Loading ...Ten ways to make visitors feel unwelcome
flockwoodLifeWay has posted a list of 10 ways to make visitors feel unwelcome. Click here to read it. Does anyone have a horror story about being made to feel uncomfortable at a house of worship? I do.
In Buenos Aires, I attended the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God for the first time, and witnessed a supposedly demon-possessed woman undergoing an exorcism. She struggled with the minister and then stopped, her eyes bulging, and pointed at me. The minister, who had really made a strong pitch for donations a few minutes before, said I must have done something to catch the demon’s attention. “Are you a diezmero?” he asked in Spanish. “Que significa diezmero?” I whispered to a woman beside me: “What does “diezmero” mean? The woman explained that the minister was asking me if I was giving 10 percent of my earnings to his church. I knew exactly how to respond, and for once, I didn’t mind a bit if my Spanish sounded elementary. “I am a foreigner,” I said slowly, “and I don’t understand Spanish very well, and this is the first time that I’ve visited your church.” The minister smiled. “That’s okay. That’s okay” he said in Spanish and waited for the “demon-possessed woman” to pick somebody else out of the crowd.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Good one, Frank. I think I’ve mentioned my own special story on here some time ago: the time that a sort of neighborhood “character” came into church, sat down by one of the older members, casually remarked, “You know, I believe I’d ruther git shot as to git stabbed, wouldn’t you?” and then proceeded to lift his shirt and display a jagged scar right around his belly button. How does one answer a question like that?
April 15th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Well, I heard this story from a priest in Lexington who ministered near the University of Kentucky campus. May be apocryphal. Students would park in the church lot routinely, despite warnings about being towed, he said. And there weren’t a lot of parking spaces. So the church began placing flyers asking the violators to please stop parking on church property. But the notes did no good. One car in particular seemed to park there every week. So finally, after numerous warnings, the priest had the car towed shortly before a weekly service. The owner showed up as the car was being hauled away and, enraged, walked to the back door of the church and caught the priest’s eye. Then he flipped him the bird.
The worshippers, facing the other direction, missed the obscene gesture, but heard the priest’s quick reply: “And also,” he said, “with you.”
April 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I had an experience with number 1 on the list.
One time, as part of my coursework, I was assigned to visit a number of different local congregations. So one Sunday a friend of mine and I decided to visit a congregation in town. Since it was pouring down rain, we naturally drove to the church building. We pulled into the parking lot and discovered that 1/3 of all the spots, including all the open spots, had signs reading “reserved for the elderly.”
No spots for visitors. No spots reserved for anyone but the pastor, the handicapped, and the over-65 crowd.
Now, I understand that there is nothing wrong with having reserved spots, especially for those who may have difficulty walking across parking lots etc. But the shear number of such spaces, in what was a decent sized lot (though it was downtown, so there was a limit on parking), sent the clear message that “young people are not (really) welcome here.”
We ended up parking on a side street a good distance away and were among a very small number of college students/young adults in worship. Neither of us ever went back.
Not exactly a recipe for growth for a church located in a college town, if you ask me.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
My all time favorite to tell me I don’t want to frequent that religious group is to have them focus on “God’s commandment to tithe.” That works marvelously in college towns when it is the principle focus of the services early in the new school year.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Preaching about giving to the Church is apparently a necessary evil. Pastors tell me that it’s the pastors who preach about giving who persuade their flocks to give, so there’s a financial incentive to do it. But it does get a bit annoying, and I imagine it sends some people home.