From my experiences in Welcome Team, through my countless conversations that ended in awkward silence, to all the times I missed a chance to get to know someone or sat back and waited for the other party to initiate interaction... I'm the kind of person who learns best by making mistakes, and even after all that I can still see so many ways to improve. I've wanted to blog about my ideas and thoughts for Welcoming for a while. I don't know how many posts it's gonna take for me to get it all down on record, because I have so much to share on this topic. So we'll just call this Part 1: Attitude.
Part 1: Attitude
Before we even talk about the actual practical things we can do in our Welcoming process, we should look within ourselves - to see whether our heart is actually in the right place. Because, in view of Welcoming being much more than just saying "Hello, my name is ____." and asking "What's your name?" and "What do you do?", do we actually care enough to carry out all the other steps (e.g. Going beyond a conversation and actually becoming friends with a person, spending time with them outside of Sunday, getting to know them beyond surfacy details, etc.)? Do we have the heart to be more than just a "Sunday Welcomer"? Aligning our attitude is the first step.
Welcoming is a ministry that requires us to step outside of our comfort zone, because as I already mentioned above - it kinda goes against our nature to want to reach out to others. Connecting with others takes time, building relationships take a lot of effort - often, we have to give more than we receive in return. It's an attitude that most definitely comes from God and not within ourselves, but luckily we have the example of Jesus and Paul to follow - in the context of a church environment, we can see how much both of them invest time into other people through the Gospels and Epistles.
There's a particular quote from Jesus (well, it's more like a command) that we really need to have burnt into our heart when we do Welcoming, from John 13:35:
"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
Sometimes I've noticed we "choose" our friends at church, which is not a good thing to begin with. But worse still - we "choose" our friends according to the world's standards - we want to hang out with the good-looking/popular/cool people, and we sideline anyone who doesn't fit that standard. It's a struggle for me too, especially with people who've been coming to church as long as I have, but I've never made an effort to get to know them. Deep down I'm scared of the awkwardness if I say, "Hey, I want to get to know you..." and that they might react in a negative way and think, "Wow, we've been going to church together for 5 years and he never bothered to talk to me before. Why is he starting now? What's his motive?" We need to learn to humbly consider those who we haven't really talked to or tried to get to know.
Jesus talks about loving your enemies in Matthew 5:43-47, and I think the challenges for us from this verse, in a church context, is to learn to love others (who may not necessarily be our enemies) even when they have nothing to offer us, to give our time and attention to those who might not give it in return. Too often we only talk to somebody because we want a favour or something, and it happens at church all the time! That's exactly the kind of behaviour Jesus is addressing in Matthew 5:47. This self-serving attitude just undermines our progress towards fellowship and church unity - and it's something Satan can so easily use against us. We gotta look at ourselves and ask God for humility.
"And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?"
I think to truly have a heart for others in a broader sense means that we don't just stick to our little clique and close circle of friends. We have to branch out, learn to include people that we don't normally hang out with and invite them into friendship/fellowship with us. This doesn't even just apply to newcomers only, but regulars too! Can you think of someone who comes to church on Sunday and sits in the same room as you all year - but maybe you don't even know their name, or their name is the only thing you know about them. If that's the case, then we gotta do something about it!
My prayer is that when we see another person at church, whether newcomer or regular, that we'll see them through Jesus's eyes - in the way He looks upon those around Him with compassion and sees value in every human being. This attitude towards others goes back to the foundation of the Cross - God's Salvation plan was for everyone, not just for the people we're close to, or for the people who we think are good-looking/popular/cool, or only for the people who can give us a favour.
We gotta learn to find value in everybody around us - and it's only possible with humility and an understanding of God's love for humanity. And once we do, I think that's when we start to naturally want to get to know and include other people.
