The Dr. Strangelove reference there is just to get your attention, as the subject otherwise may be one of curiosity, but not necessarily get you interested right away. As most of my life is lived out as one "Friends" line after another, I have a need to share movie/TV references in communications often. But why am I really writing this note? In a fun way, I wanted to share something we learned recently that can be beneficial to any of you who are or have been heavily involved in ministry. In fact, it’s probably equally important for those of us who are contented attendees each week as well.
My wife and I are in the process of trying to find a new church home at the moment. We want something that fits us best, that offers good care for our 22-month-old son, and has a solid doctrine we can get behind. On some level, there is also an interest in finding a place to fit in, at least for me, in some type of ministry capability, perhaps sound or music, maybe eventually leading a Bible study.
A few weeks ago, we tried out a church that's very close to our house, called Waypoint. This is really where all of this comes from, because I've never seen one church fail so greatly in so many ways that was yet seemingly so healthy from a numbers standpoint. There had to be 300-400 people there, at least, and I'm just not sure how. Now, you would think with a name like Waypoint that their intent was to create a metaphor for where we should be on our journey with Christ, or perhaps those "waypoints" along the way that are indicators for how we're doing, or where to strive for, etc. A search of their church website provided us with no direction heading into the service. It was very vague, very nondescript, if you will, in terms of letting you know affiliations or anything beyond a simple statement of beliefs. There wasn't even a way to contact the pastor. In fact, it didn't even tell you his name. So that's where we'll begin.
DO: In providing a connection point on the web, be sure to list WHO is on staff, HOW to contact them and WHAT they are about. Give some biographical information, something to let the reader know where this person came from, what's important to them from a vision standpoint of the church, etc. In general, share the things any inquiring newbie would want to know.
DON'T: Don't create a web space with no information whatsoever about the pastor, the leadership, contact information or anything along those lines. You wouldn't create a business site this way, so why create one like this for a church? You're a church, right? Isn't a big part of your role to invite people in to a relationship with Christ and, by nature, a relationship with you as a people? Isn't it supposed to be a place where people can meet you, ask questions, etc.? Sure, in person is the primary contact method, but this is 2009. We're closing out a decade where the web is everything and is utilized for research more than ever. That falls over to churches, too.
DO: When people walk into your church facility, whether it is a permanent structure or temporary, like a theater or storefront, they like to be greeted, especially if they are new. Is your church so big you don't know everyone that comes in the door? Greet them anyway, right? People come to a church to feel welcomed, to be invited in to learn and understand more about God. We are their first impressions of what that relationship is like and we need to be there for them. I've never been in a church that didn't have someone available to greet you when you arrived...
DON'T: That is, until Waypoint. We arrived 10 minutes before service was set to begin. Two guitar players were practicing on a stage. There were 30 or 40 other cars in the parking lot, so there were plenty of people inside the facility (this is held at a Conference Center, not a church building) yet nobody was there to greet us as we arrived. In fact, though we saw a number of people, not one came up and introduced themselves or asked us if we were visiting or anything. We had to stop one of them after a few minutes to ask for assistance in finding the Nursery for our son, which brings me to the next...
DO: Make it obvious to people where everything is. I think most churches I've been in do a good job with this with signage or, if they don't have signage, using greeters to answer questions and direct visitors to where they want to go. At Waypoint, it was more like...
DON'T: Not only have no greeters or helpers of any kind, but also no signage. Oh, there was a sign we noticed off to the right indicating some classes for older kids, but nothing indicating a Nursery. Again, this wasn't a tiny church; it had several hundred people. When we asked the person we ran down where the nursery was, we found the next item on my list...
DO: Make sure to have childcare for infants and toddlers available from the very beginning of your services, even a bit before. If service starts at 10, it should be open at least 10 or 15 minutes ahead of time so parents can drop their kids off and get to the service on time. You know what a service with lots of infants and toddlers is like otherwise? Pick an adjective: noisy, disruptive, chaotic...I could go on. So what's the opposite of this plan?
DON'T: Do it like Waypoint did. When we inquired about the nursery, we were told he'd show us where it was, but that none of the children went to their classes or the nursery until after the music portion of the worship service was completed. Ummmm, what????? So you're saying I'm to somehow keep my 22-month-old son content until the music time is done? How? With magic? With smoke and mirrors? Anyone who has ever had a child, or even SEEN a child knows this is impossible. Infants, sure. They don't move much, don't care about much. But once your kids begin to walk and are active, SITTING is of the devil to them. They hate it. And so did my son. In fact, after a few songs, I gave up and took him out of the building, yes, out of the building, so the discontent he was showing wouldn't be a problem to others. Now, while we're on the subject of times, etc., let's discuss start times.
DO: Start your service as close to on-time as possible. I've run across the occasional old-time church that starts a Sunday evening service on “farmer's time”, so to speak, maybe as many as 10 or 15 minutes late. That's fine. It's an evening service, meant to be more casual, etc. But Sunday morning really, really, really needs to start as close to on-time as possible. This isn't just because people want to stick to a schedule. It's because many of us have kids who are young enough to where dealing with anything over an hour and 15 minutes is like pulling teeth anyway, especially if we're butting up against their lunchtime.
DON'T: Start it 20 minutes late because, well, you know, we're all just enjoying fellowship and it's fun to talk and we have to catch up and yada yada yada. Ummm, that's what the time BEFORE service is for and that's what the time AFTER service is for. At Waypoint, we began the music worship 20 minutes late. This is 20 minutes EXTRA we now had to try to keep our son content and comfortable, keeping him in our area, not letting him run around and be a distraction, etc., on top of him already not getting to go to the nursery right away. This naturally leads us to length of service...
DO: Try to stick to a fairly set time of worship each week. If you want to use the excuse that it's all "led by the Spirit", OK. There are charismatic churches out there for you where a few hours in service is considered normal. But for the rest of us, and especially for those with children, we really need to know because we have to plan everything. Those toddler mouths get hungry at fairly regular times and if you don't meet it, they don't understand what hunger is and so their very fun reaction is to fuss and cry. Woohoo!
DON'T: Not only begin your service 20 minutes late, but then decide within starting the teaching time to just meander along for another 20 minutes before even coming close to beginning to speak. Yes, we had a wonderful time of "touchy, feely, sharing" time at Waypoint and we learned something entirely new in the process of this as well, which comes next...
DO: Recognize that God is amazingly capable of multi-tasking. Heck, He even knows when you are sleeping and when you are awake (to borrow from Santa). He created the universe and has a pretty good handle on all of His people. So when you want to pray, two things you can do well to show Him you understand Him. One, it's OK to pray about multiple things in the same prayer because he's a pretty smart guy. And two, He knows who or what you're praying about, so just say it. It'll be good. On the other hand...
DON'T: At Waypoint, apparently the rest of us have no clue how God works. From what I could gather, you must pray about only one thing at a time, lest you confuse the God of the universe and cause Him to forget everything you wanted to pray about. In addition, apparently it's necessary to reach out with your hands in the direction of the person or persons you are praying for so that God can see exactly who it is you're referencing. I mean, seriously, how else is He to know who those people are? I suspect this also means that when praying for yourself, you should, theoretically, point to yourself or maybe lay hands on your chest so God will know it's you who you are praying about.
DO: Last one here for everyone. Thinking about doing something "different" in the service, perhaps breaking out into small groups, or doing something requiring personal interaction? Your "DO" here is to NOT do that. Let the service focus on what it should be doing, teaching, helping people grow and lifting up God.
DON'T: Don't do this. As Pastor "Happy Go Lucky" at Waypoint started his "sermon", he let us all know he was going to do something different that day. He was going to speak for 15 minutes and then we were all going to break out into small groups to study the passage he was speaking on. It was at this point I turned to my wife and advised her we were leaving when the break occurred. Let me ask you something? If you were new to a church, or even had visited just a few times but knew very few people, if any, would you be comfortable? What if, during meet and greet time in the middle of the service, nobody had come to speak to you? How would you feel upon hearing you were being forced to get into small groups to do a short Bible study in the middle of the service? I thought so. Don't do this, people. Use your small groups for what they are there for. Use your other opportunities for what they are there for. Don't try to create small group interaction in the middle of your church service, or at least not unless you intend to drive people away rather than welcome them in. Remember, your time for preaching is not your time for fellowship. It's your time for teaching. Rationalize it how you may, but putting people on the spot, like Waypoint did with us, is a surefire way to turn people away.
I'll end my separated points there, but wanted to encourage each of you to recognize a few things when it comes to new people visiting your churches. As newbies, we aren't looking for immediate acceptance and understanding, necessarily, but we are looking for smiling faces, people who are inviting and want to assure our questions are answered and needs are met. Assure that your greeters, or just the people in your church, recognize how important it is, regardless of size, to say hello to everyone and make them feel welcome.
During the 10-minute downtime in between the music worship and the preaching time at Waypoint, I took my son to the nursery and got him checked in. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, stopped by my wife to say hello and introduce themselves before or after I returned to my seat. The lesson here is for your people not to assume someone else will do it. Always take the initiative, always be welcoming, always meet and greet, so to speak. We attended a large church down in Texas, yet we always felt accepted, always felt cared for, always felt invited. You've never seen a church with so many greeters at so many places along the path into the sanctuary, and even inside. They went out of their way to assure everyone felt welcome and it worked. A church of about 1700-2000 never felt lonely and it never felt too big.
My wife and I have gone to 5 churches since we returned to our hometown. The first was one I attended for 4 years until we decided to find something a bit smaller. But it hadn't changed a bit, the music hadn't grown, and it still didn't match up with the welcome we wanted. The second was the one we'd attended before moving down to Texas last year. It felt fine for a short time, but soon began feeling empty and lacking in key support areas a church needs. A flock needs a true shepherd, pastors and laypersons, and we all know this.
Our first church to visit after we left our most recent church, we received no greeting, but the check-in desk appeared obvious so we headed over there where we were indeed warmly greeted and ushered to the nursery for our son. However, once inside the service, the worship itself was lifeless, the music mix among the worst I've ever heard (you have to be consistent, people, or you distract from the worship), and the preaching just plain sad. Also, not a terribly friendly place overall. The second church we visited was Waypoint, of which I spoke above. Waypoint is more the antithesis of their name. I'd say a more accurate description for them would be "Looking For Our Way", because it was very disorganized, had no real structure to it, was very touchy, feely in sense and, we're fairly sure we saw a number of gay people there. Ummm, yeah, THAT one is real specific in the Bible, folks. Don't kid yourselves in this era of social acceptance.
That experience was so disappointing that we didn't go anywhere the next Sunday because we felt so frustrated. The next week, our intent was to visit a church a bit further out from our house. As we drove up on it, I realized it was in a very small storefront. It used to meet in a theater. So in 7 or 8 years of existence, it's actually shrunk from a theater to a small storefront. That's not what we’re looking for, so we decided not to attend there. We would've had to go home with no service yet again, but my wife suggested a church her dad used to pastor that happened to be on our way home. We're glad we did, as we felt welcomed right away and it was an encouraging day. It's not perfect, and doesn't meet a perfect needs list, but very few churches can. We'll give it a shot next week as well.
And why? Because they invited us in; they treated us as Christ would treat us; they wanted us there, to be a part of a body of believers who have a desire to grow and learn together in Christ.
I hope you can all see this for what I want it to be. These are just some words of wisdom from a weary, oft-traveled guy trying to make sense of what does and doesn't work in ministry, gang. Take it for what it's worth, suggestions of what to do and what not to do if you want to reach those who know nothing about your church. Too often I feel we become content and, unintentionally, we push people away because we don't want to put forth the effort to accept new people, to accept those we don't know and would have to reach out to, but that's our calling. I'd hate for us to miss it.
God Bless, all.
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