Together on the Journey: A Weekly Blog from Fr. Andrew Sheldon
I am confident that most people who enter St George’s on a Sunday, or on other days, experience us as a welcoming church. But I’ve decided that we should quit being a welcoming church. Well, not exactly; what I mean is I’ve decided that we need to quit only being a welcoming church.
At St George’s, we have invested a significant amount of time and energy into becoming a welcoming church. We have easy-to-access worship, user-friendly leaflets, we train sidespeople, we wear nametags once a month, we percolate the best coffee and make the best treats, and we have an active and committed hospitality team. But we simply cannot continue to only do this. And we cannot continue to do only this because the vast majority of this hospitality is directed at those who already feel at home in the building, in the worship, and amongst the people.
What we need to be is not just a welcoming church but an inviting church. That’s different. You see, welcoming is relatively passive. It is about waiting for visitors and guests to drop by. It means that those who have the courage, the significant courage, to enter something whose very architecture cries out “keep out,” whose adherents are gathered in small knots of people, whose language, worship, and music are often from another century, receive a warm welcome.
And they do. I am grateful for that. St George’s does provide a warm welcome. But again, these significant resources are directed at a relatively small group of brave like-minded people. I also worry that this welcoming can be seen simply as a recruitment tool utilised to perpetuate the institution. In other words, we welcome in order that we can attain the critical mass necessary for keeping the clubhouse open and our preferred traditions intact. In other words, we offer a warm welcome to people who are like us.
Now, I don’t believe this is an entirely accurate portrayal of St George’s. But I worry that it could be if we are not vigilant.
And so, we need to be something more than a welcoming church; we need to become an inviting church. Inviting is different than welcoming. Inviting means we leave the comfort of our congregational home-court advantage and have the courage to share our positive feeling about St George’s with those in our lives. My assumption is that those of you who do keeping coming back do so because you are satisfied with what we have to offer. Are you satisfied enough to want others to have the same experience? I don’t know about you but I’m pretty free to share my thoughts on a good book, a good TV show, or a good restaurant. Why not a good church?
But here we have a problem. Somewhere there is a statistic that says the average Anglican invites someone to church once every fourteen years! Well, I want us to stop being average Anglicans; let’s become exceptional Anglicans! And let us build on the exceptional culture of hospitality we already have and develop and nurture a culture of invitation.
So, here’s the challenge: When you have finished reading this blog, I want you to invite one person to join you at church on September 8 for our Welcome Back Sunday. One person for one Sunday. Then we will let the welcoming do the rest.
Andrew+