The first words I uttered as I started reading the article "Knock, Knock. Anyone Home?" (Rev! Magazine March/April 2008) were "Oh, my, did they call my church?"
I quickly flipped to the end of the article and sighed with relief when I saw that my city was not one of the areas surveyed. Whew! The article was timely because our newcomer ministry team had been grappling with how to grow our church's hospitality beyond just the presence of a smiling face at the front door.
Ironically, as I sat at my desk reading the article, someone arrived for an appointment with me, and no one was in the reception area to greet him. A congregation member who happened to be passing through asked him if he'd been helped and then brought him to me. Was this a failure? Or was it a success? On the one hand, our system of having a paid receptionist at the front desk during normal office hours had a minor glitch. She was putting up the mail and covering the phones from the back room, but no one was covering the actual lobby for a few minutes. So that would be a failure in the welcoming and friendly department. However, a congregation member had taken the initiative to stop and help someone who looked bewildered. That was a success. Hospitality had permeated beyond the paid staff's required roles and taken on a true heart of being friendly and welcoming.
Later when I passed out copies of the Rev! article to staff members and to lay leaders, everyone thought that our church as a whole does very well. The staff agreed that we're very responsive and available. But comments from the lay leadership team brought the following reality check: "We know the staff is very busy, but… " What continued from there were several examples of staff members failing to return phone calls and emails.
Are we really that busy than we forget the common courtesy of responding to someone's contact? The lay leaders weren't angry; they were hurt. They felt as if their questions weren't important because they hadn't received responses. As staff of the church we should be working to equip congregation members to lead the church, but instead, by not responding to them, we could be inadvertently pushing them further away from taking leadership roles.
I'm not writing this to point out flaws at our church. I write it to applaud us because everyone on staff embraced the article and the awareness it brought. We chose to take a fresh look at how we can better improve communication and frontline contacts. We all get into routines, and from time to time we need a fresh perspective. If you read the article and don't think it applies to your church, then you need to find a local chapter of Celebrate Recovery and work on "denial." Complacency and busyness lead to mediocrity. Every now and then we need to step back and take a fresh look at our ministry to make sure we're creating an environment where Christ can thrive in people's lives.
At our church in particular we're working on ways to help people belong and to make hospitality a value that permeates throughout every aspect of church life. This article helped us to remember that small courtesy's can make a big impact.
ELAINE MCFADDEN is coordinator of newcomer ministries at Centenary, a United Methodist congregation in Lexington, Kentucky. Rev! Subscribers can access the article "Knock, Knock. Anyone Home?" (March/April 2008) in the Rev! back issue archives.
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