Toolbox For Faith

The following was printed in the September 2010 Newsletter from Luther Memorial Lutheran Church in Blacksburg, Virginia. This article is specifically focused on students, but I thought the suggestions offered practical suggestions for how we can be hospitable and welcoming to all worshipers.

Welcoming Faces
We are gifted with many warm and welcoming people at Luther Memorial. We just want to invite you to share those gifts with the Tech students as they join us for worship. If you see a student or anyone new please remember to:

Smile! Many of us are just as shy as they are. But we are in a familiar place, and they are not. A smile can go a long way to welcoming someone to a “foreign land.”

Say “Hello! My name is . . . . . ” For the really bold among us, feel free to shake their hand. And if you’re really crazy, ask their name and challenge yourself to remember it.

Show them around. Once you’ve said hello and helped them follow the worship, maybe you could show them around the church building (especially, pointing out the bathrooms!).

Think of it as your house. What would you show them? What would you want them to know or see about this place?

Of course, these are the basics of the Christian community in which we live. We want to remind you to be alert as the students return for a new semester.

Most congregations want to be better hosts to their new worshipers, but the question is how. Pastor David Derrick (St. Philip Lutheran Church, Roanoke, VA) and I put together a checklist of Hospitality Ideas that could help an individual or team of people who are trying to become more welcoming. These are simple, basic ideas, but hopefully they can help establish new patterns and new behaviors. You don’t need to do all seven at once, but try one or two and then considering adding another. If you have other ideas for simple, welcoming activities that we could add to the list, please let me know.

Hospitality Checklist

1. When the service is over, intentionally go to someone you don’t know well and greet that person before reconnecting with your friends in the congregation.
2. If your congregation “Passes the Peace,” feel free to move out of your section to share God’s peace with someone on the other side of the sanctuary.
3. Call someone whom you haven’t seen in worship recently and just say, “Hello.”
4. Sit somewhere different one Sunday morning and engage the people around you in conversation.
5. Arrive early for worship and walk around the sanctuary to make sure things are neat and straight.
6. Arrive early for worship and walk through the restrooms to make sure they are neat and well stocked with supplies.
7. If your congregation offers activity bags for young children, take a moment to see if they are well stocked and easy to find.

My wife and I asked for a table for two. The host invited us to follow him and led us to the middle of the restaurant. As we walked I looked ahead and saw what appeared to be a full section. There was one table open, but it had about two inches between it and the tables on either side which were filled with people. Based on my observation, I assumed our host was taking us to another section. When we reached that empty table, however, the host stopped, grabbed the edge of the table, pulled it out into the middle of the aisle, so my wife could sit down and then pushed it back in so I could sit down. From my perspective as a resident of southwest Virginia, the section was full. To him, as a resident of New York City, the section was only full when every possible seat was occupied.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that there was a difference between the maximum seating capacity of a sanctuary and the maximum comfortable seating capacity of a sanctuary. Quite simply, if your sanctuary is 80% full, then you have reached your maximum comfortable seating capacity and the chances of continued growth in that service are significantly reduced. I have also learned that in rural areas, where people are used to having more space, you may reach your comfortable seating capacity when 60% of the sanctuary is full. Once a sanctuary feels full, then regular worshipers are less likely to invite someone else to church and new worshipers are more likely to feel uncomfortable when the arrive.

At St. Michael, I have been operating on the assumption that our sanctuary would be full at 80% of capacity, but based on my experience in New York, I am beginning to wonder if our community might be just rural enough that we are reaching our comfortable seating capacity at our 11 AM service even though the building is only filled to 70% of capacity. I need to look at this more closely over the next few months to see if this theory is true, but my experience in New York has reminded me that just because a seat is unoccupied doesn’t mean there are comfortable seats left in a sanctuary.

After reading my last post on our vacation church-going experience, two people asked the same question—what can we do at our church to make sure that we are a welcoming congregation. I have three starting points you can consider.

First, change the culture of welcoming by doing an exercise at the beginning of the service that we have been calling “100 seconds of Fun” at the church where I was interim. After I welcomed everyone, I asked the congregation to move about for 100 seconds welcoming as many people as possible. We chose 100 seconds in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the congregation. Two weeks ago, a guest told me on the way out that our congregation was the friendliest she had ever attended.

Second, change the culture of welcoming by using your church’s governing body to be a greeting force. Take the group into the sanctuary and tell them to sit where they normally sit and then have them divide the congregation into areas in which they will be responsible for welcoming everyone in that area and introducing the guests to as many people as possible.

Third, change the culture of welcoming by having an Art Lee type person at the door who welcomes everyone and finds out information about the guests. Art was a member at one of my congregations who took the responsibility of being in the narthex before and after services. He gave me the names of all guests when I exited at the end of the service and then talked to each guest when they came out, introducing them to all around. Art was a natural who shared a warm welcome that became contagious and spread.

Try one, two or three and see if they can help change the culture of welcoming at your congregation.

One of our guests at worship on Sunday grew up in our congregation but now lives two states away. We had an opportunity to talk during our special evening program and he told me that he and his wife were looking for a church home.

I knew the pastor of a church that I thought was not too far from where he lived and suggested that he visit. I gave him the name of the pastor and the guest gave me the name of a church with a pastor whose first name was the same. Turned out that they had visited that church and they had no follow up from their visit so they had not returned. I then told him how dynamic the pastor was and that from all I knew, the church was doing excellent ministry. I was sure that it must have been some oversight because I felt that this pastor would have followed up. He agreed that they would return and visit again because of my recommendation.

After telling the story to my son, he told me that the church name I shared was not the church of the pastor that I knew and that yes, the pastor that I knew and the pastor of the other church both had the same first name and were located near each other. Oops! I am now getting the email address of the guest so that I can make the correction.

I learned one lesson and had another lesson reinforced. First, I learned I need to know the name of the church as well as the name of the pastor. Second, I learned again that passionate follow up with guests continues to be extremely important for every church. You can do the follow up in a variety of different ways but make sure that you do it! Not doing the follow up is a bigger “oops” than not knowing the name of the church.

Congregations are always looking for helpful ways to gather information about new worshipers. For a while everyone used the “Visitor Book” and then we all switched to the “Friendship Pad” at the end of the pew. At St. Michael we use a version of the “Welcome Sheet” that my father used in his ministry.

Each week, we place an insert in the bulletin that captures information from all worshipers. There is a spot for name, address and email address. There are places for prayer requests and communion information. There is also a box which is changed each week to gather information on short term ministry opportunities. You can see an example of the “Welcome Sheet” here. The “Welcome Sheet” allows everyone to have something to put in the bulletin and has proven to be a very useful tool for gathering information from both new and long-term worshipers.

Seven Words of Grace

God blesses us with grace. - Psalm 23:6
Strong, healthy congregation live in the grace of God. - 1 Cor 1:1-4
Grace is grassroots. - Luke 2:7
Grace is generous. - Mark 16:6-8
Grace is gentle. - Eph 4:2
Grace is mutual. - 1 Cor 13:3
Grace finds us, and we find grace. - John 1:14

- Kennon Callahan

“So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us”
2 Corinthians 5:20

This weekend, I had the opportunity to meet with members of six different congregations to discuss “Invitation and Hospitality.” We had a wonderful discussion focused on ways that we can strength our ability to invite and welcome people into God’s family of faith.

Here are a few of the helpful ideas we shared in both areas.

Invitation
1. People want to be a part of God’s mission and ministry in the world. When a congregation identifies its mission and celebrates its ministry, people are more willing to extend an invitation to others.
2. Congregations can encourage invitation by creating “opportunities for invitation.” These opportunities, such as Vacation Bible School, choir concerts, or a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, create a specific reason for someone to issue an invitation to a friend.
3. Creative Communications has a helpful resource entitled “Big Ways, Little Ways: 30 Ways - Big and Small - to Tell Others about Jesus” which offers some specific ideas for how you can extend an invitation.

Hospitality
1. Congregations need to make facilities and worship services accessible by clearly labeling entrances and restrooms, by avoiding coded language and by designing worship services and accompanying bulletins that are easy to follow.
2. Practice the “Three Minute Rule.” For the first three minutes after a service ends, talk to someone you don’t know or someone you don’t know well. When a fellow worshiper offers a sincere word of welcome that makes an extremely positive impression.
3. Extend the welcome after the service by following up with new worshipers through a hand written note or some other form of personal contact.

If you have some helpful ideas that have worked in your congregation to encourage invitation or share hospitality, please let me know.

Sandy Birch, who is a member of the St. Michael staff, put together the following article  on hospitality ministry.  We are running it in the January newsletter.

Hospitality Ministry

A new worshipper walks into St. Michael. The new worshipper has taken the first step – a giant step toward connecting with God through the ministry of St. Michael. They have overcome every barrier that might keep them away; fear, intimidation, social inertia, weekend distractions, preconceived notions and a million other reasons that might have kept them away until that moment.

Many people have said, “You only have one chance to make a first impression.” When it comes to churches, you might get two opportunities: the first three minutes after someone arrives at St. Michael and the first three minutes after the worship service is over. During those first three minutes, you have the opportunity to make someone feel welcome and connected to the people of God at St. Michael. You don’t have to be an official greeter. You don’t have to say something clever or scripted. Simply reaching out in Christian love, to say a word of welcome is a powerful ministry of hospitality. The next time you see someone you don’t recognize at worship, remember the words of the angels, “Be not afraid,” and take a moment in the first three minutes to welcome them to God’s family of faith at St. Michael.