In October 2021, I was visiting my daughter at her college in Oklahoma City. While I was there, I decided to go for a run and ended up in Downtown OKC where I heard the loudest bird I’ve ever heard. It was just squawking and making such a ruckus, it made me wonder what was going on. However, when I looked around there was not a bird to be found, none in the sky and none on the buildings or any signs along the road. I then noticed the squawking coming from a small square speaker. This device was a sonic repeller. It uses birds’ own distress calls, to frighten them away so they don’t nest in the eaves of the buildings. It was very effective because, as I said, there was not a bird to be seen in the vicinity of the squawking speaker.
It got me thinking. Do our churches have similar repellents? What does your church do that repels people, those who are not currently a part of your congregation? What practices or habits have creeped into the life of the congregation that may discourage people from visiting your congregation?
Some of them could be physical deterrents. You are not handicapped accessible or you’ve had so much deferred maintenance that your building is no longer appealing to guests or “outsiders.” Some of them could be attitudinal. For example, at one church I served, a young couple attended for the very first time. They took a seat in an open pew and settled down for the service. What congregation wouldn’t be excited to have a guest, particularly a young couple in a sea of “seasoned citizens”? However, no sooner had they sat down, a member approached them and said, “You are sitting in my pew. You will have to leave.” And they did.
This may seem like an extreme example, but as I visit churches, I do find a number that are not in tune with people who are not currently part of their congregation. The reality is that a congregation lives out its attitude toward unchurched persons every day in the communication it offers, in its involvement in the community, and in the unique way it expresses and practices hospitality. In their book, The Faith-Sharing Congregation, authors Robert K. Swanson and Shirley F. Clement address the role of hospitality in what they term the “welcoming ministries” of the church: “The essence of hospitality is to be known and welcomed, needed and loved.” We truly should not take hospitality for granted. Making sure someone feels known and loved takes more than a warm greeting, it requires ongoing action on our part. When people come to our places of worship, we are the host and they are the guests. As we are reminded in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”