Are we prepared for visitors?
Cheers was a popular TV show in both the USA and in the UK from the 1980s. Its famous refrain featured in the title song was, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name." The show’s stars played a collection of sad and dysfunctional characters, but at Cheers they found a home and a place where they belonged, where they were loved and cherished, no matter what. That such a place should be a bar rather than a church is less shocking than we might think as Christians. Most human beings are put together in such a way that they need a place where they belong and most people need a number of such places, which will include home, work, the golf club, the flower club, a Trade Union, an amateur dramatics society, a political party, a re-enactment society, the National Trust as a volunteer, and the local pub or bar, etc. This potential list is seemingly endless and the vast majority of people find such places easily and naturally. The church is, of course, just such a place, and some of its advantages are:
The church then has much to offer people who are new to a community and people whose place in the community has altered. If someone enters your church as a newcomer, there is a reason for them doing so, and one of the keys to retaining them into the future is learning, understanding and meeting the need expressed by that reason.
It is also helpful, if painful, to know why people leave. Often it is not something you could or would want to change. Often it has little to do with you and everything to do with them, and sometimes they have insights that might help you do better. In one church I pastored, I remember having a long conversation after the service with a lady who had felt very unwelcomed in the church. I understood and accepted much of what she spoke about. However, what she said didn’t sit with a couple of realities, one of which was that, six months after her first visit, she was still regularly attending church, although she was also clear that in faith terms she was “not there yet!” The other was that, while I understood some of the specific experiences she spoke about, I knew that a number of people were making a real effort to get alongside her and were doing so successfully. We were clearly doing some things right, but not all things right, at least not according to her very high expectations. The reality is that people are people and there are times when, no matter how hard we try and how well we do, they will just score us low when set against their own personal markers and expectations. We do need to listen to criticism and hear when we are getting things wrong, but we also need to be wise and discerning because not all criticism is fairly delivered or delivered with any real perception.
We also need to aware that welcoming newcomers into our church families is no easier than welcoming them into our marital families. The birth of an unplanned and unexpected child may well become a cause of much joy and blessing to a family, but also initially cause a great deal of disruption and change to family plans and family life. The joy and blessing can only come if we are willing to undertake this process of change and adaptation. Newcomers to church, especially a small church (50 members or less), can cause the same anxieties in people. It is OK if the newcomers are just like us and fit right in, but when they are different, things are much harder. As the size of a church gets larger, so the diversity of the congregation increases, which means newcomers are more likely to find within the church those with whom they can identify.
Intuitively, church members understand that newcomers lead to change and change is often viewed with suspicion. There is a genuine tension that must be understood. On the one hand, people need a place where they feel at home and where they feel they belong. On the other hand, every newcomer finding such a place and home among us subtly changes who we are. One of the misunderstood challenges facing pastors who believe in Church Growth is their need to manage and aid their existing congregation’s fear of change that can make them feel unsafe, uncomfortable and unwelcome in their own church. This is by no means impossible and will involve ensuring that, within a changing and growing church, there remain safe havens for the existing members and confidence in the pastoral care system, and continual teaching about the missio dei and the responsibilities of the church towards fulfilment of the mission of God.
It can help to understand what is faced by a visitor, and we can gain this easily enough by visiting another church from a completely different stream. So, if we are Baptist, go to a High Anglican, Roman Catholic or a Pentecostal church, and vice versa. Alternatively or additionally, go and do something with which we are completely unfamiliar such as visit the pub or playing Bingo. In other words, experience what it must be like to be in a strange environment where you don’t know what is going on or even necessarily why.
It should also be said a this point that much of what follows is concerned with the ‘pure visitor/newcomer.’ That is to say, with the individual, couple or family who of their own volition arrive unannounced at your church on a Sunday morning. Other visitors, such as those who come as guests of members, who come from another congregation and are already known to you, or who come having already been met in another forum (funeral, evangelism etc.), have already received a pre-welcome. Much of what follows is equally applicable to them, but with these people you have a head start!
When a minor earthquake hits a town, it quickly becomes obvious which buildings were built properly according to the safety regulations and those which were not. It is at such times that the structure of the buildings becomes really important. When all appears to be going well, you really are not aware of the structure and you just appreciate the building as you experience it. Churches can and should be like this in that the way they structure themselves should not be overly noticed, but they should do what they are supposed to do and not fall apart when the inevitable earthquakes and hurricanes of church life kick in.
If our newcomer, on entering further into church life, discovers a structure that is a mess, unclear and ultimately failing, then much of our welcome success will have been nothing but a veneer hiding an unpleasant reality underneath, and all our efforts may prove to have been in vain.
Structure is not just about how we organise things, but also about why we are doing what we are doing. It is about understanding who we are, what we are about, what our vision is for the future, and organising ourselves to bring this about. Churches can struggle to be truly strategic simply because their visions and plans are rarely fully owned by congregations and so are quickly forgotten and set aside. All too often the process of forming and agreeing vision becomes an end in itself and churches fail to carry through the vision they have formed together and in particular they fail to budget according to the priorities established by their vision. However, we should hold in tension here the reality that, in most churches, vision is an extension of what is already being done and rarely allows for any re-allocation of the resources already committed in the budget. Ultimately, we will not be effective in our effort to welcome newcomers into the life of the church if we do not address these issues of structure and organisation alongside.
One of the differences between American churches and their counterparts in the UK is that, despite the fact that attendance at Protestant churches is declining nationally, they have not yet accepted or become comfortable with decline. In American churches, an annual growth rate of 10% is still held out as the norm to be aimed for, whereas in the UK, talk of church growth is dismissed by congregations often as an unspiritual ambition on the part of the minister. The ambition of a 10% rate of growth is brought further into focus when it is realised that this will include the increase needed to balance annual losses. Typically, a church of 200 may lose as many as 12 members per year through the ‘natural wastage’ of death, family movement, student movement and dropout. Thus, to meet a target of 10% growth, 32 new members will be necessary.
Church decline has become in the UK a self-fulfilling prophecy, for there is little doubt that churches who do not believe they will grow, or who do not make growth an aim, will be very unlikely to grow, while churches who do believe in the possibility of growth and set themselves the target of growing, are more likely to grow – though, of course, wishing something were so does not make it so! In between are those churches whose pastors/ministers believe in church growth, the Gospel imperative and the missio dei, who persuade their fellow leaders and a few members of the rightness of their cause, but by no means all, and who by the concerted efforts of these few are at best able to grow slowly or hold their own and avoid decline. It might not be farfetched to say that UK churches have a stronger theology of church decline than they do of church growth!
The sad truth in the UK over the last century is not one of the failures of evangelism, but of a failure of retention. British churches have been like warships repelling boarders to port at such a rate that we have been too busy to notice those abandoning and deserting the ship to starboard.
What must be clear is that the single most effective means of Church Growth is the retention of members and their subsequent families, and achieving this requires no outreach evangelistic programmes whatsoever, and does not even require members to leave the relative safety of their churches. Doing that which is required to retain members is not so far different from that which would be required to retain visitors to our churches, as it is all about helping people to feel they belong, to feel they are valued, to see they have a purpose and the provision of what we loosely call a ‘church life’ that is worth living.
Recently, in the church I pastor, we set aside the month of September as ‘community month’ or ‘getting to know you month’, in an attempt to encourage the congregations at our two Sunday morning services to get to know each other a little better and in the hope this might encourage us all to be more welcoming. On the first Sunday of that month, I observed a lady approach the doors and attempt to enter by pulling the doors toward her. They wouldn’t budge because they open inwards! I watched as she walked away, helpless to do anything except receive what I saw as a living parable being played out before my very eyes – a parable I shared with the congregation that morning with the message that welcoming people need not be difficult and may require no more at times than a sign on the door, saying ‘push’! We prayed for the lady and I am glad to say she came back the following week, by which time there was finally a sign on the door, saying ‘push’!
How many churches have a sign outside that says ‘Everyone is Welcome,’ but a congregation inside that gives the lie to that claim? Indeed, it may be that most churches are honest enough not to put welcome signs outside their doors, but that is hardly better! It is clearly true to say that, as churches, we have a duty and the obligation to Christ to be welcoming and inclusive communities. However, if we do this only out of a sense of duty and obligation, then there is something spiritually wrong with us. The indwelling presence of the Spirit of God in all believers is both the gift of God and the seal of God’s ownership and it is a presence that will work itself out in love and compassion. An unwelcoming and unloving church, therefore, is in serious trouble. The way in which we welcome visitors amongst us is perhaps the simplest and most visible test of our Christlikeness! As Ervin Stutzman puts it, “The church exists not just for the sake of the members. It exists also for the sake of Christ, and for the sake of those who don’t yet know Christ” (Stutzman, p.26).
George Barna describes a user friendly church as, “…a church in touch with the needs of those it wants to serve” (Barna, p.15). We can hardly claim to be doing this if we cannot even allow those who want to enter the building to do so. Are we guilty of turning a simple and straightforward task into one that only spiritual super beings are able to perform when all we need to do is put a sign on the door, saying ‘push’? How many people have been turned away from the church and from Christ simply because we have not been ready or willing to open the door to them and welcome them in?
Robert Bast tells the story of the man who, in looking for a church to settle in, visited 18 local congregations and devised his own checklist to gauge the strength of their welcome (Bast, p. 65-66):
ITEM
POINTS
A smile of Welcome
10
A word of greeting
10
An Exchange of Names
100
An invitation to return
200
An introduction to another member
1000
An introduction to the Pastor
2000
Figure 1 - Visitor's checklist
Of the 18 churches visited, 11 scored less than 100 points and 5 less than 20 points. If visitors perceive that no one cares, they are almost certain not to return.
The American academic, George Barna, developed a set of principles for a User Friendly Church based on research conducted deliberately amongst a diverse group of churches ranging in style, denomination, size and location throughout the USA. The churches shared two common threads, the first of which was that they were all growing by 10% or more per annum, measured in terms of average attendance at worship. The second was that they were also growing spiritually - a factor less easy to measure.
The first Principle Barna outlines he calls ‘the Power of a Positive Attitude.’ It is that almost indefinable something that makes people feel at home in your church. It is not, however, totally indefinable even if it is a little uncomfortable to consider some of the things that make a difference.
You have a Lovely home…
As a pastor I have been into many homes, but they have not all been lovely. I have learnt to appear comfortable in some unlovely settings and indeed there are some homes in which I have become comfortable despite the décor! I have also been into places where my level of discomfort has not eased and to be truthful these are not homes into which I would be prepared to take my wife and family no matter how effusive the greeting. My home church in the UK was a small, poorly attended Baptist church with wonderful people, and when I began to preach there, my unchurched mother would come with her unchurched friend until the evening when it was so cold that on returning home her friend became ill. They never came again.
One church I pastored was motivated, even shamed, by the words of the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your panelled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (Haggai 1.3-4).
Too many of our churches are neglected by the very people who attend them regularly and who call them their spiritual home. A church that is unable to maintain its premises in a fit and proper state of repair must ask some serious questions of itself! Neglect communicates to visitors and says that, if you do not care about your own house, how well will you care about me? It may be that the warmth of your welcome and fellowship deserves a second look, but you just might not get the chance.
Bast asks three simple questions in respect of our buildings:
Don’t touch that…
We haven’t always taken our children when we have been asked as a family to visit – the experience can be too frightening, both for them and for us! However, we have on occasion found ourselves in a beautiful home with lovely people who just don’t get the children thing! We have endured a nervous lunch watching our children like hawks for fear of them breaking something; or worse of them saying something like “Mummy, I’m bored. Can we go home now?” If people sit on tenterhooks through our services for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing then we are failing them. This is not unconnected to the previous point as we understand that untidiness does not equal neglect, but can equal ‘lived in.’ I don’t have an issue with a church that looks ‘lived in’ – just one that looks neglected.
I sometimes observe that even those of my more outgoing members ignore the children when welcoming a new family. They don’t do it deliberately – they just don’t know how to communicate with them. It’s important to include all the family when I meet them. However, I am also looking to connect new people to others as appropriate: older people to the leaders of our seniors ministries; children and teenagers to our youth workers, etc.
One of the most powerful tools in attracting other Christians and non-Christians to your church is an active and exciting Youth and Children’s programme. Families moving into a new town may at first try the same denomination that they attended previously, but they are most likely to end up attending the church that is best able to meet the needs of their children and teenagers. As the baby-boomers of the 1950s enter their middle ages, they are being replaced by their own children’s families as a second baby-boom wave hits society. The church needs to be ready for this new wave and the opportunities it presents in a way it was not in the 1960s and 1970s. Children’s programmes were seen as a way of reaching whole families, but Bast, on the basis of what happened in these earlier periods, reports this to be a failed view (Bast, p.71). What is difficult to know at this distance is if this theory failed because there is no great natural link between a child’s experience of church and a parent’s subsequent attendance, or if it failed because the church at that time did not properly exploit the opportunity their youth and children’s programmes gave them to reach into the family beyond.
Atmosphere…
I love watching sport on TV, but there is nothing like being at the game itself. The one thing you cannot get in the living room is the sense of atmosphere. You often hear a commentator say something like ‘the noise of the crowd here is deafening’ when in fact to you at home it sounds just the same as the crowd in the last televised game you watched. Visitors to a church instinctively and intuitively sense the atmosphere immediately and this is what Barna primarily refers to as the Power of a Positive Attitude. People just know if things in a congregation feel right just as they can walk into your home and know if things are OK.
Visitors can sense the reality of our unity and our fellowship. They can sense our excitement or lack of it about worship and they can just tell if this is a good place to be. It is there in the genuineness of our welcome or lack of it, in our body language and in the things we say and do. Some of the positive things we can communicate to people which are attractive to them are:
* A sense of purpose and vision
* An eagerness to experience God and learn new things
* A sense of enjoyment and participation in church life
* Proof of love for one another and a commitment to others
* An awareness of faithfulness even in tough times
Of course, for those who regularly attend any given church, it follows that this is the church to which they belong and that, at the point at which we decided we belonged, we found the fellowship to be warm and welcoming, otherwise we would not be here. Once bonded, however, it is our sense of belonging coupled with loyalty and determination that at times maintains our membership. Just as a couple who have a blazing row before their dinner guests arrive rarely are skilled enough to hide their unease, so churches cannot hide the fact they are going through trying times. Sometimes the true measure of a church is discovered during such times and visitors, while feeling the tensions, will also see the love and faithfulness of the people dealing with the problems they are encountering.
What is going on…?
In one church setting in which I ministered the local churches held an annual exchange of pulpits during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity every January. On one occasion, I was asked to preach at the local High Anglican Church, which I was pleased to do even though I knew it would be an unusual experience for me. I had to sit up front in full view of everyone (I normally did this, but somehow on this occasion I felt exposed) and was left to work out on my own when to stand/sit/kneel, not to jump when the bells rang and not to react inappropriately when I was wafted with incense. While I realised that everything they did in this church had a meaning and a purpose with which they as regulars were comfortable, I was only able to make guesses at what transpired.
What we do and how we do it matters, but we do not need to change what we do for it to make sense to people present. Rather an awareness on our part that visitors might not fully understand what is happening and a willingness to help them along the way can work wonders.
Giving our best for God…
When it comes to serving God in the ministry of Church Worship everyone should strive for excellence in what they do from the stewards to the refreshment servers to the preacher to the musicians. Bad sermons, poor music, cold churches, ear-piercing sound production, grumpy stewards and maudlin tea ladies all serve to reflect badly on the church and therefore on the Christ we seek to serve. God deserves our best and we must strive to give it for him. This, of course, applies also to those who attend church, who should also come prepared or willing to give their best for God rather than see worship as a place where others give and they receive.
Expect great things from God…
“Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.” Thus spoke William Carey, the founder of the modern missionary movement in 1792. User friendly churches will have about them an air of expectancy and anticipation shared by the majority of the congregation. This communicates to visitors and they will want to share it as well. Active, participative members encourage active participation from visitors.
People matter
There is an inevitable and continual tension in church life between the people as a group/body, and the people as individuals. Put another way, the tension is between the common good and the good of the individual. Most people place the emphasis on the former until they discover that they are themselves the latter. Barna touches upon this with his second principle, ‘Building Living Stones’, for, while each stone is an individual that matters to God, these stones are being put into place in a building we call the church.
In emphasising that people matter rather than programmes, Barna possibly overstates his case when he says there are no programmes in the Bible. In Acts 7, the problems of meeting the needs of individuals in the early church led to the formation of a programme/ministry to deal with it. In Acts 17.2, we read of Paul’s custom of going into the synagogue to preach the Gospel, suggesting that he had at least a rudimentary program/system for his evangelistic work. The notion that the needs of individuals may collectively be met by well organised responses could hardly be argued to be unbiblical – indeed Jethro was actually angered by Moses’ failure to take proper care of his people (Exodus 18.17-18) by taking too much upon himself instead of setting up a proper system to meet their needs.
Programmes/systems or ministries need to be people oriented and we should always be aware of their tendency toward self-perpetuation and indifference to the needs they were established to meet. However, we should also beware of becoming churches geared solely toward meeting the personal and individual needs of its members as this will completely and quickly drain all of a church’s resources.
This tension between group and individual might at first glance appear to be fuelled by the parable of the ‘Lost Sheep’ (Matthew 18.12ff) in which the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep to seek the one that is lost, thus suggesting the primacy of the ‘one.’ However, there is nothing in this very brief parable to suggest that the shepherd has not taken every care to ensure the safety and security of the ninety-nine he leaves behind, nor are we free to conclude that the shepherd would forsake the ninety-nine for the one if, in doing so, he placed them in mortal danger. In every novel of its genre, we find the hero facing this dilemma wherein the one who is usually a close companion is captured by the enemy and faces imminent death, while the ninety-nine are the many who will suffer sometime in the future if the hero fails in his or her ultimate quest. Does the hero save his friend or complete his quest for the sake of the many? By the miracle of the novel the hero usually does both, but life is not always like a novel! Pastors and churches may do all they reasonably can to save the one but there may come a point in time when they will be right to abandon that quest for the sake of the many.
I am aware of a church who discovered in their midst a multi-convicted paedophile who was still under investigation by the police facing further prosecution. After much soul searching, they decided that the protection of the very many children in their church congregation was their priority and that the only way they could fully ensure the safety of their children was for the individual concerned to no longer attend. They offered to help the individual find another church where there were no children in attendance. This was a case where the need of the vulnerable many outweighed the need of the one.
There is a line of thought that, in vibrant, growing, expectant churches, programmes, ministries and organisations that no longer serve their original propose should be axed. However, while programmes are ‘things’, they are ‘things’ that are operated by people who have invested of themselves in them. A church organisation that no longer serves its original purpose may serve the needs of those who run it, even if they only run it for themselves. Programmes or church organisations should certainly be closed down if they are running counter-productive to the purposes and vision of the church, if they are an unacceptable drain on church resources, or if they are becoming seriously problematic. A monthly Craft and Coffee group established by half a dozen members to be an outreach ministry, but which never grows beyond those original six members may appear pointless and valueless to many, but it should not necessarily be closed down. If those six members enjoy the time they spend together each month and find valuable and supportive friendship, it may be that all we need do is recognise that the original purpose has changed. If all church organisations fall into this category, that is, of course, another matter!
Churches are multi-faceted organisations and at times, like hospitals, they care for the sick (spiritually and physically), even facing emergencies. They can be like military bases training the troops for the spiritual battles ahead. They can function as kindergartens looking after the newly born, or schools teaching basic lessons, and at the same time be like universities as they challenge thinking and expand the mind. Like political parties, churches can be the means of transforming society and, like theatre and the arts, they can impassion and inspire us.
Keep it simple, shepherds
Barna’s third principle is that ‘You Can Only Do So Much.’ He writes, “…the stark reality is that every church has limited resources, and has been called to accomplish a specific mission. Despite the urge to be all things to all people, the successful church resists that impulse … by focussing on their vision for ministry, by reaffirming their commitment to quality, and by recognising their limitations” (Barna, p. 51).
The thought behind this is that rather than do a lot of things with mediocrity, or a number of things adequately, it is best to do a few things exceptionally well and only move on to new things when these are mastered and resources allow. It’s a good plan for a new church, but equally it is clear that over time even new churches enter a place where they are now running multiple programmes/ ministries just like pre-existing churches. We must also acknowledge that time moves us and our ministries on in ways we might not have foreseen, even if the outcome was obvious. A number of youth churches planted in the UK in the 1980ss and 1990s have now found themselves in a place where they are no longer youth churches, but family churches increasingly looking like the churches they abandoned twenty years ago. Even though one or two have launched new youth churches for their teenage children, there is no going back for them!
Rivalry, even between churches, is not always a bad thing if it inspires us to be better in our service of God. However, churches in the UK are learning that there are ministries they can operate better collectively than they can individually (e.g. Street Pastors and Schools Ministry). They are also learning that, even though one church is strong enough to launch a ministry alone, it is often best done in co-operation with other churches.
In a tradition that stretches back to the late 1790s (and beyond), churches have always been very successful at plugging the gaps. Initially, the three principal thrusts of this were in education, social reform and healthcare. The campaign to abolish the slave trade that awakened the ‘evangelical conscience’ of 19th Century Britain would transform British Society beyond anything imaginable at the commencement of the 1800s. Even prior to the 1790s, most schools were church schools, but in the early part of the century literally tens of thousands of church schools opened, not just for children, but also for adults teaching reading, writing and arithmetic). Eventually, the state got the message, and social justice, education and healthcare became part of the fabric of life in the UK. So the church turned its attention to youth work, ministry to the elderly and pre-schoolers and, as the 20th century unfolded, these also became part of the work of Government, not in opposition to the churches, but because of the churches. Now, in the age of the rise of volunteerism, churches and their premises are at the forefront once more and also, as government becomes increasingly overstretched, churches are once more taking up the mantle and plugging the gaps in youth work and pre-school work.
Church in the UK has been at its best and most effective when it has plugged the gaps and connected with the reality of people’s lives, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the Gospel in practical, not just spiritual, terms.
(Part 2 of this article will be published in the next edition of Ministry Today)
References and further reading
Barna, George: User Friendly Churches: What Christians need to know about the Churches People love to go to, Regal Books, 1991, Ventura CA USA
Bast, Robert L: Attracting New Members, Church Growth Press, 1988, Monrovia CA USA
George, Carl F, and Logan, Robert E.: Leading and Managing your church, Fleming Revell, 1987, Old Tappan NJ USA
Gray, Robert N: Managing the Church: Vol. I Church business Administration, The Phillips University Press, 1971, Enid Oklahoma USA
Kilinski, Kenneth and Wofford, Jerry C.: Organization and Leadership in the Local Church, Zondervan, 1973, Michigan USA
Likert, Rensis: New Patterns of Management, McGraw Hill, 1961, New York USA
McGavran, Donald and Arn, Winfield C.: Ten steps for Church Growth, Harper and Row, 1977, San Francisco, CA USA
Olsen, Charles M.: Transforming Church Boards into Communities of Spiritual Leaders, Alban Institute, 1995, Bethesda MD USA
Oswald, Roy M. and Friedrich, Robert E. Jnr.: Discerning your Congregations Future, Alban Institute, 1996, Bethesda MD USA
Parsons, George and Leas, Speed B.: Understanding Your Congregation as a System, Alban Institute, 1993, Bethesda MD USA
Schaller, Lyle E.: Assimilating New Members, Parthenon Press, 1978, Nashville TN USA
Schaller, Lyle E.: 44 Questions for Congregational Self-Appraisal, Abingdon Press, 1998, Nashville TN USA
Stutzman Ervin R.: Welcome: A Biblical and Practical Guide to Receiving New Members, Herald Press, 1990, Scottdale PA USA
Willimon, William; Willard, Dallas and Burkett, Larry: The Pastor’s Guide to Effective Ministry, Beacon Hill Press, 2002, Kansas City Kansas USA
You are reading Church - Where Everyone Knows Your Name by Clive Jarvis, part of Issue 54 of Ministry Today, published in February 2012.
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