COMMENTARY: The need for a church’s welcoming presence

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.) UNDATED _ Eight weeks in Europe leave me tired and disoriented. Tired, because eight weeks of business travel is tiring. Disoriented, because I return from hotel living in Italy and Spain to a […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. He lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ Eight weeks in Europe leave me tired and disoriented.


Tired, because eight weeks of business travel is tiring. Disoriented, because I return from hotel living in Italy and Spain to a house that my family moved into just three days before my departure in May.”Look what I found on the front porch!”says my wife. She shows me a coffee mug bearing the name of the church she visited for the first time last Sunday. Inside the mug are a pen, a church newsletter and a handwritten note of welcome.

I have trained and chaired evangelism committees. I know the mechanics behind this offering. I can imagine the planning sessions, the ordering of mugs and pens, the training of callers, the making of assignments, the tabulation of calls made.

I know how hard it is to walk up to a stranger’s door. I know the callers’ mixed feelings: worry about imposing, hope for a personal contact, relief that they can leave their offering but not have to make conversation.

More than anything, I sense how much this call pleased my wife. She wasn’t looking for the perfect church. She had no shopping list of desired attributes. She was scouting for her family.

I know what was at stake. The last time she went looking for a church was 25 years ago. No one spoke to her during worship. On the way out, the pastor shook her hand distractedly and looked past her to the next person in line. No one got her name; no one called.

Today, mug in hand, she tells me how friendly they were. She would like to return for a second visit.

I am deeply moved. I don’t ask about the liturgy, the preaching, the music or any of the dozens of supposed verities and totems that church people fight about. I just see the smile on my wife’s face, and I know that if this congregation is open to strangers, if its members are at least nominally aware of the life transitions that lie behind a decision to visit a church, then I am open to trusting them.

Churches can be unspeakably cruel. They can freeze out strangers, especially those who don’t fit the mold. In their desire to protect turf and comfort, members will ignore newcomers’ needs, treat their stories as unimportant, tell the wounded to make an appointment with the pastor, insist on doctrinal conformity, snarl at children and sneer at uncertain adults.


Churches can be the perfect expression of conditional love, that demonic force by which the insecure torment the needy. Churches can impose a loneliness that cuts deeply because it seems so personal. You watch people’s eyes turn away, you watch conversational circles close against you, you realize that no one cares whether you are lost, in the sense of not knowing where the restroom is, maybe lost also in a life crisis, and you ask,”What’s wrong with me?” Churches can radiate a smugness that rips one apart. I have watched it happen; I have been on the receiving end. One Sunday, when a tight-lipped matron snarled at my son for rustling paper and later shooed him away from the cookie tray, I wanted to throw a Bible in her face and say,”Read about Jesus! Read how he responded to strangers! Read how he waded into crowds because he was filled with compassion! Is your personal comfort so important that you would stifle a child? What exactly are you protecting _ the mission and ministry of Jesus, or your own sense of propriety? Do you think Jesus cares one whit about noise in church or who has more than one cookie?” Church-inflicted wounds cut deep and last long. They’re on a par with abuse by parents, or rejection by a lover. One learns not to trust.

So it is no small thing that this congregation took the time to find our house, walk up to a stranger’s door, leave a gift and invite us back. The tired and disoriented don’t need liturgy, doctrine, balanced budgets, well-vested clergy or grand processions. The tired and disoriented need to be received with open arms and compassionate hearts.

AMB END EHRICH

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