I realise our church is quite large. I realise our lives are getting quite busy. However I am getting fed up with our selfish attitudes towards welcoming new people. And I say OUR because I'm not taking myself out of the equation.
Often doing sound at church I am up the back and it gives a good platform to observe people and in particular our welcoming of visitors. And I'll be honest- we aren't doing the best at it. In fact we aren't even making people other than our friendship groups welcome. Have a quick think- who did you have a chat to in our Sunday's greeting time?
Firstly we need to be more welcoming at the front door. This is more than a hello- If you don't know the people- Introduce yourself- ask people how their week is going. If our friends are on welcoming have a quick chat or hello and move on- Lets not interfere with their welcoming ministry. Clear the entrance way so people can move in. Be aware that the teach people have jobs to do so don't start chatting to them 1 min before service time. Look around for new people or irregular people and even just say hello.
Then we have our welcoming time. Most people don't bother to get up. The ones who do get up first seem to rush off to chat to friends. The visitors or the people who aren't regulars sit quietly by themselves. (ever wonder why they aren't regular?) Eventually someone might come over to talk to them but often it is the same people every week.
I'm going to have a radical suggestion here- If we want to catch up with friends lets not do it at church. Chat up for a coffee on sat or after work. Even do it later on, in the day on Sunday. But lets not waste our opportunities to welcome/encourage visitors or non-regular attendees or people in a different age group in those key times: Directly before church, during church and immediately afterwards. Better yet invite them to things afterwards with you.
Common Willows lets pick up our game. I'm getting sick of people saying "Are they new?" about people who have been coming for a while- but are the first ones to chat to their friends. Maybe if the only time we see our friends is on Sunday- there may be something wrong.
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This is such a challenging topic for me because I am not very good at first getting to know people - or at least I don't believe that I am. So how do we get past 'we should be more welcoming' to 'here's some skills to help you be more welcoming', to help others like me feel confident to welcome new people effectively?
Another thing I find difficult is meeting up with friends on other-than-Sunday times with kids. It hugely limits the time you have to see people and still maintain a level of sanity at home! (Though, a lot of that probably has to do with the teaching lifestlye as well.) It took us two days to recover from going out on Saturday night.
The other thing I find challenging is that I've felt ever since I've come back to Willows that there is a culture of demographic division. I think it has a lot to do with the size of the church, but I often feel that I'm really only supposed to talk to other people with small children. It has made it very hard for us to settle in at Willows, and we could have easily become one of those 'non-regulars'.
These aren't excuses, just some thoughts.
While I agree with most of this, I think it's unfair to say "if the only time we see our friends is on Sunday- there may be something wrong."
For a lot of people Saturday is the only day they have available to catch up with friends (aside from Sunday) and you can't really expect them to fill up every saturday each week to see all their friends. Especially if they use that time to catch up with non-Christians friends.
I agree with Stuss on the demographic division thing too. I'm not even sure when it happened, or if it was always there and I only noticed it when I got older.
Fellowship is a big part of a sunday but the point I was trying to make Leah is I see the same people week in week out going straight away to talk to the same friends- people who they would call close friends- even relatives whom they saw the day before... what is the go there?
There is a big demographic split- sometimes it even works out as an old church- new church or left side vs right side. I think those of us who have been in the church for a while need to breaking this division. I thin it will be even more noticeable after the church plant.
Any ideas on how to do this- I liked it when Nathan got us all up and told us to move in the same row and talk to the person who was on the other side of the church
Tim, I don't think it is as cut and dried as that.
I'm one of those people who tend to talk to the same people every week, unless we're rostered on morning tea (which is part of why we're on the morning tea roster). But I think I know how it has happened.
When I left John Calvin at the start of 2003 I very much felt a valued member of the church family. Feeling part of the church family made me feel (somewhat) confident to talk with people I didn't know or didn't know well.
Then I came back, now to Willows, 3 1/2 years later: seven months pregnant, and living with my mum while my husband was overseas with limited communication. And no-one seemed to care. In the five months before he came back to Australia, I had one invite out from anyone in the congregation. Just one. And almost no-one came to introduce themselves to me and find out who this new person was. One person who I hadn't been friends with before made an effort to get to know me. My guess would be that half of the congregation at that time was new since I had left. I was somehow supposed to just know everyone. When Steve did come home, it was worse. He was genuinely new, and the only people who talked to him were people who had known me for a long time and had met him on our visits here while we weren't living here.
I think one or a combination of things happened:
a) people assumed that I was already part of the church because I grew up here, so the 'old' people would look after me
b) people assumed that I fit in with the 'young mum' demographic and they would look after me. (They didn't, really.)
c) people made a judgement on me because I was very pregnant and here on my own.
Let me now fast forward a year or so, and we lose a baby, and then another one, and another one. We don't really tell many people about the last two because so few people cared about us the first time. A few people did, at the time, but Steve's work community showed more love and concern than our church family. I'd love be able to say that I know that my church family is praying for us, or hear from someone, anyone, that it's okay for me to not want to go to baby showers and not to be excited about every new baby being born. I don't want to feel like I'm expected to go to Bible Study with just the other young mums - the ones who are all there with their young babies. I don't want to feel like because I'm a young mum I'm not really welcome to do anything other than playgroup.
While I was hurting the most, the safest place for me was with the people who I knew well, and who I knew cared.
I think what I most want to say here is that it is easiest to be open and welcoming when you yourself feel welcome. Boxing people into groups makes it really hard to make some people feel welcome.
That's my story, which I'm quite willing to share if it helps me see my faults (which I do - I'm not out for sympathy - I know I need to look for my comfort primarily in God, which I don't always do), and to help others see where they might need to improve.
Tim I understand your bigger point and I wasn't disputing that, it was just that specific comment that I quoted that I was contending.
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