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One recent wintry weekend, I decided to visit a random church in my neighborhood, and just for a change of pace, since I spend so much time visiting our Michigan UCC churches, I thought I’d go to another denomination.
I tried to forget that I was a pastor and professional church visitor, so I looked for a church the way normal people do - online, at the last minute, haphazardly and on a day with bad weather. I plugged three nearby churches into google maps and drove toward the one that looked to be starting soon but hadn’t started yet.
I circled around looking for parking, and then I circled around again, and by the time I finally parked somewhere semi-legal, my frustration was high, as I slipped on icy sidewalks toward the entrance. I’ll admit it. I was now late and coming in hot.
I know enough about historic church buildings to know that the front door they built a hundred years ago is almost never going to be the front door today, so I went to a modern office door near a staff parking area, but it was locked, and on the door was a paper sign that said something unhelpful like, “Please enter through the north narthex courtyard office staff side main entrance” and included a map of the church’s architectural blueprint with a few illegible squiggles. So I slipped along the sidewalk to a side door, also locked, and finally up the unsalted stairs to the grand gothic door, amazed that the main entrance was actually going to be the main entrance but of course it wasn’t. Pasted to that door was the same mysterious sign I had seen on all the other doors, so I circled back to door number one, which was at least made of glass and knocked on the window, and finally reluctantly pressed what might be a doorbell, that I prayed didn’t ring straight to the pulpit.
After a few minutes a uniformed security guard opened the door just a crack to ask me why I was there.
“I’m here for church,” I said.
“You’re late,” she said.
“Your doors are locked,” I said.
“We have signs,” she said.
“I tried four doors with the same sign before coming back to this first one.”
“You should have rung the doorbell,” she said.
“I just did,” I said.
“You can come in, but it’s almost over,” she said, and sure enough, church must have ended early that day (I’ll guess they hadn’t invited the Conference Minister to preach.) The one dark hallway into the sanctuary was now as crowded as a cattle chute, full of people leaving just as I was coming in. I just turned myself around and followed the crowd out, ready to try church number two.
At the next church, a few blocks away, I was ready to be locked out a few times, and was, but I was pleasantly surprised when the actual entrance proved to be the entrance. The tall door opened into a gathering space, which was empty, but I could understand that, because once again, I was late, and I was just grateful to step in from the cold. Next step was to locate the sanctuary, but when I tried to open the double doors as quietly as I could, I realized I needn’t have bothered because the church was also empty. Was I in the wrong building? Was this even a church? Or was I trespassing? A man walked toward me, wearing a badge that made me nervous until I saw that it said, “Usher” and he had a friendly smile.
“You probably expected to find a bunch of people here, and not an empty narthex, but we’re all actually downstairs in the basement if you’d like to join us. Welcome!” he said cheerfully.
I thanked him, apologized for being late, and then went into a long story he had not asked to hear, about this being the fifth entrance I’d tried in a vain attempt to break into locked churches I had found on the internet earlier that morning. “Can you please direct me to the church service,” I asked, “So that I can just slip in?”
Yet once again, my questions as a church visitor did not seem to have an obvious answer. “We have a charming tradition here at our church,” the usher explained, “That whenever there is a fifth Sunday of the month, we cancel worship and have breakfast instead in the basement. Would you like to join us?”
“No offense but I wasn’t looking for breakfast.” I said. “I was just hoping to go to church somewhere.” Back in my cold car, I rechecked this church’s website and worship times and nowhere was there anything about fifth Sundays, breakfast and other charming traditions.
The third church service I tried was now well under way, probably almost over, so I had no time to waste. By now I knew to look for the least obvious entrance architecturally, find it locked, but by I had now learned the doorbell ringing trick and I had even mastered my pitch speech for yet another guard who sure enough questioned me about my reasons for wanting to come in. “I know that church is almost over,” I said, “I’m just trying to get in for the end.” Perhaps he thought I was referencing the End as in eternity for he relented and walked me to a side door off a hallway I never would have found myself. Finally, I was going to get into a church! But did I ever. This backstage entrance popped me into what felt like the center stage of the chancel. No slipping in late at the back for me, in order to find a pew in which to be quiet. I was going to have to walk in front of everyone, like a pageant contestant, which I did, for the sake of world peace, and then I sat down.
All around me, people read and sang out loud from a lengthy printed paper program that I did not have a copy of and no one around me seemed willing to part with their own. When it came time to sing as a group, they looked at me curiously because I was not singing but no one seemed to understand that I was literally missing the memo, which was the printed material they held in their hot little hands. As no one offered to share, I pretended to have no need of their help, making up and mouthing words to songs I pretended to sing. As they wrapped up communion, I jumped into line, which probably looked like cutting, and then tried to mimic the behavior of the people in front of me at the altar. I returned to my seat, fed in the body of Christ, but also exhausted and eager to leave more anonymously than I had come in. But that was not meant to be, for the only exit was yet another cow chute that ended with the one thing I was not in the mood to do by then.
The line to shake the pastor’s hand was interminable, as parishioners chatted with the pastor, while others waited patiently, tossing the bulletins they had refused to part with minutes before straight into the recycling. But I could see there was no getting around any of this. The only way out was through. I shook the pastor’s hand, shook the dust from my feet and high tailed it home.
So thus concludes my story of three churches, eight locked doors, two security guards, multiple faded paper signs with instructions that made no sense, entrances and exits with no escape, ice, cold, frost and some bad weather to boot. Even to me as a professional pastor, the entry code was hard to crack. I imagined how hard it would be for someone who has been away from church for years, someone who carries wounds or a sense of rejection.
Now, I trust that all three of these churches are warm and welcoming, and not only because they had blanketed themselves with signs and banners to that effect. I trust that they really are loving people but their logistics told a different story.
Friends, if your doors are locked after worship starts, please add signs to every locked door that explain how visitors can still get in without feeling embarrassed, but then be prepared for them to still feel discouraged and leave. It takes a lot of courage to come to worship somewhere for the first time, and our churches need to be ready and welcoming, for real. Update everything you have online to make it clear what time you worship, and post publicly when you don’t, because that may be the very day you get a visitor. The most important person in the church is the one who has not yet arrived.
We can hang as many welcome signs as we want telling the world how open we are, but if the stranger can’t find their way in, late, tired and unprepared, what is the point?
Peace and Blessings,
Lillian Daniel
Michigan Conference Minister
(Note: No actual UCC churches were harmed or observed in the production of this newsletter.)
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