) By the way, that church didn’t have greeters at the door… they didn’t need them with all the honestly friendly and helpful people we met.

Another huge church on the west coast, we were still in the parking area when a woman came over and introduced herself. She had seen us at a meeting before and told us how blessed she had been to sit behind us. She loved her church and it was genuine. I don’t think we could have been made to feel more welcome—certainly not by the assigned greeters at the door. (more…)

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VOTD.10.09.17 Visiting Churches

Do not hurry yourself in your spirit to become offended.  Ecclesiastes 7:9

I’ve been traveling a lot this past summer and this has meant being a visitor in a number of churches. Over the course of visiting many churches I have had great experiences as a guest along with some not-so-great ones. But for the most part my visits to churches, both recently and in the past, have been pleasant, though some are more memorable than others (for good and not-so-good) reasons.

Somewhere along the way I got the idea that it would be fun to do a few meditations on being a good church visitor. That led to another idea: What makes a church one that makes visitors feel welcome. So I offer this as a public service to visitors and churches that want to encourage visitors. Here’s a few ideas…

Churches need to realize that you only have a few minutes to make a first impression, and that usually means that the first impression is not made by the paid staff, it’s made by congregants. It’s made in the parking lot. It’s made by people (if any) at the door or people who people you sit near.

That’s a scary thought to those who want to orchestrate a visitor’s experience at their church. But scarier yet is that a visitor’s impression of the church may be hijacked by some offbeat individual who is friendly, but… unusual (or perhaps not so friendly). Every church seems to have at least one… someone who undoubtedly means well, but lacks social graces or is too full of their own agenda. (more…)

Continue ReadingVOTD.10.09.17 Visiting Churches

Why Helping People Repent Often Fails pt 2 – VOTD.10.03.17

I could choose from dozens of appropriate verses to write about today—One of the reasons there are so many verses in the Bible on correcting people is because it really takes a lot of godly wisdom to do it well. But one of the more pervasive problems we face when we want to help someone in a corrective way is ourselves. So we’ll begin with Jesus’ own words:

“Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Jesus asked in Luke 6:41. His point is, the very desire to help someone repent can come from trying to avoid dealing with our own sinful failings. So when we set out to help a repentant friend, motive is huge.

Because we are completely dependent upon God granting the other person repentance, the most effective place to begin helping that person repent is to look at ourselves. The key idea from Jesus’s log in the eye imagery in today’s verse is how the log is always in our eye, not in the other person’s eye.

If our starting point for change is not with ourselves, the result will fail. It will spin us and the other person into ongoing relational wounding. If we try to change them before we carefully address our own hearts, both of us will be wounded and our relationship will be, too.

Why is it so hard to address our own spiritual condition before we help someone else? Often there’s a mixture of pride and frustration along with impatience to fix the other person. Fixing our eyes on the other person and their problem distracts us from fixing our eyes on Jesus (the solution for both of us)…and when our eyes stray from Jesus, the result looks a lot like judgement. (more…)

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Why Helping People Repent Often Fails pt 1 – VOTD.10.02.17

And the Lord’s servant must be gentle … patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God may grant them repentance. – 2 Timothy 2:24-25

When I was a young believer, I took a job where I was responsible for the spiritual welfare of a floor or young men in a Christian college dormitory. As time went on, I ended up responsible for several men’s dormitories, so I got to watch this work out quite often. Some of these young men I dealt with were seemingly in a perpetual state of repentance over one thing or another. And just like clockwork, another group would rise up as would-be, caring “stronger brothers”…to hold them accountable…to keep them walking the line.

The problem was, even when the repenter truly wanted to change, these situations rarely-if-ever turned out well. I began to see a pattern: The “stronger” brothers fed off the “weaker” brother’s success in repentance to bolster and maintain the “stronger” brother’s image as a stronger brother. The “weaker” brother’s continued failings ultimately frustrated the stronger brother, because they expected to see a victorious return on their time, emotions, and ministry investment.

Since then, I’ve seen the same thing in local church-life since those days. How could that be? Let’s say a friend objectively and legitimately does something wrong. It’s sin, plain and simple. Their behavior is an offense to us and Jesus. To compound the problem, it’s not the first time they fell into this sin and it doesn’t look like it will be the last. So we step in to try to help the repenter succeed. (more…)

Continue ReadingWhy Helping People Repent Often Fails pt 1 – VOTD.10.02.17

How to Help Someone Repent pt 3 – VOTD.09.26.17

Correct the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.  1 Thessalonians 5:14

We have a name for people who obsess on correcting others all the time. It’s ‘narcissist’. They use correction as a means of raising themselves above others…to control people…to keep people in shame. And whether they realize it or not, they do a lot of harm.

Nicodemus (the Pharisee who visited Jesus under the cloak of darkness) represented his fellow spiritual leaders in their conclusion that Jesus had come to condemn and correct. Jesus set the record straight. He had come to save us, not condemn us. Jesus actually came to break the curse and shame that accompanies it and replace it with life and light (Jn 3:17, 1:4). It’s no wonder Nicodemus didn’t understand. His entire culture revolved around pride and its partner, shame.

The Bible has an amazing amount to say about how to correct someone. It doesn’t forbid correcting a brother or sister, but it has to be done correctly. There’s a time for correction, but that correction should be occasional, and in line with today’s verse. Filled with encouragement, help and patience.

Sometimes our correction will take the form of confronting (Gal 1:6). Sometimes it will take the form of helping someone in their weakness (Lk 11:46). Sometimes it will take the form of instruction and prescribing a better way (2 Tim 3:16). But it will always be done with a spirit of patience. Not anger, not frustration, but patience.

This is how do we help people really change: Pray. Encourage. Patiently correct. Repeat. Too often we get this backwards. We correct far more than we pray or encourage. The result? We destroy the relationship. We discourage the repenter. And the outcome is no change. (more…)

Continue ReadingHow to Help Someone Repent pt 3 – VOTD.09.26.17

How to Help Someone Repent pt 2 – VOTD.09.25.17

Encourage one another and build each other up.  1 Thessalonians 5:11
Accept one another then just as Christ accepted you.  Romans 15:7

As we saw last time, if we’re praying constantly for our repenter, we’re doing by-far the most practical and valuable thing we are actually able to do for them. But suppose we want to do more… What else can we do?

We can encourage them. For some of us, that counsel is obvious, for others it may sound even counter-productive. After all, if we encourage them they won’t feel so ashamed and might even start to feel like they’re part of the group-church-family again—You know, part of the Body, one of “us”.

Don’t think Christians don’t feel like that. Of course I wrote it so bluntly hopefully no one would agree. But quite frankly, there is an undercurrent of ostracism repenters have to deal with in the Christian community. It can cause them to lose heart, give up, throw in the towel in defeat. So in a sense, we can help someone repent by NOT trying to make them repent—at least not by using the devastating ‘tools’ like CONDITIONAL LOVE, AVOIDANCE, SHAMING, TREATING THEM AS PROJECTS. Christians often employ things like this. (more…)

Continue ReadingHow to Help Someone Repent pt 2 – VOTD.09.25.17