Vineyard Church of Knox County
The Importance of Being a Welcoming Church
Ted Buehrer, a VCKC elder, is on sabbatical in North Carolina this year from his position at Kenyon College. Moving to a new place for a year has provided him and his family with the challenge of finding a church family with whom to worship. We've all been there, right? Well, when talking with him about his experiences in various churches, I asked him to write to us because he has learned some very valuable lessons on what makes a church a welcoming place (and conversely what makes a church an unwelcoming place) and why it is so very important that we become such a church. So, read on and hear his experience and the wisdom he now is able to share with us about how we can welcome those who will be walking through our doors (and there will be many of them, for sure!)...
When Leslie and I began hunting for a church home in Chapel Hill, we had nothing to go on. We were new in town, knew no one, and had only a church’s website from which to form a first impression. The nearest Vineyard was 45 minutes away, and just as we don’t travel 45 minutes to the Columbus Vineyard from our home in Mount Vernon, we didn’t want to travel 45 minutes to the Raleigh Vineyard; it’s hard to feel a part of a community when you’re not living in that community to begin with. But we had a good feeling about a Methodist church very close to our house, and right up the block from the school Ethan would be attending. Though we guessed that the style of worship would be more traditional and less casual than what we’d grown accustomed to at Vineyard, their website said all the right things, we both wanted to like this church because of its placement in our community, and Leslie especially had a sense that this was where God wanted us to worship during our time in Chapel Hill. Yet our first visit there in August almost made us not come back.
We came away from our first visit to this Methodist church thinking that it had to be the least friendly church we’d ever attended. The service was fine, the teaching was solid, and the pastors were welcoming, but besides the pastors, not a single member of the congregation approached us to introduce themselves, to welcome us, to ask if we were new, to help us route our children to Sunday School, etc. In fact, the usher didn’t even know which Sunday School rooms our kids were supposed to go to, based on their ages, and didn’t even know (as we soon learned for ourselves from the sign posted on the classroom doors) that Sunday School wasn’t meeting that morning because they were taking a break during the month of August, as many churches do.
And so we tried another church the following week. This church was non-denominational, more casual, and felt more like Vineyard. Yet this church tipped too far the other direction. I didn’t know that it was possible to accuse a church of being too friendly, but I think this church accomplished this feat. We were met by a greeter with a GUSHING welcome. This person then made it her business to introduce us to at least three other people standing in the lobby area, and each of them in turn gave us an extended, overly-friendly greeting, all this while we had our three young kids in tow that we were trying to get checked in to Sunday School! It seemed “fake,” as though they were trying way too hard; it didn’t seem real. After the service the pastor introduced himself to us, and maybe it’s our northerner, Yankee sensibilities, but he seemed too slick, too polished for our tastes. It didn’t help that the worship music seemed like camp song singing, either (that’s another story), but needless to say we decided against this church as our temporary church home.
Instead, we felt God pulling us back to the Methodist church. And we continued attending, and we are still attending. It is a vibrant church full of committed--and friendly--believers. God is moving in this church in fresh, exciting ways, ways that are perhaps unfamiliar to many in the church. There is definitely a core of individuals in the church, including the leadership, through whom God is revealing himself in new ways, and it seems they are open to whatever God has in store for them and the church. For “outsiders” like us, it is exciting to observe how God is moving in this place. But the point to be made here is that we almost missed all of God’s exciting work taking place at this church because it was so utterly unfriendly toward newcomers like us. I remember standing in the bustling lobby after church one of those first Sundays, eyes and head up, looking around for a friendly face, for someone to make eye contact with, and no one did. It was an interesting sociological experiment, if nothing else! But it was also a lonely feeling. It took us weeks to feel welcome, weeks before our faces were remembered by others as “familiar.” The pastors were friendly and reached out, but they can only do so much. It’s safe to say that we continued attending this church out of obedience to what we felt called to, and in spite of the church’s unfriendliness.
VCKC has always been a friendly, welcoming community. Our hope is that as we move into the new facility, and more and more people begin to come, we as a church continue to strive to be welcoming, friendly, and real. And that we help people, especially newcomers, to get connected to other people in the church. Chris, Sharon, and the other leaders can do this, but they can only do so much, and it’s not only their responsibility. Reach out to an unfamiliar face, a family you don’t recognize, and help them to feel welcome. Help them get plugged in to the life of the church. As we can tell you from recent experience, it can feel lonely at a new church when this doesn’t happen. Among the many things that we all hope VCKC will become known for in this community, may our warmth and genuine desire for fellowship with all who come through our doors be high on the list.
Ted Buehrer
