Caring Enough

I was recently in a conversation with a young priest about his congregation. It is a young church with leaders who love it and want it to grow. It has much to offer in spirit and opportunity. Yet when I asked him how he gathers contact information about first time visitors he said, 'we are inconsistent, we try but aren't always successful.' I was really surprised and pondered on this response for a couple of days. Why wouldn't a young church with energy and potential not be more intentional about gathering information from visitors?

What does it say about a church that doesn't seem to care enough to put high priority into this task? Do they think they are being too pushy if they systematically do this? Is it one of many things needing to be done that just doesn't get done very well?

I decided to think about the visitor's perspective. Here is a person who screws up courage to visit a church they have never been to before. They might have impressions of what to expect born out of previous experiences with churches. Or perhaps this is a person who is so unchurched that this visit may be the first EVER to a church outside of a funeral or wedding.

The following might be a few thoughts running through this first time visitor's mind:

" The people seemed nice enough, but I was surprised that no one asked my name".
"I really didn't want anyone to approach me because I am not sure what I want. However, I left that church really not too impressed. I have no idea if there is anything there for me anyway."

"If they really are interested in me, you would think they would have taken down my contact information. I want to know more about the church and not sure what I need to do to find out. I guess I will visit their website. Maybe I will try again later."

Of course, these are just a few possible responses. But one thing is for sure, visitors have an unspoken expectation that they will find something that represents God at a church. Isn't God caring? Loving? Does God care about me? Isn't that what churches are supposed to do?

Not caring enough to capture contact information from visitors is like saying, 'we are doing well enough here without you'or 'we don't value your visit enough to respond to you'. Anyway you slice it, not caring enough to capture contact information and responding to it with at least a 'thank you for attending' says 'you really don't matter to us'. That is personal. That is counter to every thing we profess as Christians in terms of caring for others.

Let's raise our awareness of how well we do this critical 'welcome' ministry in our churches. It should be very high priority. It truly represents how much we really care.