Welcoming guests

One of my favorite church blogs is running a series on welcoming visitors to churches. I encourage you to check out the blog, and read the whole series (it's still in progress). Here's a sample to get you started:

...for the first time in years I was being welcomed into a church rather than welcoming people into church. Unable to shake my church-planting mentality, I was particularly sensitive to the way churches approached visitors. After visiting a few different churches, I started to realize something: many churches have forgotten what it's like to go to a church for the first time.

The reason for this seems obvious to me: pastors have been attending church for years. Before they became a pastor, most have received some sort of education while attending a church. In fact, before they even feel the call to the ministry, they have been attending church for years as well--in some cases, they even grew up going to church. All those years of faithful church attendance has groomed them to serve Christ’s church. At the same time, all those years form an insurmountable gap between now and the time they first darkened the door of a church.

Consequently, some churches make some very basic mistakes when they welcome a visitor. If they welcomed you to a dinner party like they welcome a visitor to their church you would never want to come over for dinner again. They are so glad to see you that they make an embarrassing scene. After shaking your hand they ignore you, leaving you to fend for yourself. They exclude you by talking about things you’ve never heard of. They even slip into the common jargon of their friends, leaving you out of the conversation altogether. On top of these faux pas, they forget that you are a little nervous to be there in the first place. Who would want to be at that party? Who would put themselves through that a second time?

That was from part one. Here's a snippet from part two:

What do you think is the most pressing issue for a first time visitor to your church? The doctrine? Now I am a doctrinal stickler, but I’m realistic enough to realize that most visitors don’t care much about this. The music style? Good music can give a great first impression--whether traditional or contemporary--but most visitors will just sing along with whatever you have. The sermon? While a sermon could definitely cause people to leave a church, I don’t think this is the most pressing issue for a first-time visitor. First-time visitors care most about not embarrassing themselves.

There are all sorts of things that can embarrass a church visitor. They might have dressed inappropriately--too formal or too casual. Their children might not know how to act “appropriately” in a church and end up embarrassing their parents. They might be put on the spot as an offering plate is passed to them by a stranger, who they feel is pressuring them to give. They might stand up at the wrong time in the service. They might sing out during the wrong part of a song because the church has a different arrangement than they are used to. The most detrimental embarrassing situation can come from a bad welcome, destroying an otherwise great first impression

Some churches work hard to make people feel welcome, but they undermine their efforts by making it impersonal. Some churches make all their visitors stand up in the middle of the service--a terrible choice considering how much most people fear standing up in front of crowds. I once visited a large church that apparently realized how awkward this made their visitors feel so they did the opposite and asked their members to stand. There I sat, surrounded by towering members in this intimidating church, each hanging over me as they offered me an obligatory welcome and handshake.

Bishop Wolf on the House of Bishops meeting

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I write to you out of deep prayer for the life of our Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.

The House of Bishops' meeting begins on Wednesday evening, September 19th, with the first two days spent in the honored company of Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primates from the Joint Standing Committee, and other invited guests.

Primarily, we are being called to offer a response to the Windsor Report (including an Anglican covenant), and the Primates' Communiqué from Dar es Salaam. Once the meeting adjourns, the Archbishop is to consult with other Primates to consider a response to our deliberations and resolutions, after which they will give us a timely response. In addition, we will discuss the MDG's, spend a day working in New Orleans, and visit neighboring parishes on Sunday morning.

On Wednesday, September 26th, I will arrive home about two hours before the regularly scheduled meeting of Diocesan Council, and will communicate with you as soon as I am able.

Please pray for me and all our bishops. I leave for this meeting with a deep sense of anxiety, and my prayers have been for wisdom and humility at a time when there seems to be growing entrenchment and self-righteousness. May we honor one another in the honor and glory that is God's gift through Jesus Christ.

May God bless all of us.

+Geralyn Wolf

You are Invited

The Right Reverend Geralyn Wolf,
XII Bishop of Rhode Island,

invites you to attend the

Seating of the Dean and the Installation of the Chapter and the Canons

The Very Reverend Harry E. Krauss, III
will be seated on
Sunday, September 16th
4:00 PM
Cathedral of St. John, Providence

The Reverend Canon John G. B. Andrew D.D., O.B.E., Rector Emeritus of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue New York, will preach.

Reception in Synod Hall

How long is your Sunday service? Does it matter?

Anglicans Online has this:

Of late, we've noticed a new trend on church signboards and websites; some now indicate the time at which a service begins and the time at which it ends. A few examples: 'Most of the time the service lasts about 57 minutes'. 'Our service lasts 75 minutes'; 'Our worship takes about 40 minutes'. Others have firm start and stop times.

It is understandable that people should like to know when they'll be able to breakfast after communion or join friends for brunch. Others are keen to use what remains of Sunday to get on with some form of recreation: walking in the park or on the beach, finishing or starting a livre du jour, helping children with an essay due soon, or taking part in one of that most hallowed Sunday custom, the early afternoon post-church-and-paper nap. A clue about when a service will finish, as well as when it will start, can be undeniably helpful.

And yet we prefer to see just the starting times of services on signboards and websites. The time we give to Divine Worship is too important to be circumscribed by calculations after the manner of railway departures and arrivals. In this all-too-human world, a sermon inevitably goes longer or shorter than planned; a hymn takes longer to sing than one thought; a baby wails to the point of delaying a baptism for several minutes. The variables in worship are at least as great as those in automobile traffic.

For our part, we're unable to treat time spent in bookshops, museums, churchyards, or fleamarkets as anything but open-ended. In what Kathleen Norris has called 'quotidian mysteries', we enter a kind of supra-chronological time that can't be measured — much less planned — on a clock. This richly textured, expanding, refreshing time is magnified in worship beyond even the loveliness of occasions outside church walls when we browse and meander without recourse to our watches.

What do you think? Is it good or bad to post service lengths? I for one think it's helpful to give first-time guests an idea of what they're in for. That said, I have little patience when people complain that "church was five minutes too long."

Grants available

I just got word of several grants that are available to congregations and clergy. I hope this is useful.

Louisville Institute Offers Sabbatical Grant Program for Pastoral Leaders

Through the Sabbatical Grant for Pastoral Leaders, the Louisville Institute offers pastoral leaders a chance to step out and step back from the pace and pressures of ministry through its Sabbatical Grant for Pastoral Leaders program. The program is designed to provide clergy with the opportunity for personal renewal, study, and reflection. The Louisville Institute will award up to forty grants for eight-week ($10,000) and twelve-week ($15,000) sabbaticals. Recipients must be released from all pastoral duties during the entire grant period. Recipients are free to use the grant award at their discretion. Previous grantees have used their awards for the purchase of books, research material and equipment, conference and seminary expenses, salary replacement, travel, etc. There are no residency or travel requirements or expectations, except for attendance at the preparation consultation in Louisville February 18-20, 2008. All expenses for that consultation are covered by the institute, over and above the grant award. Recipients of a 2007 Sabbatical Grant for Pastoral Leaders shall take this sabbatical between March 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009. The program is open to Christian clergy, church staff members, denominational staff, and others employed in recognized positions of pastoral leadership, ordained and lay. Seminary administrators and faculty members are not eligible for this grant program. In past years, most successful applicants have at least five years of pastoral experience, and anticipate five or more years of active ministry after the sabbatical. The program is open to pastoral leaders in the United States and Canada. Visit the Louisville Institute Web site for complete program and application information. Deadline: September 17, 2007


Fund for Theological Education Invites Congregations to Apply for Grants

The Fund for Theological Education is a national advocate for excellence and diversity in Christian ministry and theological scholarship. To help congregations identify and nurture the next generation of leaders for the church, the fund is offering competitive grants for grassroots programs that cultivate a sense of Christian vocation and the call to ministry among youth.

The grants are awarded through the fund’s Calling Congregations initiative, a national ecumenical effort to encourage and equip churches to play a leading role in the vocational discernment of young men and women and to increase the number of gifted young people considering ordained ministry as a profession. The Lilly Endowment, Inc. funds the initiative.

Grants are made to congregations and are intended to support the "culture of call" within congregations. However, grants may include support for activities that foster partnerships between the congregation and campus ministries, theological schools, camps, denominational bodies, and other congregations in strengthening the congregation’s capacity to nurture vocation and the call to ministry.

FTE will award $200,000 in total grants over three years, beginning in 2007. Grants will range from $5,000 to $12,000 each.

Program information and application forms are available at the fund's Web site. Deadline: October 15, 2007


Wolcott Family Foundation Offers Support for Social Change and Environmental Stewardship

The Wolcott Family Foundation focuses its funding in the areas of social change and environmental stewardship, with emphasis on supporting grassroots organizations for which a small grant can make a real contribution.

Priority is given to organizations that empower individuals and communities to organize for social change; seek to strengthen civil liberties and civil rights issues; build community development that seeks to break the cycle of poverty, create economic opportunity, and build effective leadership in distressed communities; and demonstrate linkages and interdependence of ecosystems and economics with win-win solutions and collaborative approaches.

Consideration will be given to projects that emphasize environmental preservation, advocacy, and community involvement aimed at root causes of societal problems.

Eligible groups are tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Organizations based in Colorado are given preference. The foundation does not fund groups with annual budgets over $350,000. Requests will be considered for either general support or specific project support. Grants are for one year and will generally range from $1,000 to $7,500 each. Visit the foundation's Web site for complete program information.

A wing, a prayer, and a new airline?

I've been saying for some time now that we need a diocesan helicopter. You know, to save us from traffic angst before "important" meetings. Plus, think how the local news would love it when a purple helicopter landed in your church parking lot and our bishop emerged for the visitation. It's not only cool, it's evangelistic.

Turns out I wasn't thinking big enough. Pope Benedict, in between re-writing the afterlife and restoring Latin, has decided to launch an airline. I am not making this up.

Maybe we need an Anglican airline. Heathrow and Gatwick are both fairly miserable places to fly into. Maybe we could have direct flights from the US to Canterbury or Lindisfarne. Naturally, the flight would feature good food, prayer books in the seatback pockets, and red doors on the planes. The biggest shift would be rethinking our seating preference. In airplanes, you want to sit as close to the front as possible. Do you think Episcopalians could make that shift?

Now is the perfect time. Our Presiding Bishop is just the person to lead us in this new direction.

Religion on campus?

Over at The Lead, I saw a link to this, from the Social Science Research Council:

Recent studies of college students' attitudes toward religion suggest that the academy is no longer the bastion of secularism it was once assumed to be. And these studies further reveal that the spiritual landscape on today's college campuses is virtually unrecognizable from what we've seen in the past. Evangelicalism--often in the form of extra-denominational or parachurch campus groups--has eclipsed mainstream Protestantism. Catholicism and Judaism, too, are thriving, as are other faiths.

To help make sense of these changes, the SSRC offers this online guide, which was derived from a series of essays it commissioned from leading authorities in the field of religion and higher education.

Read the online guide.

A better church website in eight steps

Over on one of my favorite blogs, a posting promises this:

These days you do not need to be an internet ‘whizz’ kid to make a website. In order to demonstrate how easy it is to make a website for a church (or any other purpose) I have made one for an imaginary church in about half an hour (perhaps an hour - but I dilly-dallied along the way) and it is here: http://churchwebsite.wordpress.com/. ... You can of course make many improvements to this by spending a little more time. There are I’m sure lots of other good ways to make a website, but for someone starting from scratch I think wordpress.com is a great option.

Read the whole post for the eight steps to make a better site.

The Gospel according to St. Arbuck

Here is a news brief about what churches could learn from "St. Arbuck's"

As he drives to church, the Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos always notices the Sunday crowd gathered at one of his favorite sanctuaries. ...

But the key to the success of St. Arbucks, he said, is that these establishments have become what researchers refer to as "third places" for people to gather or hide -- a safe zone between home and office. For generations, bars, diners, barbershops and a host of other locations have played similar roles. This kind of hospitality has become rare in this rushed world.

Regulars at St. Arbucks are greeted by name and the baristas may have their favorite drink --Asimakoupoulos is a grande-drip purist -- ready when they reach the counter. Many modern churches have grown so large that people cannot know the names of many people with whom they are praying.

It's also crucial that these coffee sanctuaries are open to all kinds of people. At the Starbucks a short walk from his church, the pastor, people watching over the top of his laptop screen, has even seen believers reading their Bibles.

Here's another take on what we church people can learn from Starbuck's. At very least, I would hope churches could start to serve a decent cup o' java at coffee hour.

iChurch -- boosting your attendance

I saw this over on Gizmodo:

...Church by the Glades will be handing out $15 iTunes vouchers to attendees of their iThemed services. The [offer] will run for three weekends, but it looks like you have just missed the first. In return you will have to complete a connection card...

The seminar series titled, "i: Successful Living in a Self Absorbed World," sounds rather interesting... Yesterday was the first night of the service and to celebrate one lucky audience member walked home with an iPhone!

Now there's a creative way to boost attendance. Think $15 per person is too much to get someone in church? Think we shouldn't pay to get people into churches? What if the alternative is paying a few hundred dollars to heat a mostly empty church? I hope more churches will try similarly creative evangelism strategies, and I hope they'll let us all know how they work.