New to your church

This is my recipe for the process that people (should) go through so that when they church shop and find a church they like they keep on coming back and become a part of the community. Like all recipes it will probably need tweaking to taste and there will be times when you have to substitute an ingredient depending on what is in your pantry. I say recipe, but everyone knows that a simple formula just wont get the job done - it takes a lot of work, a lot of heart, and the work of the Holy Spirit. I would be very interested in feedback so feel free to comment.

Ingredients
Welcome
Connect
Heal
Challenge
Empower

Welcome
This is not just having someone at the entrance to the church with a friendly smile. This means making sure that anyone new can find everything and know everything they need to. Sometimes the information needs to be conveyed through well positioned signs, sometimes it is given by the welcomer at the front, sometimes it comes from people who sit around the new person, sometimes it comes from the person leading the service or their assistants. This includes knowing things like which page to turn to, which book to use, where the toilets are, what information in the pew bulletin might interest them or be helpful (bible readings that are used in the service or a sermon intro or what events are coming up that might suit them) or just giving them some way in which they can ask for help during the service.

Welcoming children and parents takes a specific skill because they don't necessarily fit into the normal church. What options have you got for children and for which specific age ranges? Do you have a feeding room with change facilities? Do you have a time in the service when the kids come up to the front? Do you have a time when the kids leave the service for an alternative program like Sunday School? Are all the helpers with children blue carded and trained for whatever roles they take and do the new parents know? How is all this information conveyed? What do you do when you don't cover every single age range and someone turns up with kids in the range you cover and kids in the range you don't cover?

The key to all of this is that you don't want the newcomer to feel embaressed by the fact that they are new and don't know anything. All of this information does not need to be conveyed as soon as someone new comes through the door because that would give them information overload. What does need to happen is that the whole congregation needs to consider how they respond when someone new turns up. It must be a very clear strategy that everyone knows about, even if they don't have to do anything.

In ages past, when people were brought up in the church, and church services varied little, a warm smile from other congregation members was enough to welcome newcomers because the information was "obvious". Things like when to sit and stand, which page to turn to and send you kid out just before the sermon were pieces of information that could be worked out using the wealth of knowledge from years of church attendance. In a largely unchurched population, the few that do turn up in the pews don't necessarily have the information to decode the *obvious* and we lose a lot of opportunities when people randomly turn up because it is too scary, too intellectual and literate, too embaressing, too obvious that you are new, and much easier just to stay at home. It cannot be covered by the priest/pastor/leader if there are any more than about 10 people - there is just too much which can put people off.

Finally, a warm smile can be encouraging, but staring at someone's tattoos, thongs-singlet combo and turning your nose away because the newcomer didn't have a shower this week can be devestating. People who don't understand the dresscode probably already feel uncomfortable enough as it is, without the bodylanguage, percieved whispers about them, and *blanking* which makes them feel judged, whether its from the priest or anyone in the congregation. If the welcome isn't good enough, it won't necessarily put off the seriously committed Christian, but unchurched non-christians who are responding to the call of God, or the guilt of Grandma will probably run out the door - never to be seen again because they have been innoculated (a small bad dose protects against a full-blown version taking hold) against the Church and against Christ.

Next - Connect: Not an evangelical sermon series or bible college course, but an attitude.

Cheers
Macca