For Wilshire Baptist Church
The Nextdoor social media app is packed with information – some interesting and useful, some trivial or just weird – and then there are questions about the who, what and how of navigating life in the community. Such as this recent post: “Hey guys, am I able to just walk into a church on Sunday? And if so, what are times they usually start so I can be on time?”
At first I thought it was a joke, because having been raised in the church, I take it for granted that everyone knows the answers: Yes, you can just walk in on Sundays, and 11 a.m. is prime time for most everyone. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the questions are evidence of the decline in the once-pervasive influence of the church in our society.
I grew up understanding that the church was always open to anyone who wanted to partake of the spirit and fellowship. And as I became an adult, I also became aware of how much a church needs people to walk in, participate and contribute their time, talents and financial resources. It takes all of that to not only tend to the spiritual and physical needs of the members, but more than ever, to serve and support the community around us.
Much has changed in recent decades. The inclination to “just walk into a church” is not so strong anymore and also may not be so attractive to outsiders or those already inside. Most churches are locking their doors more often in response to outside threats. And the outsider may be wary of what they will find inside based on what they’ve read in the news or on social media: judgment, political agendas, unpleasant pushes for money, worship that seems more entertainment than worship, or worship that seems lost in old, dead traditions. As a result, fewer people are interested in going to church, and COVID perhaps stopped the in-flow permanently.
On the other hand, the questions posed on Nextdoor are hopeful. They signal that someone unfamiliar with the ways of church, or perhaps estranged, is interested in coming for the first time or rebooting their relationship with organized religion. That seemed to be the reading by the Nextdoor audience, because the questions were answered with warm invites and service times at specific churches.
I could have piled on with a Wilshire invite, but even I was overwhelmed by the volume of responses. And besides, inviting is the easy part. Once you get someone inside the doors, how do you make them want to come back?
That is the question churches of every variety are wrestling with nowadays. The answer for some seems to be to try and be all things for everyone: “You want that? Come on in because we’ve got that too.” Others answer with a narrow definition of who they are: “We are this, and if you are this too, then come on in.”
And then some flip the perspective and have less to say about who they are and more to say about who you are. A good example is on Wilshire’s recently redesigned web site, where the headline is, “Be you. Belong.” That’s about as you-oriented as it gets.
Still, every church needs to say something about who and what it is, and Wilshire’s message does that but circles back around from “we” to “you” with these words: “Wilshire is a vibrant and flourishing intergenerational community of faith. We are justice-oriented and inclusive. At Wilshire, everyone is welcome and valued—not for what they might contribute, but for who they are.”
That’s an invitation for “you” to become a valued part of “we”; an invitation to come on inside.