On Being a Good Church Member Part 6: Offering Hospitality

One of the biggest differences between being a pastor and a church attender was made evident to me at the first church we visited after moving to Jacksonville. We filed past numbers of people who hardly noticed as we entered into their house of worship. The designated greeters did a fine job, but the rest of the church family's reception was tepid, or awkward at best. The people were nice enough, but they didn't seem to know how to offer hospitality. This is not meant as criticism because it caused me to reflect on what church life was like when I was a pastoral leader.

When you are a pastor, everyone seems to feel free to come and greet you. As a pastor you feel you have access to anyone and everyone who comes to the church. It is not quite the same as a member. Since there isn't that pastoral connection, it does not feel as natural to greet and enter into a conversation with people you hardly know. I understand better now why people seem to break off into the same small groups of acquaintances they have at the church and don't venture too far out of their comfort zone to greet and welcome "strangers."

I always wondered why people did that when I as a pastor wanted them to be so much more outgoing and friendly to visitors. Now I think I understand the dynamics better. One church I pastored described themselves as a "friendly" church. My observation was that we were friendly to the people we knew. It wasn't that they were unfriendly to visitors, but most felt awkward outside of their circle of friends.

Now I find myself gravitating toward the same kind of behavior. We have been attending our new church now for about 7 months. We recognize enough faces now so that we find it easy to seek them out to greet before and after the service. It isn't quite the same during the "passing of the peace" because we often sit by people we don't know as well. But we want to change that.

We have fabulous greeters in our church. We have our hand shaken a dozen times before we find our seat. While we know that is a great first impression of our church, we also know that it will take more than that to make a visitor feel truly comfortable. Because we know this, my wife and I have made it a point to find at least 3 new people every Sunday that we don't know and greet them and try to enter into a bit of a conversation with them beyond just polite pleasantries. We don't often remember their names from week to week, but in time we hope to know as many of our new church family as possible.

Many people come to church with expectations of finding friendship and connection even beyond the obvious connection and friendship they are seeking from God. God certainly does his part by extending to us the deepest of relationship we can have, that of Bride and Groom. By his grace he adopts us into his family and calls us friends. Now he wants us to enter into familial relationships with one another.

The Great Commission and the Great Commandment go hand in hand. These two principles can be encapsulated in a simple phrase. God wants us to love Him and love people. Extending a greeting that can open the door to friendship is a very important part of fulfilling the Gospel. My wife and I want to be a part of the friendliest church in our part of the Vineyard. We desire to make our circle of friends as inclusive as possible. We want to become good at extending friendship within our church family, especially to those who are new.