What the Rest of the Family Is Doing (part 1)

When we first moved to the Grand Rapids area, we only visited three churches. They were all decent churches, but we were eager to settle in quickly and decided to go with the church that Jenny had been involved in when she was still a high school student.

In August, we decided it was time to move on. But this time I didn’t want to jump quickly into the next church. When I was a worship musician in Dallas I had the pleasure of worshiping with a number of churches across the metroplex. After living here for three years, I found myself eager to get out and explore. I wanted to know what the rest of the family was doing, to put faces with the names of churches I had heard, to see who was serving where and how.

It’s now January, and while I haven’t visited every church I had hoped, we are in the process of settling down. And as our time of exploration draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment and reflect on what we have seen.

When we first moved to Dallas, I blogged about each church we visited for our friends and family back home. In fact, one of the churches actually caught us and reached out to us through the blog after sharing our post with their staff!

I’ve been encouraged to blog about each church here as well, but since it’s a smaller town I didn’t want to get that specific for fear of discouraging anyone with criticism. This isn’t meant to be a set of restaurant critiques or movie reviews. Instead I hope it will be something like a “State of the Church in West Michigan.”

So far we have visited 11 churches, not counting visiting my friend’s church plant in Battle Creek. Of these 11, most were Baptist or non-denominational. One was Presbyterian (PCA). All were conservative, Bible-believing evangelical churches. If I had more time, I would love to visit our local Lutheran, CRC, OPC, and RCA churches as well.

But let me be very clear: 6 months is far too long to go without a local church. While I have enjoyed the tour, this is a huge con to the project. We were made to belong to a local church. We were made to relate to Christ, our head, through the body. We were made to live with the family, not as orphans.

The churches were all different sizes and styles, with pastors all different ages, music ranging from formal to informal, and with a variety of differences in the ambiance and order. Some left me in awe of Christ as I left; some left me scratching my head.

But before I get into the details, one last note: my heart in visiting these churches was to approach as a gracious guest, not a customer. All of these churches are parts of the family! I am committed to the teaching that Christians are not just metaphorically brothers and sisters but truly adopted children of the King, and therefore truly brothers and sisters. Not like a family, but actual family. Our family.

Now, the fun stuff:

1: Welcome

All of the churches were welcoming in one way or another. Most had greeters at the doors; one had what seemed like an army of greeters! At one church, the greeters didn’t open the doors for people, so I found myself holding the door open for an elderly woman and her granddaughter. At another church, the greeters gave us mixed messages about whether our drinks were allowed in the sanctuary. (They weren’t.)

Greeters actually made a smaller difference than I expected in how welcome we felt. The real action happens once you get past the greeters. At one church, no one was friendly. Everyone was busy with their own work, and there was a lot of work to do. This church was so packed, I wondered if maybe they felt they already had too many people and weren’t thrilled at the prospect of having more.

But at most churches, the children’s workers, the pastors, and even the people seated around us were warm and welcoming. As a rule, the largest churches were generally the most welcoming organizationally and the least welcoming personally. The most genuinely welcoming churches in my experience were the mid-sized ones—provided that they had enough space for everyone.

2. Children’s Ministry

I didn’t bring my family with me to every church, partly because of circumstances like sickness. But overall it’s much harder to bring your kids to a church you’re only visiting, especially if you don’t know what they are going to do with your kids. This goes double for smaller churches which often have fewer resources for security and curriculum. I don’t mean to denigrate any of those churches; I have no doubt about their love for their kids. It’s just something I felt would be inappropriate with my “adventure” mentality.

All the churches we did bring our kids to did a fantastic job with security, and were very welcoming and hospitable. Some gave us verbal directions, some gave us maps, but most walked with us and offered to answer questions on the way. In my mind this is service over and above what is necessary. It’s red-carpet treatment. I so appreciated it, but I would hate churches to feel like they had to do it or else risk losing young families. We often need extra help, but we’re no more special than anyone else in the congregation.

Some of the children’s ministries featured themed walls and area names, and some even had indoor play structures. But again, that sometimes feels a bit too much. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, but my kids also need to know that church isn’t all about them. (I know it’s my job to tell them, but it helps if we’re all on the same page!)

All this attention actually created a logistical problem that we kept running into: you can never plan enough time to get your kids registered in a new system. Some of the churches had a nice and easy guest check-in, but most required you to be fully added to their system. Add to that the personal guide and (in larger churches) long walks from one area to another, and we often found ourselves late for the service. But the way everyone kept patient and hospitable made it impossible to be frustrated.

There was one exception where a church had a system malfunction and no backup plan, and there were long lines of frustrated parents being served by exasperated helpers. We definitely felt like a burden, but it’s one of those things where you just have to make the best of a bad situation. We all struggle when things don’t go as planned!

There’s a lot more I want to say, but I want to keep these posts short enough to read in one sitting, so I’m going to stop here for now and break this one into parts as well. Next time we’ll look at the actual Sunday morning service: the worship, the order/liturgy, and the preaching.