I will go on with the church-state blogging when I have time, but first I wanted to address an issue that Dash brought up. She has non-Christian friends who feel that churches are unwelcoming. She wonders if open communion would help.
As I said on her blog, my own experience with churches is that their communion policy has little to do with how welcoming they feel. Truth be told, I haven’t had much of a problem with churches feeling unwelcoming, and I wonder if this is a difference in experience or in expectations. But I have seen variations in hospitality, so I thought I would offer my own highly subjective tips on how to make a church more welcoming.
1) Get out information about yourself that visitors will need. Put the relevant wheres and whens out front, in your phone-book ad (if you have one) and on your answering machine message. A good website helps a lot too, but be sure to update it if things change. I’ve had the experience of showing up for a nonexistent event, and it’s not welcoming.
2) Whatever your communion policy is, make sure people know it, either through announcement or the service leaflet. Much of the difficulty about this issue comes from people not knowing what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes non-Christians commune simply because they’re doing what everybody else is doing, and don’t realize they aren’t supposed to. I’ve also heard from one person who went up to an LCMS altar expecting communion and was passed over, which I’m sure was embarrassing for both parties.
3) This may sound odd, but convey that it’s all right for people to feel awkward. When I visited the Orthodox mission, their attitude was, “We know we do funny things and you probably think we’re weird, but that’s OK, we’re still glad you’re here.” When people have permission to feel uncomfortable, it can paradoxically make them more comfortable.
4)Â Don’t get territorial if someone sits in your pew spot. I’ve never actually seen this, but I’ve heard about it, and it’s ridiculous.
5) Organized events especially for newcomers are helpful. At my church, the Sunday lunch has been a really nice way to get to know new people. It provides more depth than the usual small talk over coffee.
6) Don’t start a conversation with, “So, are you going to come back?” Somebody actually did this to me once, and it was followed by a painful silence since I was nowhere near deciding that yet.
Generally speaking, if you’re even worried about being welcoming, you’re probably OK. The most unwelcoming churches are the ones that don’t even think about it. And an open communion is no substitute for thinking.
Lots of good points. How about walking up to the stranger/visitor and saying “hello?” Too often “we” (myself included) are in a hurry to talk to a friend, make the coffee, etc. Lots of times introducing yourself and recognizing the visitor as a person makes a person feel welcome.
Just my two cents.
/Steve
Comment by Steve — August 28, 2006 @ 10:45 pm
Great post — I took up the open communion theme in a post over at my place.
One other thing that strikes me as important is for the person who greets a newbie (and everyone in the congregation should share in this responsibility of greeting new folks) to probe deeply enough to find some kind of common ground with that person, or connect them up with someone in the congregation their share interests/etc. with.
On one of my visits to the American Cathedral, which I visit when I’m in Paris for work, one of the greeters started talking to me during coffee hour, and although it was a bit awkward (we didn’t share much in common), she finally hit upon the fact that I was a Russian major in college. So she went off and found a Russian woman who attends the Cathedral and she and I had a great conversation. I felt like they cared as a community that I had a place there and could connect with someone. It was definitely one of the better new-person experiences I’ve had at a church.
Comment by Chris T. — August 29, 2006 @ 3:57 am
You know, there was a lot of good stuff here — but you lost me when you castigated “territoriality” about pews. There you ask too much! (just a joke, contrary to what Dash says. I’m willing to share my pew with strangers — it’s those who should know better who rock my planet!)
To get personal, one thing I don’t feel to be especially welcoming is to be paid too much attention to. It seems desperate. When I visit, I like to be invited — not directed — to the coffee time (why would a congregation NOT have a coffee hour?). But don’t try to hard to rope me in. One church I attended offered me three invitations to join the choir. (The congregation was small; the opening hymn was my favorite — and sung in harmony; I sat on the aisle — claustrophobia, you know — and sang the tenor line; apparently it was loud enough for some choir members to hear as they processed by — oops.) That was a bit much, but if it had been followed up with any conversation or any attempt to learn about me, it would have been fine. As it was, when I demurred, the people sort of disappeared. And I was led to feel that they were interested in what they could get out of me, without really knowing what I had to offer.
I think you hint that key to “welcoming” is to create a space (physical, emotional, sociological) where a stranger can “stand” to see what goes on and figure out who we are. That’s what Parker Palmer describes — together with a strong discouragement of changing who you are and what you do in order to “accommodate” the stranger. Be yourself, but define yourself in such a way that you expect strangers/visitors and can fit them in as such — not as pretend members, but as the gift of otherness they represent. That makes perfect sense to me.
That, much more than admitting everyone who wanders by into the holy mysteries, seems to be the essence of welcoming. To be raw: It’s sort of the difference between being open to falling in love and hanging out on street corners waiting for the next bid.
Dwight
Comment by Dwight — August 29, 2006 @ 7:05 am
I agree with Dwight. Especially as a (relatively) young person I’ve visited some churches where I detected more than a whiff of desperation. I guess there’s a fine line between being welcoming and clingy.
I also think your number 5 is a really good point. If you’re new to a church it’s sometimes hard to make that transition from saying hi to people at coffee hour to forming deeper connections and relationships.
Comment by Lee — August 29, 2006 @ 8:31 am
Great points guys. It’s true, I was thinking about making a “Don’t go overboard!” sort of point because that’s happened to me too. Sometimes a visitor can really feel like she’s under a spotlight. I remember my Lutheran pastor said that when he first started pastoring he’d ask people who were there for the first time to stand up. Fortunately, he was quickly disabused of the idea that this would make them feel more welcome.
It is interesting, though, that different people come in with different expectations about attention and boundaries. I remember in that book about the Baptist church that I blogged last year, the author pointed out that in the liberal urban churches he was used to it was considered respectful to give people lots of personal space, so the visitors would have a chance to decide whether they wanted to know you or not. But the people in his subject church said they found those churches “cold and unfriendly,” and when a new person came to their church they would pay all sorts of attention that made the author cringe because it seemed so boundary-crossing. Yet a lot of visitors seemed to like it, I guess because in their subculture that was normal. I remember when I read that I thought of my Lutheran pastor, because he obviously had a different idea about the proper amount of attention to draw to a new person.
That’s one reason I made point no. 3. There’s likely to be some kind of culture clash with visitors, so it’s better to just acknowledge it than to be constantly thinking, “How can I make them more comfortable?”
Comment by Camassia — August 29, 2006 @ 9:05 am
I do think a simple greeting and welcome should be forthcoming, and not by the official greeters either. My husband once stood in the church lobby of a church we were visiting, obviously alone, and just waited. It took 3 weeks before anybody talked to him.
When we moved to the same town we ended up going to that church anyway, for a variety of reasons, and it has improved somewhat. I’d rationalize it by saying it’s a large church in a government town, but the mother church is equally large and in the same town, so that doesn’t wash.
Curious how individual congregations develop their own personalities, which can persist through the years.
Comment by Walrus — August 29, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
Lots of good points here. It’s certainly true that an open communion policy doesn’t automatically make visitors feel more welcome. At All Saints Pasadena, we famously have had open community for nearly forty years — but people still remark that their first visit is always a bit daunting and bewildering. After my first visit, it took me a long time to come back, so intimidated was I by the size and perceived impersonal nature of the community.
On the other hand, that “whiff of desperation” one finds in smaller churches is often really depressing.
Comment by Hugo — August 30, 2006 @ 9:45 am