HELLO!

As I walked into the church at 9 am I could spot our ushers-greeters at the front door, eagerly awaiting the first arrivals. They had their bulletins, their smiles (Bethe would approve), and they were ready for questions (where are the washrooms, where is coffee hour, where is Room D? Kevin would approve). I asked Craig to take a photo of this welcoming team. We mainline churches consistently underestimate the value of hospitality. I had several people ask me this week, “Why do very conservative churches, attract so many people who do NOT share their beliefs?” Easy answer. Hospitality. If you enter one of those churches you are typically warmly welcomed, a member may well ask you to join him/her and their friends for a meal later. Small groups are a foundational building block in these churches, it allows new people to get to know names, stories, build relationships. I had a young mother, in a previous church, who told me the very conservative church she sometimes attended made her feel like she belonged, but the theology left her cold. So when she went there, she had tiny headphones in her ears, listened to another sermon, as the pastor spoke. I hope no one was doing this during my sermon, but who knows…

If you ask people who are new to church, what is the draw of a congregation 1) welcome, 2) music, 3) the number of young families, 4) Outreach and 5) engaging programs. If you ask people who have always gone to church, what is the draw of a congregation 1) music, 2) minister, 3) accessibility, 4) sanctuary and 5) a place to make friends. There is overlap and there are differences. When a church has been your home for a long time it is easy to take hospitality for granted, after all, you are already there. Also, in my experience, many long-time members would say it is the minister’s role to offer a warm welcome. Yet, newcomers, when I meet them for coffee, tell me it was the welcome of a layperson (like Jerry Jackson) who made the difference, prompted them to return.

As for progressive Christians like me, the challenge is to take the words diversity and inclusion and make them more than policy statements and posters and flags. I have been to several government and non-profit gatherings, where the messaging around inclusion is very strong and visual. And yet…no one spoke to anyone they did not know already. It’s one thing to be attentive to the way we neglect the marginalized, but someone, somewhere, needs to speak to a marginalized person, otherwise the policy, the poster, is more for show than action.

Peace, Kevin