Welcoming newcomers to your church
Here are some things to consider.
“We need our church to grow.”
This is a common sentiment in many congregations. My first response to this statement is always, “How do you define growth?” There is, after all, more than one way. Often church members and leaders think in terms of numerical growth because attendance and giving are easier to calculate than spiritual development and the congregation’s impact on the surrounding community. Additionally, bodies and energy and resources soothe the worry that the church is in decline.
If your congregation is geared more toward the concrete measurements of growth, I encourage you to consider the harder-to-quantify metrics too. Still, there might be very good reasons for you to want more children of God to come through your doors, including the desire for new perspectives or for more people to experience the life-changing love you have felt at your church. Great! Even with these earnest hopes, though, newcomers don’t always come back, and even those who have visited for a while might drift away. That’s a difficult reality to face.
To assess why that might be happening, let’s first consider why people try out new-to-them churches.
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