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Church visits

Searching: I’ve been looking for a church that projects relevance to my stage of Christian development. In this quest I have visited and worshiped with many streams of religious persuasion. Assuming this may be an issue for many in the Anchorage area, I offer in this blog brief accounts of my visits. The criteria I use in evaluating my visits are:
• Did the church project friendliness and warmth?
• Did I truly feel welcomed?
• Did I relate to the main teaching and was it delivered effectively?
• Did music merely entertain or did it deepen the worship experience?

Map to churches I have visited.
My email: churchvisits@gmail.com

Contributors

Chris Thompson

Chris Thompson, an amateur biblical scholar and student of religions, is a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and Society for Biblical Literature (SBL). He enjoys AAR/SBL where he studies, first hand, with worldwide religious scholars. A management consultant, skilled in all aspects of 360-degree feedback programs and human resource management systems, he practices these skills as Workforce Consulting. He lives in Anchorage.

ON THE WEB

Google map with visited churches

As I visit churches, I'll post their locations on this map.

Is it Unrealistic for a Visitor to Expect a Warm Welcome?

Posted by Chris Thompson

Posted: June 19, 2008 - 6:14 pm

When blogging, you open yourself up to the world. Some recent blog comments and communications stated strong personal biases against my evaluation of churches using my posted criteria.

What About My Welcome
One commenter noted that my "...search should be for truth – the ONE truth – not a warm and fuzzy welcome." But, that's not what my visit criteria states on the right side of this webpage. The commenter further went on to state "Jesus’s walk on the earth had nothing to do with warm greetings, music quality, or his ‘personal walk’."

The gospels show us that Jesus lived a life of hospitality which played out in other peoples spaces. In his relationships with those whose lives he touched: Mary, Martha, Lazarus, the woman at the well, and the disciples, for example, it is inconceivable he did not bestow warm greetings on these and others he met. The same with churches one visits. Aren't "first impressions, lasting impressions"?
Mastering Outreach & Evangelism

How One Church Addressed Visitors
Myron Augsburger describes in Maintaining Momentum, a chapter from the excellent book Mastering Outreach & Evangelism, how his church addressed the issue of what he terms "Fringe Churchgoers". "On any Sunday, as many as 25 percent of those attending are what we call fringe. Not yet involved in the life of the church...[these]are the unconnected visitors, the occasional churchgoers, the "church-hoppers." A church that desires a strong outreach ministry needs to start inside its own walls by reaching these people."

They do this with a 3-step program: offering a warm welcome, linking newcomers with regulars, and ensuring future contact.

For the welcome several strategies were developed:
-They ensured the church building was user friendly
-Pastoral staff lead by personally welcoming newcomers
-They changed the model of pastoral availability by:

1. Doing the unexpected - Think Mickey Mouse here. You don't enter a Disney park and expect Mickey to be shaking everyone's hand. Neither are they similarly available before and after services. This pastoral staff roams the parking lot and greets visitors at their cars. One group of seminary students from this church shared their excitement at visiting Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. They said they were welcomed five times and that was before they reached the front door!

2. Pastoring by walking around - They roam the foyer, parking lot and pews before and after the service. Their informal contact brings them a wider range of service opportunities.

A warm welcome is not the only reason I go to church. However a quality welcome will help ensure my initial visit is not the last. In line with this, well-informed churches are taking welcoming seriously. They train people how to warmly welcome and deal effectively with visitors.

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2 July 7, 2008 - 4:15pm | bender_23

Once may not be enough

I have moved around quite a lot in my life and in doing so, have had to look for new church communities many times. I'm Catholic, so I tend to stick with just searching out the right Catholic church for me, but the kind of service can vary greatly even in one church. For example, where I used to live, the Sunday evening Mass was more of a family Mass while an early Sunday morning service would have sermons that would relate to generally speaking just adults, more traditional hymns and pipe organ rather than guitars and such.

And churches even in the same area could be very different. And sometimes the service would be for a specific purpose like the Alumni service you attended and while that service might not be great for a newcomer, it probably gave something important to people that have been long-time members.

I don't think you can really a)'hit a home run' with every service or b)make every part of each week's service pertinent to every person in the audience. As a Christian I try to find something at each service that brings me closer to God- and while it might not be the lesson the readings or sermon intended, I still can find something that has to do with my life. I understand that criteria are needed to be able to have even-handed reviews, but I think it would require quite a bit more time to see if a church really was or wasn't a fit. And while some churches might not be great at first impressions, that seems like the only thing you're reviewing. What if you pass a church by because of it's first showing when that was the only thing it needed work on and it could be a community that gave you great support and a better understanding of Christ over time?

Personally, I try out each church over a much longer period of time and go to different services and if it's a church that has multiple priests, I always make sure I go multiple times to see each one preach.

I'm also a very reserved person and prefer a card in the pew or information on a bulletin that lets me know who to contact if I do want to join the church. 'Hello's are nice, but doesn't make or break my church going experience. I prefer to get the feel of a church first and then if I'd like to be approached about becoming a member, I'd like to be the one reaching out. I think some congregations treat potential new members or guests to a 'hard sell' when they'd just like to shop around on their own.

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1 June 23, 2008 - 9:45pm | brawkalicious

The beginning of quite the 'blog, here!

Please consider yourself invited to Holy Family Cathedral. Hopefully you'll feel welcomed, in the truest sense.

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June 25, 2008 - 6:11pm | stainedglass

Thanks for the Offer

I would like to visit Holy Family Cathedral. Initially, I'm trying to spread my visits over a representative sample of all faiths represented in Anchorage. The Catholic faith is coming up in the near future. Thanks for your comments. ct

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Is it Unrealistic for a Visitor to Expect a Warm Welcome?