When They Will Not Come” (WTWNC) names the social dilemma of the church in post Christendom when we can no longer assume non-Christians will come to church even when they are seeking God. This new cultural condition forces us to change the way we think about every aspect of the church. WTWNC is a series of posts that reflect on the ways the practice of being Christ’s church/church planting must change because of this new cultural dilemma.
Illustration by Ben Sternke of http://benjaminsternke.typepad.com.
All church leaders will recognize this situation. Some people, maybe a couple with children, come to the church and they attend a service or two. They don’t return. They tell someone that “they did not feel welcome,” or “they just did not feel like they fit in.” This is never a positive and we lead so as to nurture hospitality as a practice of the church gathering. Yet there is a danger to this as well.
Sometimes these words from the visitor reflect a mistaken assumption about church: that they should somehow feel “warm.” comfortable and part of things in just a few short visits. Yet any community of any significant depth will present barriers to entry for the new person. The community will already know each other deeply, the visitor will not. The community will have shared a journey, struggles, pains, sorrows and joys. We will already understand deeply our purpose, our Mission as worked out for our context because we have spent months, maybe years, praying and listening to God. We should ALWAYS BE HOSPITABLE in inviting others into this great life we have been called to share. But frankly, it cannot be communicated or extended through the exchange of simple pleasantries after church gathering on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, there will always be these communal hurdles to becoming part of such a community of Mission.
I think it is a mistake to over react to the visitor and try to create a welcoming team that engenders a false sense of community to those visiting on any given Sunday. It may have an initial positive effect, but long term I think it raises false expectations. Community, formed around Mission, cannot be commoditized or made easily accessible ( Tim Keel says something like this). Community comes through understanding a common goal and becoming committed to it with other people of like mind and then struggling through the trials and pains of that journey together. It takes long-term commitment. I think that the Walmart-like greeters who wear a smile and have a system to greet you going into the large church are a sign of the loss of this community. It is false, a simulacrum, and it eventually breeds cynicism. I think it is better to have a pamphlet to give to visitors explaining that community is difficult and will take time and offering them helps on how to get connected.
In post Christendom, as I have often argued, the Sunday morning gathering is essential, buts its very character changes from the ways we met in Christendom. It is no longer structured to attract seekers or non-Christians and evangelize them. It is no longer put together to attract Christians wandering away from other churches. It is instead formational, it brings us corporately into the practice of encountering God and being transformed by that encounter for life and Mission in Christ. The very nature of what we do changes if we are not seeking to attract but instead to be trained into a Call-Response vital relationship with the Triune God of Mission. This time around the Word and the Table is certainly a powerful witness to the presence of our God in Christ, but it cannot always make sense and should not be tailored to the one who is outside of Christ.
Last Saturday, as a number of us sat around my back deck (talking Missional stuff at what I am now calling the “Missional Back Porch” meeting at my house on every first Saturday night), this issue came up. J R Rozko said that the shape of Sunday gathering changes in the Missional context. Instead of a place for strangers to feel immediately welcome, we would do better to understand it as a “family gathering.” We would not expect people to come to our family gatherings as strangers. More likely they come invited through a significant relationship. And when they do come, say when one’s new fiancé comes to the family thanksgiving meal for the first time (is J R expressing some personal anxiety here?), there is an unease and a feeling of unfamiliarity which out of commitment this “stranger” will work through.
It should be expected that new people get to know the community in social contexts outside the church, in the bar, at the house gathering, in friendships of many other ways. They come with someone they already know well and can rely on them to navigate “the family” for them.
I have made it a habit not to chase every Christian visitor to our church (this is different from when I was first starting the church and was seeking to gather a people). There are simply many Christians who are looking for something that we cannot and probably should not offer. I do not often chase Christians, who after a time with us, choose to leave. I think pastors/leaders have often spent inordinate amounts of time trying desperately to cater to Christians who have, for better or worse, a consumer mentality. (I know, this certainly does not apply to every Christian searching for a church). I think we are to spend our time searching out the lost however. And I think we should listen deeply to one another as COMMITTED MEMBERS of a community to the complaints, concerns, issues of our community. And I think we should nurture the practice of hospitality to all strangers. But there is no doubt, that in the new cultural conditions of post Christendom, the nature of this welcome has changed and we must be sensitive to it.
Some have said this is too harsh. Others have asked do you not want this church to grow? What do you think?
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I think is the way we must go in this new location. What I like about it is that it really does put a stake in the ground and say: “We will live out our faith among our neighbors,” and, “we will trust that the Holy Spirit will bring growth.”
David,
I like this.
Hey David. It’s Jeff from Rockford! I have a question that is perhaps not directly connected to this post, but kind of flows from it…from a missional perspective, is it still possible to derive some sense of “gathering a people” around the principle of God’s presence? In other words, if one of the things we have going for us as a people is that we are the habitation of God, is it a legitimate part of our mission to “gather” people to encounter him among us? I am taking this somewhat from the idea in 1 Cor 14 that unbelievers can indeed be transformed through such an encounter by being present in Christian worship. What are your thoughts?
Jeff,
w/o a doubt yes. We assume formation does not happen apart from encountering God, and of course, this is the heart of the Eucharist Table.
I think this is spot on. I would suggest that there are some family gatherings I’ve been to, other than my own, where I felt welcomed and others where I did not so there’s still relational issues for us to pay attention to. But it’s silly to think that everyone who happens by for a Sunday will connect – for various reasons – but especially relational ones. Pastors and communities get discouraged though and feel like there must be something “wrong” if others don’t feel attracted to the group. Again, the family gathering is very useful here.
One of the dangers of a smaller family gathering is that you can’t hide out and smaller missional churches have to accept that some folks prefer to blend in to a crowd.
“I have made it a habit not to chase every Christian visitor to our church (this is different from when I was first starting the church and was seeking to gather a people). There are simply many Christians who are looking for something that we cannot and probably should not offer. I do not often chase Christians, who after a time with us, choose to leave.”
This post is bold. My fellow pastor and I have chased after many Christians in recent years–it has simply seemed like the obvious thing to do. Sadly, most of these people have been in your second category–Christians who left “after a time with us” (sometimes a time of many years!). Rarely have these people changed their minds about their decision to leave.
This fact brings me to a question: How often does the move to missional lead to a decline in numbers? I suspect that it is one of the reasons for our numerical decline, as our preaching and teaching have become more prophetic (in the sense of challenging things like consumerism), and many of the persons who have left have gone down the street to the consumer-driven megachurch that offers many choices–including a swimming pool and tennis courts!
Have others experienced numerical decline that they trace to becoming missional?
Josh,
On a purely numerical number, the answer is obvious. Others can testify to this, but numbers will go down. On the other hand, the kind of change in numbers you are experiencing can only be described as addition by subtraction. You church will become a “powder keg” of H. S. enlivened activity in Christ’s Mission. Your church then qualifies as an example of the principle we grow by getting smaller. Of course, there will be other adjustments necessary and over the long term, eventually “church seeding” from your church (asking people to leave in groups to start new and smaller communities) becomes the means to further propogate God’s Mission in the world.
peace bro
This sounds more like how it should be – kind of like the gathering is for people who already know Christ and actually being the church happens everyday.
This form of community would take away from the “show” and put more emphasis on being a community and getting to know each other.
[...] On church hospitality teams – David Fitch says it is a false expectation for people to be integrated into a church community in a few visits. [...]
Hi David. I “met” you in a phone interview in Dr. Keith Matthew’s class on postmodernism at Fuller last November. I was really looking forward to your class on church planting–I hope that this can be rescheduled soon!
Interesting thoughts here. So, what size do you think the church must stay at to really maintain a sense of community? Also, what do you think of multiple house group type of gatherings that come together say, once a month, for a celebratory worship? Is the sense of community still possible in this context?
Thanks!
Dave,
considering that we are in the transition period from Christendom to post-christendom, there is a complicated relationship with the people known as ‘greeters’ and the community of believers being built w/in a church. I agree with your statement about not chasing believers (and how this was somewhat necessary for you early planting years to create a base), but the fact remains that many missionaly focused congregations tend to attract the wounded and disenchanted believers. Although some of these believers may be shoppers, others (including a strong core at Life on the Vine, from Trinity and surrounding schools) are committed people, yet may need some help assimilating into the quasi-community that a church in suburbs offer.
Using the family illustration, these people are the neighbors who watch the thanksgiving dinners through the window and wish to become a part of the feast.
I guess I’m just wondering how we can be inviting to Non-christians, but also not turn away some amazing people because all of the relational effort falls on their shoulders?
Great post, great comments. There is a balance here… we certainly can’t use being missional as an excuse for not being relational and welcoming, but neither can we go back to chasing down consumer Christians. In our seeker days, our church did not cultivate much sense of God’s presence in Sunday gatherings, now it is what we gather people around, including open-hearted “seekers”. I think one of the inherent problems with “seeker-church” was that having sucked people in by appealing to their own self-focus, it was almost impossible then to disciple them in the ways of a God who is telling a bigger story. I’m not sure we have to resign to shrinking in numbers to be missional, but we definitely have to learn to grow with people who are attracted to the God who is restoring all things (not just our American dream).
[...] really lays it down in THIS post about how real community is NEVER easy to break in to. [...]
[...] of my reaction to Erwin McManus’s quote was compounded by a blog entry by David Fitch called, “Should We Chase After Christians Who Come to Our Sunday Gathering When They Do Not Feel Welco…. The post hit a nerve because, well, I find myself in that description. Now, there is much I [...]
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