Restoring Kingdom Builders

Several years ago, my former church held a social event on a Saturday evening.  We enjoyed great food, crazy games, and gondola rides on a lagoon behind the church campus.

During the event, I met a woman from the neighborhood who came from the Czech Republic.  (She wanted a boat ride but wasn’t attending the event.)  She had experienced some tragedy in her life and told me her story.  After a while, I suggested that she might visit our church sometime.  She seemed to consider the idea.

I carefully led her over to the stairs that rose up to our event center.  The closer we got, the more panic she felt.  Although I was very gentle with her, she wanted nothing to do with being inside a church.  She became extremely anxious and exited the building as quickly as she could.

She was afraid of church.

Like her, many others are also afraid of church.  Some are afraid to set foot on a church campus.  Others are afraid to enter a worship center.  Still others are afraid of Christian music.  And lots of people are afraid of preaching.

Why is this?

For starters, some people have never attended church in their lives – not for a wedding, or a funeral, or a children’s program, or a worship service.  While some people almost pride themselves on never darkening the door of a church, the very thought petrifies others.  But one day, they can’t avoid it any longer.  Their daughter is getting married, or an uncle passed away, or one of their kids has a role in the Christmas program, and the event is held at a church.  They don’t see a way out of the situation, so they go … with all their defenses up.

Is there some kind of event that you’ve never attended and it makes you nervous just thinking about it?  Maybe you’ve never attended a rap concert, or a city council meeting, or an indoor arena football game, and you have no desire to go because you don’t know what will happen if you do.  That’s understandable.

That’s how many people feel about attending any event at a church.

Next, some people have suffered traumatic experiences inside a church service.  Some churches used to exclude non-members from communion, either asking them to leave or asking them not to partake of the elements.  Feeling excluded feels unsafe to some.  On the other hand, I once attended a church service where everyone was expected to leave their pew, walk forward, and kneel around the altar – something I did not want to do.  (But I did it only because I felt coerced.)  The whole experience shook me up because I did not want to embarrass myself in front of scores of strangers who already knew what to do.

Some people don’t sing at church because they never sing anywhere else.  Other people freeze up during the greeting time, either because they want to remain anonymous or because they don’t like to shake hands with strangers.  And a lot of people hate it when a preacher yells about anything because it reminds them of an abusive stepfather or boss.

Shouldn’t such people just “get over it?”  They’d like to, but remember: while going to work is a necessity, going to church is purely optional.  And if the leaders of a church – however well-intentioned – create experiences that make people feel uncomfortable, those people may choose to stay home from church for a long, long time.

Next, some people expect that a church will be a safe place – and if it isn’t, they’ll just stop going.  I believe that a pastor who preaches from Scripture should be able to talk about any issue from the pulpit, even tough social issues like abortion or homosexuality.  However, if a pastor does it without sensitivity, he can unintentionally slash the hearts of those who feel guilty about their past conduct or those who struggle with their present behavior.  The pastor would say he’s being “faithful to the Word of God” and prophetic in his presentation, but if he condemns sin without offering grace, many people will just stop going to that church.

Because he wanted to reach unchurched people, Robert Schuller believed that a pastor shouldn’t deal with controversial issues from the pulpit, that those should best be left for classroom discussions.  But Bill Hybels, who also championed reaching unchurched people, was comfortable dealing with any and all issues, including cultural hot potatoes.  The key is to proclaim the truth while making people feel safe at the same time, because if they don’t feel safe, they won’t come back.

I am not talking about compromising the gospel or avoiding difficult topics.  Most Christians want a church to explain its position on issues from Scripture.  This adds to their knowledge and helps them explain and defend their faith in the marketplace.  For example, if a pastor never talks about abortion, how will most of his people obtain a Christian view of the practice?

But if a pastor becomes so incensed about abortion that he starts screaming and yelling, he may run off women who have secretly had an abortion even if they have already repented.

Finally, some people are afraid of God – and maybe they ought to be – and identify God and church in their mind.

Why bring all this up?

My wife and I experienced a horrible trauma 18 months ago.  The trauma was inflicted by Christian people that we loved and cared about.  We had to move to another state to start the healing process.

To be honest, we didn’t want to attend church anywhere for a while.  It felt dangerous to us.  While we did take a few Sundays off, we eventually began visiting churches, but some of them did not feel like safe places.

At the second church we visited, the pastor raised his voice about an issue, and I sensed he was addressing some critics.  But it still felt uncomfortable.  As my wife and I were walking on a sidewalk toward the parking lot, a couple tried to go around us and forced us off the sidewalk.  (That wasn’t nice.)  And let’s not even talk about how so-called Christians behave in a crowded parking lot.

Forget being seeker-sensitive – some of these churches weren’t even believer-sensitive.

You’re probably wondering, “Jim, aren’t you being nitpicky about this stuff?”

No, I’m not.  Here’s why.

There are millions of people in the United States who believe in God and who already like Jesus Christ – and yet they aren’t yet Christians.  We can blame them all we want for their unbelief, but when they do finally visit a church – maybe after years of avoiding one – what kind of experience do we give them?

We act like they’re not even there.

Maybe they’re not afraid of church as much as we are afraid of them.

A pastor friend once told me about a time that he went up after class to speak with one of his seminary professors.  My friend said, “I appreciate what you taught us: teach the sheep and love the sheep.”  The professor said, “No, I said love the sheep and teach the sheep – and in that order.”

If our churches are going to be safe places to hear a dangerous message, then we need to learn to love people before we teach them.  They need to have a positive experience from the church parking lot to the nursery to the children’s rooms to the church lobby and into the worship center.  They need to have a positive experience inside the service, from the songs to the greeting time to the offering to the message.

But I’m seeing a disturbing trend today.  Too many churches are becoming in-grown.  They don’t seem to want guests to come so they don’t expect them to come, either.  The emphasis is on spiritual formation – which is fine – but to the neglect of reaching lost people for Jesus Christ.

So when people finally do show up – and it may have taken them months to work up the courage – we simply aren’t ready for them.  Nobody greets them.  Nobody talks to them.  Nobody even notices them.

So when the service is done, they slip away as fast as they can – all the while even more determined not to go to church anywhere.

After trying a church, they’re even more afraid of church.

Many years ago, I learned this adage: most people will give a church only one chance.  If a church treats their guests well, they may be able to reach them for Jesus.  If the church neglects their guests or makes them feel unsafe, they will probably never return, and may write off Jesus and His people in the process.

It takes courageous leadership to make a church a safe place.  There are churches that do this and do it well, and they don’t compromise their message in the process.  And the leaders do their best to involve everyone in the church in reaching people for Christ.

But they have learned to love people for Jesus before they teach them about Jesus.  And in so doing, they have earned the right to be heard.

How about your church?  Is it a safe place for hurting people – even those who have experienced trauma in their lives?

If not – in the words of Jean-Luc Picard – make it so.