Don’t Judge Draw Final Conclusions On A Church Based on One Visit
For whatever reason, we have a lot of people who visit our community on Sunday mornings. This is all fine and dandy. But, a thought occurred to me recently. I often want to tell those visitors that you can’t judge draw final conclusions about The Well (or any church for that matter) based on one Sunday morning visit.
A few reasons:
- We have a team of people who preach. I preach maybe twice a month. Because of this team approach to preaching, you can’t come once and draw specific conclusions about the preaching style of our community. I am more emotional/big picture. Gary, our other pastor, is more of an intellectual and “rubber meets the road” kind of guy. David, a seminarian, preaches about once a quarter and is highly intellectual and academic. Shanna who has recently joined the rotation brings a unique but similar style as me. We often have people from within and outside of our church share as well. Each and every one of us brings such a valuable perspective to the leadership of our community and it would be possible to get all that in one visit.
- Much of our worship service is lay led. The different aspects of our liturgy are led by a team of non-seminary trained (gasp!) people. And we love it this way. This regular parts of our liturgy are: call to worship, prayer, scripture reading, benediction. Our weekly communion time is led by someone on our leadership team. But, since there are so many different people up front, you get a variety of perspectives week in and week out. So, while we have a similar order of service each week, it is very different. We love this approach for a few reasons. First, the word liturgy literally means, “the work of the people.” It’s cool to have our weekly worship time literally be “a work of the people.” Second, one of my critiques of the Western Church is that pastors spend way too much time planning and organizing the two hours on Sunday morning. With this approach, since the responsibilities are spread around to gifted people, the pastors don’t have to spend crazy amounts of hours planning the perfect worship gathering. We’ve left behind a lot of the video production and slick stuff much for this reason. Coming together as a community for worship each week should not take up most of our ministry time. The only weeks that I put a large amount of preparation into our worship gatherings are the weeks that I am preaching. Even then, I try to take the approach put forth in Chris Eardman’s fantastic book on preaching. Okay, that last part was a tangent. I’ll continue on…
- Lastly, and most importantly, so much of our community life and mission together happens in the unofficial moments of our life together. Sure, you’ll see and hear a lot of stuff we’re doing in the announcements, preaching and even the bulletin but if you really want to see what we’re all about then you’ve really got to stick around a bit and take part in the more organic and non-programmed parts of our life together. And, since most of our life together is non-programmed, this can’t all be seen by coming on one Sunday for two hours.
Now, all that said, we work really hard to make our sunday gatherings a good expression of our life together. We try to celebrate our shared faith in the risen Messiah and our shared call to be a community for the sake of others. If you come visit on a sunday, I hope you’ll get a glimpse of who we are and who and what we are for. But, just keep in mind, its only a glimpse. I’d venture to guess this is true of most every church but it is especially true of ours.
Update: Note, “judge” is a strong word and I am not trying to be defensive here. I don’t really have too much baggage here. Maybe a better title for this should be “don’t draw final conclusions about my church from one visit.” Please, do feel free to visit The Well. We love having extended family worship with us. Just keep in mind these thoughts. That’s all.
bill said...
103/3/08 2:12 PM | Comment Link |
good word…it is hard for a person to really know about a church just from one Sunday morning. And I would also argue, that I hope a person would try to judge and understand a church more than just experience. What does the church believe -doctrine, polity etc..? When the church talks about what they are doing on Sunday (events, activities etc..) what percent is “for the people within” and what percent is “for those within the community.”? For me that becomes an important diagnostic question.
Fusion@letmypeopleread said...
203/3/08 3:42 PM | Comment Link |
I have to admit, my church is very informal in that sense. We’re working out the kinks. I will say, it would be nice to have it set to where I can feel more comfortable inviting people. We meet in a small place in LA. But, the people are decent. I might add, my family is from Guatemala and am glad it has been a country that has been blessed by people like you and your wife. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll adopt a kid from there.
Todd said...
303/3/08 6:31 PM | Comment Link |
bill, yeah, that is a good diagnostic. Alan Roxburgh once said he can often tell how missionally and externally focused a church is by listening to their announcements and reading their bulletin. This is not a perfect gauge, but its an interesting way to look at it. Of course there is a chance someone would come on the one week that everything we talk about is internal.
Fusion dude, great to “meet” another Guatemalan! We loved the country when we were down there last August. We made it to Antigua which is such an amazing city. Of course, i left with a day’s worth of food poisoning but it was still worth it. As you can probably tell from my post, our church service isn’t perfect either. But, i would not want to invite a friend to any other church. I think there is something beautiful about being able to be authentic to who you are as a community. Not that we don’t strive to get better at what we do, but being perfect in presentation isn’t really what we’re shooting for.
Eric said...
403/3/08 7:25 PM | Comment Link |
Have you felt “judged” by those visiting your church gatherings in the past? I remember saying to you at the Ecclesia gathering that I wanted to possibly come visit and you said exactly what is written here. However, whether you knew it or not, your tone was somewhat defensive. I felt like I had asked a bad question (”does he think I want to come judge them?” That’s what I thought to myself).
I do understand what you are saying - much of it very good. But I do think that many people (not all, just many) already know that they should not judge a church by its Sunday morning gathering. I would even go as far as to say “don’t judge a church” period.
Todd said...
503/4/08 6:35 AM | Comment Link |
Eric you bring up a great point here, and Thanks! I think the word “judge” is a strong word and I am not actually trying to have a defensive posture. if that is how it come across than i need to be careful how i share this. in the past, i have often heard people make conclusions on my church or some other church based on one visit. i even find that I have to catch myself when i am visiting another church for the first time.
maybe the title of this post should be “don’t draw final conclusions about my church from one visit.” that might be a more helpful way to bring up this idea.
Dorie Morgan said...
603/4/08 9:44 AM | Comment Link |
Todd,
Your post made me think of when Jeff first brought me to The Well. We got in the car after the service and he started asking me what I thought about The Well and if I could see myself worshipping there. With the background that I grew up in, it took a lot of grace to be able to say “It was interesting and I’m still thinking about what I’ve experienced”. Just because we know that we shouldn’t judge a church doesn’t mean that we still don’t have to battle against the engrained urge to judge.
Oh and I should tell you that I usually refer to the Well as “The Little Warehouse Church That Could”. I’d rather guests be pleasantly surprised at the community that is inside.
To Eric: I’ve felt judged before by guests. I can’t even imagine what it is like for Todd and Gary as they are more of the public face. Although the people that bring the judge-y feeling usually don’t come back.
ed c said...
703/4/08 1:46 PM | Comment Link |
Good post.
However, having visited your church only once, I still feel like it matched up with what you’ve been preaching and saying it should be. That doesn’t mean I have a great picture of your church, however in just one service I learned about most of your ministries and met a lot of very nice people while enjoying a sermon from a comfy couch. Not bad, not bad at all.
Gabrielle said...
803/4/08 2:07 PM | Comment Link |
This post made me think of my first Sunday there, actually it was a Saturday night, a concert night, that was my first experience.
I thought, man if this church is half as cool as the people running this event, I’m in.
Almost three years later, still coming back, I guess first-good judgements are okay.
:)
'Mas said...
903/5/08 1:28 PM | Comment Link |
This topic jumped out at me, having been in the position to find a different church a year ago owing to some painful experiences at our “home” church. Did we “judge” the churches we visited? I don’t think that adequately characterizes what we were doing. It was more like trying on new clothing: seeing if we fit inside (was it too big or too small); did we feel like we could move freely or were we tighly enclosed; most importantly, did we see Jesus there. Is that judging from your perspective? When I led the evangelism team at our previous church, we had a practice of meeting with new members to find out what brought them back after their initial visit and then to continue visiting and finally joining. We went from a church that many felt uncomfortable about inviting outsiders to and reached a point where members were excited about bringing new faces in to experience our “family”.
Perhaps the “judging” you pull back from is an important mirror that will show how much of Jesus people see when they pay a visit.
That’s my 2 cents :^{>
Todd said...
1003/6/08 1:22 PM | Comment Link |
Mas, its not the actual judging that i’m bothered by. That’s why i edited the post a lttle and said maybe judging is too strong a word. Of course when you visit a church you are going to form opinions about the setting you were just in, that can’t be helped. My issue is that so often we base these opinions on one week of attendance. Especially in our setting, you just can’t form a full opinion from one visit. We’re (and i would argue most churches) are just too diverse in the way we worship together. Does that make more sense?
'Mas said...
1103/6/08 1:46 PM | Comment Link |
Todd -
Yes, that makes sense. I have to agree that you can’t fully assess a church in one visit, though you can determine if the “fit” or “style” will likely work for you. Though, even there, if a particular church has multiple services of varying styles and you happen to hit a traditional service when you feel more comfortable with contemporary and don’t find out about the other options, you’ll never know what you missed.
A case in point: a family that used to attend my old church showed up a few weeks ago at our new church. They had come at their daughter’s insistence (she’d plugged into the youth group) and they were expecting what they’d experienced many years before. They were very surprised that we had shifted there and that things had changed mightily from what they remembered.
Looks like I just supported your argument…smacking forehead…DOH!
Ginger said...
1203/7/08 5:29 AM | Comment Link |
Just a side comment on David, one of the Well’s preachers..
What I like about David is his ability to see patterns in Scripture that are memorable but not usually obvious right away. He delves deeply into the text and has a great literary sensitivity.
For instance, last Sunday he preached on how the suffering in Acts 5 took the church from a state of innocence (like Eden) to a wiser state of maturity (the new Zion). Though I didn’t agree with all that he had to say about the church, I appreciate this metaphor. It surprised me, but I think it’s justifiably in the text.
He is less “personal” than some of the others who preach at the Well, but I appreciate what David adds to the mix.