Come on in!

Games like "Guess Who's Coming for Dinner" appeal to some people because they like the challenge and mystery of an unexpected guest. After basic preparations have been made, the surprise of an unknown person arriving at the door can be exciting. However, for some, this is absolutely terrifying. Most people want to feel totally prepared, not just with food, but by anticipating what kind of people they are going to be entertaining and spending the evening with. Are they really into sports or theatre? Are they very formal or quite casual? Do they like table games or would they prefer conversation?. These kinds of details are very helpful in feeling truly prepared for someone coming to dinner.

As a church, who are we expecting to come to dinner? Who are we expecting to come through the doors of our church on a Sunday morning? These are thoughts I've been wrestling with lately as I've had a few conversations with some new friends over my sabbatical. These interactions have really changed my perspective on who the people who are likely to be coming through the door and how they may be different from who we've expected in the past.

In my early years of pastoral ministry, there was a kind of a type-cast person that we were expecting to come through the door. Usually, it would be someone who grew up in a Christian family, maybe drifted as a teenager or young adult, and later in life, as they started to wrestle with bigger questions like parenthood, marriage, heaven, and hell, they would feel the guilt of abandoning the faith of their childhood and be drawn to reconnect to church life. I’m not saying that this was the only kind of person we were expecting, of course, but having a specific background and set of expected desires and wants in mind was helpful in anticipating how to best engage with newcomers. 

This was a time, however,  when there was a lot more agreement in our culture about things like values and ethics, and there was a lot more cultural consistency. But we're in a very different time now, and I think the kinds of people who are going to be coming through our door in the future, increasingly won't fit that same profile.

There are two people I've had in-depth conversations with over my sabbatical, and they've become good friends. Both of them did not grow up in practicing Christian families. One of them is an author and educator in the Vancouver area, specializing in economics and the impact of broken money systems on family and culture. He's been seeing different aspects of decay in our culture around money systems and also around the breakdown in family and social norms, and he’s seen the impact of how we're experiencing that culturally. He's been looking for something different and no longer feels that he's aligned with the values and ethics of our broader, secular culture. In conversations with him, he's expressed a desire to connect with the church, to connect with Christian community, not because he has all the details of his faith figured out at this point, but because he's more confident that there's going to be more alignment with his worldview and his sense of right and wrong in a Christian community compared to a secular one.

The other person, who also didn't grow up in a Christian family, has been attending church with his family for the past year and a half. Over the last few years, he recognized the pervasive influence of moral relativism, nihilism, and narcissism in society and became convinced that there must be a better way. While he's not yet certain about all the tenets of the faith, he is deeply involved in the community and is clearly progressing on his journey towards relationship with Jesus.

Two conversations are anecdotal, I know, but I do think they represent a wider movement, and I've had similar conversations with a lot more people. It seems like this is the kind of person that is going to be coming through the doors on a Sunday morning. Not people that are necessarily trying to reconnect with a childhood faith out of a sense of guilt or maybe a sense of fear of going to hell, but people that see the cultural decline all around us and want an alternative. They want to belong to a community that is a prophetic voice to the challenges of our culture and find a path that leads to life and hope in the midst of chaos and hopelessness.

So how does this impact our approach to Sunday mornings? I think this can help us become more intentional about how we structure our programming and our Sunday public services. If we can anticipate the questions that people are going to have when they engage with us, we can be ready with those kinds of answers. If we anticipate the needs and hopes of those people, we can be intentional about addressing those in our engagement with them.

If I have a call to action in expressing these thoughts, it's for us as Christians, as churches, to shift our perspective and our approach from a defensive posture to a more confident one. It is very encouraging to know that people are increasingly interested in engaging or reengaging with Christianity, and not because the services are "relevant" to the culture, not because they've heard an easy message about eternal life or salvation. They're drawn to Christian community for the expressed reason that we're distinct from secular culture, that we have different values, and that we're willing to live them out. 

So our approach should not be to try to make the Gospel seem more palatable, or make our church culture seem more “relevant” to a secular culture that it is fundamentally incompatible with, but rather to celebrate the fact that we are distinct. Always in a posture of love and respect, yes, but also not being shy or apologetic about what we believe and why. In a culture rife with hopelessness and fear, let’s remember that we have real hope based on the life and love of Jesus, and people are hungry for that hope. So let’s set the table and be intentional about being a place they can come and find it.