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.

Each year, I spend two days at the Price’s Fork Fair. The fair is nice, small community event that provides a wonderful opportunity for outreach to the community. Our booth at the fair offers free activities for kids - a ball toss game and face painting. Everyone who comes by the booth gets a faith-themed coloring book, a small bag of candy and some faith-themed prizes (typically we spend about $200 for prizes and supplies). We also have Bibles, grief resources and information on the congregation available at our table. The booth is staffed by me and at least one volunteer from the congregation. For me, our booth is a ‘ministry of presence.’ We are present as God’s people to show God’s love to others, to proclaim God’s caring through our actions and to share the story of Jesus.

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.

This summer I am writing Lectionary focused Sunday School material for a class of kids who range in age from kindergarten to fifth grade. In searching around online, I found a couple of interesting websites that have helpful resources and tools.

Here are a few helpful sites if you are interested.
Sermons4Kids.com

Lesson Plans that Work (from ECUSA)

Make your own Word Search

You can also look at the “With Children” section which is at the end of the links provided weekly by Textweek

I was with a group of pastors the other day who were talking about resources for preaching.  The group listed several commentaries and favorite books, plus websites like: Textweek.com, and WorkingPreacher.org as possible resources. We also discussed the value of pericope study both with colleagues and with congregational members.

Last Thursday however, I was reminded that one of the best resources for improving my preaching is the congregation I serve. I was talking with one of my senior adult members who said with a gentle, coaching spirit, “I finally figured out why I have trouble hearing you when you are preaching. You just go a little too quickly.” I trust her judgement and so this past Sunday, I made an intentional effort to move a little more slowly through my sermon. The pauses seemed a little long and unnatural to me, but I tried it and the results were dramatic. After the service, three different senior adults made a point of telling me that they heard every word I said. Just to me sure I wasn’t going too slowly, I asked a few younger folks about the pacing and they said it was fine. The change in pace was relatively simple, but without the coaching of my congregation I would never have known that I needed to make the change.

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.

I consider myself to be a community pastor.  I am called by the people of St. Michael, but my ministry extends beyond the boundaries of our congregation.  In today’s world, I think having a healthy relationship with the community around you opens doors for ministry to happen.  I don’t walk around the community randomly inviting people to church, but I am present at places like my son’s school, volunteering in kindergarten, and at a regular a community luncheon, occasionally offering the invocation.  Over time my continued presence has afforded me the opportunity to make Christ known and has helped make people aware of our congregation.

While each community is different, I offer these suggestions if you want to be a community pastor.

1.  Discover something you are passionate about - - for example helping children

2.  Introduce yourself to someone in the community who is working in that area - - perhaps a local principal

3.  Ask “What can my congregation and I do to help you out?”

4.  Listen to what the person says and follow through

Becoming a community pastor will not happen over night.  It will take time to build trust, but I believe that investing a little bit of your time in the community can make a tremendous impact on your ministry and your ability to make Christ known to those around you.

Late last year, I read an article in Wired Magazine entitled: “The Good Enuf Rvlutn: Why lo-fi high tech will rule the world.” The author discusses a a trend in business he calls “Good Enough” by tracking the development and marketing of several products including the Flip video camera and the mp3.  He concludes that products which focus on low price, flexibility and convenience are becoming more popular than products with all the bells and whistles.  A product, the article suggests, does not have to be able to do everything, it simply has to be good enough to do what we want it to do.


This morning, Alban’s weekly email conversation entitled “Faithful Finances: When to Adopt New Technology,” discusses a congregation’s shift to an email newsletter.  The author notes that instead of a huge attachment, “Effective congregational e-newsletters reshape the content to fit the form. Instead of a big attachment—in effect, a do-it-yourself newsletter kit—the e-mail itself acts as the front page of the newsletter. The three or four most newsworthy stories get headlines and a sentence or two, with links to a web page with more. The e-mail is so short you can see it without scrolling.”  The e-newsletter is not nearly as extensive as the old newsletter, but it is good enough in today’s world to connect people to the information they need.


At St. Michael, we do both.  We have a traditional newsletter that is mailed monthly which includes lots of stories about people and as many pictures as we can fit in.  By all accounts, this newsletter is still well read.  We also do a weekly e-newsletter which includes basic information about the activities for the weekend and links to new information on the website.   It is a simple email with a little color and at most a couple of links.  Overall the e-newsletter has been a very effective tool for St. Michael for the last several years.


I know in the past, many churches focused primarily on producing formal communications (newsletters, official phone trees, neighborhood groups).  In today’s world,  I am convinced that we also need to focus on developing the informal ways in which God’s love is communicated and explore tools like email, facebook and texting which facilitate and encourage fast, convenient, “just in time” methods of communication and participation.  These new forms of communication may not be as extensive or carefully crafted as previous methods of communication, but in most cases they are just good enough to get the message across, which for today’s world may be exactly what we need.