1:50-3:00
How welcome plays its part
We all go to unwelcoming churches.
Are you a guest or a host in the church you attend?
Most of the people in our churches are still acting as guests – feed me pastor. It’s all about me. Was the service any good for me today? It is selfish Christianity gone stupid. I always thought worship was for God. Apparently it is all about me.
People coming to church can decide whether they will return in the first 30 seconds.
I think God is into the pew system because if you can bring your friend into church on two consecutive Sundays, he will know where to sit.
It is not a good thing calling ourselves a “welcoming church.” We are a church that is trying to improve our welcoming. How can we get better.
What does welcome look like before, during, after the service, after Sunday?
What is church in 2012? What are we inviting people to?
Religious commitment in Britain is seen as a hobby like keeping Corgis.
Is church a duty, something we are in the habit of doing?
Are we church with a better class of sinner, or a better class of sinners?
Is our church just a little club for like-minded people who happen to enjoy singing, religious emotion and sermons?
The keys to adding to the church – back to what?
Would I really want to invite my friends to this?
77% of Canadians ticked Christian in the 2001 census.
I think we are being blessed because of the work of Christians in the past. Blessings are passed on through generations. Christ claims you for his own.
I think God sees people in families. There is something about a generational line. Something is passed on in the DNA.
We need to take the confidence that 8 out 10 people you meet self-identify as Christian.
We need to be a befriending church, not just a friendly church.
Welcome is not good enough. Welcome hides fear and paralyzes people. Call it friendliness.
Can someone come to your congregation and we will make them a friend.
It takes the effort of the congregation to notice the stranger and then transform the stranger into a sister/brother.
Our church is increasingly needed as people become more and more isolated from each other.
Belief System
If you accept a belief,
You reap a thought.
If you sow a thought,
You reap an attitude.
If you sow an attitude,
You reap an action.
If you sow an action,
You reap a habit.
If you sow a habit,
You reap a character.
If you sow a character,
You reap a destiny.
What are the 12 steps of kicking the habit of being an unwelcoming church?
These 12 steps have no chance of working unless we deal with the culture of unwelcome.
1. Vision – if everyone one of us invited a friend and they accepted (this is God’s bit) we would double our congregation, let’s do it! What we are told to do is set vision. Without vision, the people perish. Churches have vision, but they are so low, no one would even know if anyone has hit them.
I am setting you up to fail because I would like you to face some rejection. It is in the rejection that transformation comes. We are only called to set a vision.
The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you .
Be Do Get – we all want to get a growing church – numerically and spiritually. What has to die in us. Do we need to be born again in yet another area in our lives?
2. Modelling - church leaders must get in front of their congregations and say, “I’m inviting someone to church, will you?” This is about doing that which is right.
Be the change you wish to see in others. It has to start with us. We cannot expect people in the congregation without us getting over ours.
When you say, “I’m inviting someone to church, what about you?” 80% of the people are thinking, “This doesn’t mean me”.
3. Cascading – take invitation down to a one-on-one level. Jesus did a lot of effective leadership working with smaller groups. Personally invite every member of the congregation to invite.
This is the discipleship step involving the whole of our congregation in a practical exercise.
Safety Net – if the church leader personally invites, they can always say to their friend that their church leader asked them to do it.
Church leaders should say, “Blame me. Tell your friends that the mad priest at church asked me to invite a friend.”
4. The Gift of Friendship – God has connected his people throughout the country. Normally in relationship we do what our friend asks us to do. Friendship is a spiritual thing. Some mothers with adult children say they could not invite their adult son or daughter, because they wold be coming for me. But that is the point; they are coming for us. People come because a friend has asked them to come.
Where two are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.
We don’t have elderly congregations. We have elders. There is something here, that if we can get our congregations over their fear.
5. The Power of Story – We want the stories that get people to say, “If they can do it, I can do it.”
6. We have to get radical and ask God who God has been preparing in my life to invite? Tell your congregation that, if people don’t get an impression of who they should invite, they are off the hook.
7. If there was a training evening for Back to Church Sunday, it would only last 10 seconds. In the 10 seconds we would practice the question – “Would you like to come to church with me?” – training over. If Jesus can get away with “Follow me”, why does this have to be complicated?
8 Pray – pray for courage and for the people you are going to invite.
9. Make the invitation – it is just an invitation, the answer is in God’s hands. Just ask. Practice without pressure. Practice is the key to mastering any skill.
10. Walk or drive with them to the church service. Pick them up. Don’t wait at the porch door. If you wait for them at the church, they will not show up.
11. Introduce them to your friends over coffee or food.
Between 11 and 12 you need to “Mind the gap” – now you have a second question to ask – “How did it go?” There is a second invitation going on here.
12. Assume they will come the following week. Keep asking until you hear the magic word: “No”.
4 comments
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May 11, 2012 at 6:42 pm
jaqueline
I have invited friends to church and a number of them have come…
As I was sitting next to my strong women friends the patriarchal language and attitudes in our liturgy was obvious in my ears. The longing for some sense of spirituality was there yet the language spoke to them of a religion that had no meaning to them any more and what exactly did it offer that was different or rather better than the Buddhist centre down town or a weekend at a Yoga retreat?.
I think we need to get over ourselves a bit and ask …why SHOULD people come to church? Where do we get the idea that we are the best place for people to have their spiritual needs met? Are we looking at ourselves and asking..if I were a seeker would I want to come and hang out here?
May 13, 2012 at 12:55 am
jaqueline
I would like to qualify the above comment. It occurred to me that the friends who I invited were not particularly drawn to church in the first place; they came for other reasons….but someone who WANTS to come to church may not find some of the cultural constructs as troubling. Though hearing the liturgy through them it was illumining..how much we take for granted as Anglicans and forget that what makes sense to us does not translate easily.
Our church at St Philip I seem to be happy to invite people to …if those are looking for church or a Christianity that is not defined by fundamentalist attitudes. It is not for everyone, some have an idea of church that is noble and austere….It felt good at Easter this year to actually put up pictures of our Easter Service on Facebook and suggest those looking for somewhere come along…No-one took it up but to have a church that is invite-able is lovely.
It is important though to ask that question “if I were seeking, would I want to hang out here?”….”what would church look like to me if I had never gone?”
Although I am uncomfortable of this set of teachings I am not anti invitation….I myself became a Christian because a friend of mine invited me..at the right time, right after I had cried out to God to help me…and his invite changed my life…AND he came and got me and drove me there. And his friends welcomed me openly AND I had a set of people who took an interest in me beyond my friend who had invited me….The thing is, he felt he had something to invite me to and something that would meet the longing of my heart…..I am not sure Christians are convinced of that themselves at the moment let alone trying to convince someone else.
May 13, 2012 at 5:33 pm
lindsay
Hey Jaqueline,
Still wondering what happened to Mary in the church in Calgary I went onto the St Michaels website to see if I could spot Mary in some of the pics maybe … but no sign of her. Felt a bit like playing “Where’s Waldo” except looking for Mary instead of Waldo.
Anyway stumbled across this page on the St Michaels website …
http://www.saintmichael.ca/main/index.php?page_id=88
First view … groan … ad campaign to pay for the new building … second view …. hmmm …. okay … if you join this church you are going to be expected to contribute … something …. then I’m thinking about the conversations I have with people … when researching homelessness, community building and volunteerism …. and how people with whom I chatted mentioned again and again their need to feel valued … as making a contribution to their community whether on the street, or elsewhere. I remember being struck by how it is we automatically assume that people who are disadvantaged or at risk need something from us when what we often all need more in some way is to feel we are contributing and valued for the contribution we make … no matter what it is … so anyway now I’m wondering whether maybe this St Michael’s video is onto something …. where can we go where we can do something that feels meaningful and which we enjoy and where we feel before we even sign up for it that our contributions provide value … ?
“Most of the people in our churches are still acting as guests – feed me pastor. It’s all about me. Was the service any good for me today? It is selfish Christianity gone stupid. I always thought worship was for God. Apparently it is all about me.”
Yup, of course it is … why would anyone want to pretend otherwise? … or try to make us to feel guilty or try to convince us otherwise ? It’s the ‘me’ in me and in you and you, our friends, our families, our colleagues, and the lady 3 blocks down and one street over who we’ve not yet met and the recluse who lives the other side of the world across the internet divide who doesn’t say much. It’s all our ‘me’s who hold such beauty and pain and longing and love …. that grease the cogs of connection … in our laughter, our tears, our spats, our frustrations …. in all of life … even at our most selfless we are selfish … and selfless … as I love you do I want you to be any different than you already are … really, truly? … When all is said and done? …. Of course not ….
May 13, 2012 at 11:25 pm
jaqueline
See….this talk..making people feel guilty about going to meet a need, seems to neglect to remember that it is WE who need worship. GOD DOESN’T.. God is sufficient, God’s existence is not dependent ( in the way we think ) on us…but we are desperately dependent on God.