David:        Karen and I have purposely been visiting various churches in our geographic area.

Karen:        And the reason that we’re doing this is we want to get a feeling for what’s happening in our local church. This visit, we’re going to share some of our observations.

Intro:         Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:        Karen I made a quick list of how many churches, either we got two together or you have gone too, or I have. And I came up with 10 just off the top of my head. So, that’s a good number.

Karen:        Yeah, that’s a good number.

David:        That includes Catholic, Orthodox, Protestants.

Karen:        It doesn’t matter what…

David:        Liberal, conservatives.

Karen:        …faith expression they were, they were just Christian churches. And so, we said, “Well, what’s going on in our little community? Let’s see what the life of the church is like here.” So that’s why we started to visit.

David:        And one of the things that we’ve been very aware of is how people are welcomed.

Karen:        Or not.

David:        Or not. Sometimes a very good welcome. And sometimes welcomes that leave something to be desired. I would like to talk about some of those churches. I would say that I didn’t give any church an “A.” This is kind of silly of us, you know, giving grades to churches, but it’s a way of communicating and saying this was good. This wasn’t so good.

Karen:        A way of evaluating.

David:        There were some churches that I would characterize as they had greeters at the door. That’s a tough job. I don’t think I would like to do that because people tend to come pretty much all at the same time in one thing. Swoop and how do you welcome them at that point? It’s kind of a professional welcome because it goes by very quickly.

And after that welcome. And there were churches that didn’t do that either.

Karen:        No, that’s right.

David:        Because the churches were all sizes. There were very small churches, 20 people or less, and then there were quite large churches.

Karen:        A couple hundred.

David:        You’re talking 500, 600 and multiple services.

Karen:        Yeah, none of them were mega churches, however.

David:        No. Some of them were new and some of them long time. Been there for a long time. Let’s talk about the one that in my mind, as we discussed it afterward, was the most friendly of all. And that surprisingly was one of the very small churches.

Karen:        Yeah, and maybe that’s why, because they knew who their regulars were. And we, David and Karen Mains, two white-haired people sort of stood out from that crowd. And so that one was most welcoming in that. And we measured this by did they intentionally greet? Did they chat? Did they talk? Did they extend welcome? And so that church did the best. But I think part of it was because it is so small. So, they knew who were their regulars and who were their visitors.

David:        They had never seen our faces before.

Karen:        No.

David:        We actually came in and there was no one outside the church. And we walked in and there was a greeter with a bulletin. And we were given a bulletin and then we went and sat maybe four rows from the front. And again, at the most there were probably 20, 25 people who were a part of this congregation and three children.

We sat there for a little while and then the gentleman who had given us the bulletin, he came down and he said, “Well, you must be new here. Let me tell you a little bit about ourselves.”

Karen:        This is before the service started.

David:        Yes, and he was very gracious.

Karen:        Yes.

David:        That was a good experience. And after he talked with us, then the couple behind us talked a little bit as well. And by the time the church service was over, I would say half those people had talked to us.

Karen:        So, then there were the other churches, which were very fine churches. We were not evaluating the quality of church life, but we’re just saying how do churches greet, meet and assimilate newcomers who come who are just looking around. And I would say that most of the other ones didn’t have a methodology, or they had enough people that they weren’t concerned about reaching out. I thought I’d make a little sign that said we’re new to this church. Say hi or we’re visitors. Just to help them all along. But that was the only church where we were really greeted as newcomers.

David:        In a personal way.

Karen:        In a very personal way.

David:        I would say that a good number of the churches have greeters at the door. Again, that’s the hard one. And because people are coming in groups almost, not as a formal group, but they just come a big clump at a time.

Karen:        Yeah, family at a time. Now, the reason we’re doing this is partly to figure out what the churches are doing in our local community. I mean, we’ve traveled all over the country. We’ve worked with, I think it was an aggregate of 15,000 churches when we were doing the spiritual adventures. You’ve helped umpting, umpting, umpting pastors conferences. During those years when we were working directly with churches. So, we’re very highly involved in the nature of church life. And we find that it can be a barometer of how Christians are connecting with their communities. How they are witnessing to Christ’s life within their life, to their neighbors and extended family and their work people. So, when the attendance begins to diminish in many churches, and of course this is just at the end of COVID that we’ve been visiting these churches, then it’s a signature of some sort that the church life of either a community or even a country is in bad shape.

David:        Well, it’s even worse than that, Karen. I would say several of those churches we visited, they’re in the process of dying.

Karen:        Yeah, there’s a handwriting sort of on the wall. It’s not good. They can’t financially even keep up paying for a pastor and even interim kind of pastor.

David:        I found myself sometimes mourning for churches because I thought any kind of death is a hard thing. But that’s going to be very sad. That church will be gone, and we’ve seen this happen. Probably the property will be sold. The church will be taken down. The steeple will be gone.

Karen:        Yeah, beautiful little historic church down the road from us. It was an old building, but it was a historic building, not large church. Very lovely with the steeple. And the people who bought it from the congregation who sold it and then left just took that church down. It was sort of a road marker in our town.

David:        It’ll be a whole generation of younger people who in time will be raised in situations where most of those church steeples are gone. The smaller churches are dying, and you can feel it. It’s there. People are holding on, but it’s not going to last real long.

Karen:        So, we started to visit and as we were visiting just out of kind of curiosity and because we’re interested in church life. Then we began to look at the kind of welcome that’s given. And we find that welcome is a signifier of the invitation that exists in a congregation to newcomers or how open they are to having visitors. How much do they realize that they have to build their congregation if they’re going to survive. It became a very interesting dialogue between you and myself, because why is it so important to greet and to welcome?

Well, one of the reasons that we came to is that we are instructed to do this in Scripture. Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.

David:        It’s out of Romans, I think.

Karen:        Romans? So, we’re really instructed to do that. But the level of welcome for newcomers is an indicator also of the life and vibrancy of a church and its growth potential. The interesting thing I was doing studies in neighborliness because we’ve lost our feeling of community in much of America. People used to know their neighbors. You would have coffee clutches, neighbor gatherings, your kids would play together.

Well, a lot of that is diminishing and this is not just my observation. This is from the social scientists. But one of the things that came up in those studies that I was doing, as I was researching that, was that people who have regular church attendance in their background are more neighborly. They reach out to their neighbors more than those who are not regular church attenders.

So, what we want to do with this podcast is talk about the meaning of extending welcome. Welcoming Christ’s name. And the very obvious place to start with that is in church as people visit to make those visitors feel included. Even if they’re just in town just coming with their friends and family, make them feel included.

David:        Way back in my life, I still remember what I don’t think was a very good way to do welcoming of visitors. But the pastor would say in the church in which I was raised, he said, “Are there any visitors? And if you are, would you please stand?”

Karen:        That’s when the congregation was gathered, right? We did that in our church.

David:        And I think as we are now being the visitors who are going to different churches, that’s a kind of intimidating thing. Because you don’t really know whether you want to stand. But that’s what was done. Please stand. And now you who are a part of the congregation look at these people. And then now I want you to stand and welcome them.

Karen:        Yes.

David:        And then what would happen would be the person would say, “So you’re a visitor?” “Yes.“ “You’ve never been here before.”

Karen:        Maybe a little coaching would have been a good idea.

David:        It was funny because the people, they were not very adept at saying something that would be meaningful at the time. And that’s kind of still where it is.

Karen:        Yeah.

David:        Oh, my golly, you’re a visitor.

Karen:        Yeah, how nice.

David:        That’s unusual.

Karen:        You might say where you’re from. Now the interesting thing that we observe because we do this, we would say to the folks who did greet us, “Well tell us a little bit about yourself.” And everyone loves to talk about themselves or to be invited to do that.

So, they would chat on and that was interesting, but they never ever turned it around and said, “I’ve told you about myself. How about you guys? What are you involved with in your life?”

David:        I have a standard question when I’m in a situation where someone is a visitor and I say, “Tell me what prompted you to come.”

Karen:        Yes, that’s a good question.

David:        It’s a good question because it can be answered. quickly and it gives a good indication of where this person is. And the person may say, “I’m from out of town, my children attend here, and I wanted to see what the church was like.”

Very quickly you get a feel for what’s going on and then how you should respond accordingly.

Karen:        What we’re really talking about is the extension of hospitality. When we were working with our teams, I was into hospitality, had written the book, Open Heart, Open Home, and I do have that gift. And it’s the first thing I think of doing is inviting people into our home. One of the fellows in our pastor team said, “Well, I could think of one sermon to preach.” And that’s about all I could preach on hospitality. And I looked at him and I said, “I could do a whole year.” Maybe he was thinking of it very narrowly.

David:        Too extreme.

Karen:        But the truth is this concept needs to be preached and taught from our pulpits at a regular point all the year around. Now hospitality can go into all sorts of conversations right now. I’m researching our immigration system. We are desperately in need of immigration reform.

Well, when you welcome the outcast who comes to your shores when you provide safety for them and housing and don’t split families apart, that is an exercise of hospitality on a governmental national level. Still is. And I believe those scriptures that apply to us as far as exercising hospitality relate to the way we treat people at our borders.

So, it can have that kind of exposure, or it can just be what we’re talking about, just welcoming people who you meet in your church and haven’t gotten to know before. But in all the expressions manifest the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. And as that scripture said that I quoted, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.” When we do that, because Christ has welcomed us, and let us meditate a little bit on how he’s welcomed us.

                  Sick and sore and miscast as many of us were. Without question, “…come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden.” When we do that, we are expressing the nature of Christ in this profound way, and we receive his pleasure. I mean, he’s happy when we do these things because it is who he is to the core of his very essence.

David:        I think it’s hard for people because they get used to being in a church and coming and meeting friends and talking with them to put themselves in the mindset of the outsider. I remember one of the churches. We were there. You kind of feel awkward when you go to a new church. They said, “All of you visitors, you’re welcome to a fellowship hour that we have after church.”

Well, the truth is we didn’t know there was going to be a fellowship hour. Maybe you should have thought that, but a lot of churches don’t have that. We were not prepared to stay for an extra time.

So, there almost needs to be a conversation between the church people and those who are visitors just to get a feel for what is going on. “Why didn’t you stay? We had an hour for you planned with refreshments in the basement.”

Karen:        But we didn’t know about it.

David:        Didn’t know about it at that time.

Karen:        Yeah, could stay but we had other schedules.

David:        So, all of the misconnections and such that need to be resolved in the church, they get resolved best if you can actually talk to a person who is a visitor, not the day they come, but you know, just say somebody who goes to another church, come and visit and then tell us how this felt to you.

Karen:        Yeah, to their great credit, a lot of these churches are dividing their congregations up into small groups. But in some ways, small groups, unless you know someone who invites you to be a part of that group, are a hard way to make an entry into the life of a church.

David:        It’s a bigger jump than most people are ready for.

Karen:        It’s a big jump for, maybe some people who are extroverted and can do that easily will do that. But I guess what I’m thinking is that we need various levels of invitation and welcome so that the newcomer can kind of choose between the ones that he or she feels comfortable with. And it needs to be sort of a set card that gets passed out in the congregation and the ones where regulars can leave it on their chairs when they leave. But the ones who are new then have a schedule of things that they can do as far as getting to know the life of that body in a way that’s just not superficial.

David:        I think that what goes on in church is totally foreign.

Karen:        …for many, many.

David:        For many people. And it’s kind of like, oh my god, this is a world I don’t know anything about.

Karen:        Yeah, for the real newcomer, the non-church person, it can be.

David:        It is a huge step for them. And any kind of a warm welcome is something that people just, “Oh, thank you, thank you. I was feeling out of place.”

Karen:        Well, we do feel that way. You know it’s almost something you can’t quite quantify, but there is this almost neurological warmth that begins to embrace you because you feel that well.

David:        It’s like to reverse it, it’s like a Christian who has never been to a dance and says, “I’d kind of like to learn how to dance.”

Karen:        “I just don’t know the steps.”

David:        “I just got to get out of this place because I really don’t sit here.”

Karen:        “I’m going to have a clutch.”

David:        Yeah, there you go. “I’m a clutch and nobody likes to feel like a clutch.”

Karen:        So, what’s the sentence? Well, usually put this into a distinct summary sentence.

David:        The way a congregation extends welcome to visitors is extremely important. And then I will add this because it pulls in your thoughts, because it can model the welcome Christ extends to all.

Karen:        Okay, say it again. I think that’s good.

David:        The way a congregation extends welcome to visitors is extremely important because it can model the welcome Christ extends to all. Talk about the model of Christ extending welcome to all.

Karen:        Well, just go through the New Testament, the story of his life. I mean, he was out there for anyone who wanted to engage with him. He talked to all of those of all classes, of all dispositions, of all physical disabilities.

David:        All ages, yeah.

Karen:        All ages. And he was there for them. It is really a great model, but the concept of spiritual hospitality is taught in the Old and the New Testament.

So, it’s a major emphasis all the way through the scriptures. And the reason for that, David, is one of the quickest ways we can as insiders in the church, but outsiders who are not a part of church life, began to understand the nature of God. When they see that exercise done on a human level, they began to say, “Well, these are Christians, Christ ones.” I mean, this figuring goes on in some ways subconsciously. That must be there that way because of who God is.

David:        I remember one specific church and so many good qualities about that church and the service that went on. We went there twice. And as we came in, there was a greeter at the door, very warm and friendly. “Welcome, you’re welcome. So glad that you’ve come.”

That was the extent of it. And other people were going in at the same time, sat down. No one spoke to us as we kind of walked slowly.

Karen:        So, in case someone wanted to.

David:        I mean, you’d look over and people hardly missed the fact that we were visitors. Sat down, the service went on. When the service was over, no one talked to us. We kind of wondered. Then we left. I remember saying to you afterward, I think in some of these churches, and there were really good things that happened in the service.

Karen:        I’m so good at service.

David:        Some of these, I’d like to go if I had the courage and wear a gas mask to the church. And see if you don’t say, “Welcome, welcome to our church.”

You know, and sit there and see if anybody would say, “Do you know that you’re wearing a gas mask?”

Karen:        “Can I take it for you?”

David:        “Why are you doing this?” But I think that people are intimidated. One of the good churches here, I remember a gentleman at the back of the church, it was a small church, and he came up to me. He said, “We don’t get very many visitors here. And my wife said, ‘you go and talk to those people.’”

Karen:        She was crawling through little kids to her. There’s a wonderful story I have out of my past.

David:        I’m thinking of the many, many times you have invited people into the home and how often you have extended hospitality. In years past, we would go to church, and you’d set the table for having people for lunch. And I’d say, well, who’s coming? We don’t know yet. I’ll find out after the churches. Finish, you’ll know.

Karen:        Who wants to come for dinner?

David:        Yeah. So, it’s amazing. You know when it’s there, you can feel it. There’s a wonderful.

Karen:        Well, I think it’s the presence of Christ, actually, that we’re really experiencing when people are welcoming one another.

David:        Who’s Jesus going to invite for lunch after church today?

Karen:        Yeah, it’s wonderful.

David:        I remember one of those times here in three couples led two of them to the Lord…

Karen:        …at the dinner table.

David:        I asked the third one. He’s died now.

Karen:        He’s a lawyer.

David:        Yeah, he’s a lawyer. And I said, “How about you, Mike?”

Karen:        How close are you to becoming a Christian?

David:        I remember his wife said, “I don’t know, but I’d say the labor pains are about two minutes apart.” It wasn’t that lunch, but he did come to the Lord. Yeah. So anyway, that whole sense of hospitality, which is a part of the home, but also goes back to the church home. Yeah. It’s a good conversation.

Karen:        It’s extraordinarily important.

Outro:       You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2022 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.