Category: Welcome

A guest column by Caitlyn Keith

As the priest in charge of planning Christian formation at my parish, I have come to realize that forming disciples is more than presenting information. Possessing information does not necessarily equal learning; learning does not necessarily equal formation; and formation does not necessarily equal discipleship. Effective Christian formation rarely develops without both personal and relational elements.  

Welcoming new people into our congregations is the same way: we welcome people into discipleship with Jesus through our community, but that welcome is incomplete if it only lives on our splashy website, tidy newcomer kiosk, or the smiling face of the usher. These are important elements of building welcome–but there needs to be something deeply personal and relational included there, too.  

Enter our monthly Welcome Dinners! Every month, newcomers are invited (by announcement and personal invitation) to come have dinner with myself and the rector at our church. Every detail of these dinners is meant to be formational, relational, and to demonstrate what discipleship means in our community.  

We always cook the food ourselves in the church kitchen, because we want our church home to feel like it can be their church home, too. There is something homey about arriving at a dinner party where the host is still in their apron dressing the salads. We set out place settings with the nice fabric tablecloths, fresh flowers, and china plates, because everyone who walks in should see that there is a place at the table prepared for them. Instead of banquet rounds, we set long tables pushed together like a big dinner table, because we’re all gathered together. Whether three or thirty people RSVP, we simply make the table longer because there is always room. The food is rarely fancy (think taco bars and spaghetti), because we know that how stories are shared around the table is more important than the menu.  

Then we simply get to know people, not in the fleeting small-talk of Coffee Hour, but in sharing our stories eye-to-eye while passing around the bread rolls. We get to know them, and they get to know us outside of the pulpit. It’s only at the end of the meal that we transition to tell the story of our church, and invite them into belonging.  

We’ve done close to forty dinners at this point, so our spiel is well-rehearsed! We make it clear what we mean by belonging: for our community, that is “Worship + 2 + Give.” First, we tell folks, come to worship! Come weekly, come as often as you can; it’s the main thing we do here! But then find your “plus two”: something that helps you grow, and something that helps someone else grow. Or, something that feeds you, and something that feeds someone else. And if, after a year, you’ve done these things and you have not grown in faith, then we the clergy have not held up our end of the bargain, and we hope you’ll tell us. And finally, everyone here gives financially. We’ve welcomed more than two hundred people to our dinner table, and have seen the membership of our church transform in the last 5 years.  

As the school year begins and you welcome your regular members back with “kickoff Sundays,” take the time to do some routine maintenance on your welcome of new people, and imagine how that welcome might become more than information and casual interactions, but an intentional and robust road to belonging and discipleship.  

The Rev. Caitlyn Keith is an Episcopal priest serving at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in Columbia, SC, a growing parish in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina. Prior to ordination, she served for nearly 10 years in parishes doing formation and development work, and is an alumna of the Episcopal Service Corps, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, and the College of William and Mary.  

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A reflection by Cedar team member Regina Walton.

When I was the pastor of a congregation greeting first-time visitors to Sunday worship, I would often commend them for their bravery. “It’s a daunting thing to show up at a new church for the first time—but you did it!”  

Even with so much information available on the internet or social media, it still takes significant courage to walk through the doors of a new church for the first time. You find a spot in what you hope is not someone else’s favorite pew going back three generations; you scan the bulletin to see if you know the tune to at least some of the hymns; you try to join in at the right time in the prayers. Everything is unfamiliar.  

And that’s just during the service! Navigating small talk before and after worship (without spilling powdered donut crumbs on your shirt during Coffee Hour) can feel like an obstacle course. If you’re visiting with children of any age, a frail elder, or someone with disabilities (or if you yourself have disabilities), or if your race, age, sexual orientation or gender expression puts you in the minority of those gathered, the complexities multiply.  

Visiting a new church is truly an act of faith. Those of us receiving these brave souls as they step through the church doors for the first time need to keep this in mind.

Offering a robust, Christ-like welcome means making room for others to join in.  We should offer a welcome that is sincere but not overbearing. We should show interest in visitors, without making them feel like they are at a speed-dating event. And, what is often the hardest thing of all: we need to take a break from talking to our friends, in order to talk to newcomers.

Greeting visitors can feel awkward for some of us. Here are a few tips that can help:

• When you introduce yourself, name some of the ministries you are involved in. This gives a sense of what’s going on at church, and may spark more conversation.
• Offer to show the visitor around the church. Demystify the space so visitors feel more comfortable.
• Introduce visitors to others at church. Find folks who share interests they have named, or just connect them with a few friendly faces.
• Follow visitors’ cues with sensitivity. Don’t drag them to Coffee Hour against their will, or strong-arm them into filling out a Newcomer card if they seem hesitant. Visitors may prefer to keep young children with them on a first visit; don’t make them feel like all babies must be deposited in the Nursery.

People who have made the choice to boldly go to church where they have not gone before are usually doing so because their longings outweigh their anxieties: they long for a deeper relationship with God. They long to connect with others seeking the same thing. They long for opportunities to serve others in Christ’s name, and to make a difference in a hurting world. The Holy Spirit is already powerfully at work in the life of every person who steps through those church doors. Let them know that their presence is a blessing!

The Rev. Dr. Regina Walton is Editor and Content Developer for Discipleship Initiatives at Forward Movement, and a member of the Cedar team.

A reflection by Cedar team member Robert Hendrickson.

Churches spend a great deal of time thinking about welcome. We train greeters, improve signage, print visitor cards, perfect websites, and make sure someone knows where to find the nursery and the coffee.

All of that matters.  

Hospitality is a Christian virtue, and no one should have to navigate a Byzantine ecclesiastical obstacle course simply to find the bathroom!

But eventually we have to ask a deeper question: Welcome to what?

When the Church welcomes someone, we are not simply welcoming them to an organization, a Sunday activity, or a community of people with similar interests. We are welcoming them into the Body of Christ. And that makes Christian welcome unlike almost any other welcome in our lives.

Most welcomes leave us fundamentally unchanged. A restaurant welcomes us and asks what we would like. A hotel welcomes us and tries to make us comfortable. A store welcomes us hoping to discover what we want and provide it. Much of our culture has trained us to understand welcome in precisely these terms: You are important. Your preferences matter. How can we serve you?

The Church certainly should care about people. We should listen carefully, practice generous hospitality, and pay particular attention to those who have too often been ignored or excluded. But the welcome of the Church ultimately leads somewhere very different.

At the font, we discover that our lives have been joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the altar, we stretch out our hands and receive a life we could never provide for ourselves. In confession, prayer, Scripture, service, and the sacramental life of the Church, we slowly discover that Christianity is not primarily about fitting Jesus into the lives we have already constructed. It is about allowing Christ to give us a new life altogether.

The great promise of Christian welcome is not simply, “There is a place here for you.” It is also, “God is making something new of us together.”

That is why belonging to the Church can never be a consumer relationship. Consumers remain at the center of their own stories. They evaluate communities according to whether their needs are being met, their preferences honored, and their expectations fulfilled. But discipleship steadily displaces us from the center. Christ becomes the center. His life becomes our life. His mission becomes our mission. His Body becomes our body.

This is the strange sacramental reality into which we welcome people.

We do not invite newcomers merely to attend what we are already doing. We invite them into a people being formed by grace: washed in Baptism, fed at the Eucharist, forgiven when we fail, shaped by prayer, and sent into the world to love and serve in Christ’s name. And, importantly, newcomers change us too. Every person God joins to the Body brings gifts that the rest of the Body needs.

Perhaps, then, the deepest Christian welcome is not, “We hope you find what you are looking for.”

It is something far more daring: Welcome to the Body of Christ.  

Welcome to a life that is no longer entirely your own. Welcome to the astonishing grace of discovering that, in losing what we imagined was the center (us), we find ourselves part of a story infinitely larger than our own.

Welcome to the Church.  

The Rev. Robert Hendrickson is Chief of Discipleship Initiatives at Forward Movement, and a member of the Cedar team.