Visiting Churches

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…)

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…)

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…)