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Stranger! Stranger!

In Anchorage, there is a gentleman who visits churches and writes up his experiences for the Anchorage Daily News.

He recently visited our sister church, Central Lutheran. You can read his warm and positive review here.

When he visits churches, he looks for warmth and friendliness to visitors as well as an organized service, Bible-based preaching and meaningful music.

Do we offer these things? What kind of review would he give us? What kind of review would Jesus give us?

Comments

LoieJ said…
This is a great review and, clearly, your church has an established tradition of friendliness. Certainly if we can't show warmth and caring to those we worship with, our brothers and sisters in Christ, we could have a difficult time showing this to complete strangers on the street.

When I visit another church, I usually am is a semi-critiquing mode, unfortunately. I don't think that is such a good idea, but it is hard not to notice things that are different from what I am used to.

I was at another church this past Sunday. It seemed like a vibrant Lutheran church, but nobody greeted us, before or after the service, except that our relative brought the pastor over to meet us. But in a suburban church with three services back to back, it think it might be difficult to know who is who. And yet....[we have greeters at our church even though we DO mostly know each other. It just sets a good tone.]

The service was traditional, yet no liturgy, perhaps to save time. What I found "unfortunate" was that both the worship leader and the reader did not have any greeting or warmth or personal touches that would convey that this service was happening at this moment in time with real people present who were welcome to be there. There were no announcements mentioned either, although there was a TV screen in the narthex with happenings, and they were detailed in the bulletin. I know that some people need personal and/or oral announcements and invitations to make the connection to them, personally.
December 2, 2009 at 8:58 AM
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