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Welcoming Or Inviting?
I’ve been reading a little book called Creating a Culture of Invitation at Your Church by Michael Harvey. It’s not a thick tome, and Harvey is an Anglican (in England) who sees the church there is as much in the same boat as the church here in America. Dwindling numbers and resources, low energy levels and “stuck” processes and patterns.
In the Introduction, Harvey reviews these conditions and then determines that there is only one question churches (and their leaders) must ask themselves: Is your congregation welcoming or inviting? (you can only choose one or the other)
Most congregation leaders, in his experience, answer “Welcoming.” They see themselves as
there awaiting to greet anyone who crosses the church building’s threshold. But this is where he sees the problem – no one knows we’re welcoming unless they drive down Rt 1, turn onto Blackburn Road, don’t miss the entrance to our parking lot, find a place to park and venture out to find the “correct” door to come in. This relies almost solely on the initiative and curiosity of the one who visits. But how do we get on the attention radar in the first place?
Modern-era churches have a social media presence. Not as prolific or effective as most
commercial sites, but a church’s website is considered the 21 st Century equivalent of the
building’s front door. In other words, if they get to our website, they will learn things (usually in the first two or three minutes) that will either attract them or repel them from even trying to come and visit us.
Harvey suggests that what we fail to realize is that there are people in our personal, outside-of- church spheres that may be seeking some connection, some relationship, some lifeline to hope that is what we Christians have to share with the world. Sometimes they have been wounded by a hurtful Christian experience or they are coming into a time of life where the purely rational answers no longer meet their questions.
So what would happen, what might change if we – each of us – looked around us at work,
school, the neighborhood, the stands at Little League and just mentioned something that is
going on at our church or that was talked about last Sunday or what is was like to serve at the Hunger Prevention Center or played in the Good Shepherd Housing Foundation Golf
Tournament or walked in the Walk For ACTS? What kind of conversations or questions might
come up? Could it be something we’re afraid of hearing? Or maybe it would be too touchy for us to talk about? Or perhaps it might be rather “faith unfriendly”?
Invitation is, as Harvey says, at the heart of God’ own self. Jesus was sent to invite us into a
relationship with God. And each of his disciples were invited to “Come and see.” What is the
obstacle keeping us from inviting someone to church?
I think, for many of us (myself included), we are afraid of “failing,” in that our invitation will be
rejected out-of-hand or we might be ridiculed for what it is we hold dear. Popular impressions of religious observances as coercive, abusive, or detached-from-reality tend to make us less likely to take the risk of inviting others to come and see. Sometimes it helps to invite someone to a social or fellowship event (Bingo, Trunk or Treat, VBS, Pet Blessings) and sometimes it might be easier to invite a friend to help take food donations to the Food Pantry or gifts for kids at the hospital.
But as a seminary professor once told me, “If we invite people, some will say yes and some will say no. But if we don’t invite people, the answer will always be no.”
Surely, we need to make sure that what we present, how we act “inside” the church is important as well. But all the design, comfort, heartfelt worship and care for one another will go unnoticed if we aren’t able to invite others to our church, to meet us and get to know what we are about – to “Come and see.”
Let’s take a chance, shall we?
Shalom.
Pr. Mark
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