Is your church Wal-Mart ready? Blog by Neil Mancor

Is your church Wal-Mart ready?

I love going to Wal-Mart. I admit it. Very different from going to Costco, of course. Wal-Mart stores promise so much abundance at low prices. And of course the ubiquitous Wal-Mart greeter at the door ready to receive each customer with all the warmth they can muster. It’s not quite Canadian to be too friendly in that toothy wide-smiling kind of way, but they do their best. It’s not quite Anglican either, but we do our best too.

During this time of forced enclosure, our churches have valiantly kept going with services and times to gather for virtual coffee (or beer!) all online. Many of us have become much better at staging services online as we get the hang of camera angles, Zoom links and Facebook live. The time will come when we will be able to meet in person again. It may well be quite some time until we can gather together as we once did which means that our gatherings will be different.  Things like exchanging the Peace, taking Eucharist and even corporate singing will probably be modified for some time to come. 

But with that comes an important pivot we all need to think about making: from Wal-Mart ready to true hospitality. Don’t get me wrong, greeting people warmly at the door is important. Welcome is much more than just a nice smile: it is about the whole experience of a guest at your church from when they enter the door, how they are enabled to participate in the service to the way they are cared for during coffee. It includes your website and Facebook page and the information they convey. Welcome needs to be warm and genuine, but not overwhelming for those who want to slip and try your church on for size, so to speak. If you are offering people envelopes and signing them up for the sanctuary guild on their first visit you are being too welcoming! But welcome is not the same thing as hospitality and the community it can foster.

Because here is the pivot. In COVID-19, event-based fundraising events have been impossible. But what are we really doing with these events? Often we are inviting people into our buildings for the purpose of entertaining them, gaining some revenue and hoping they like us. I think we need to look at that and question how much we want to continue entertaining people. Because I don’t really see Jesus engaging in entertainment-evangelism. Jesus took the risk of eating and drinking with people. That way he could get to know them and they could get to know him. That is how community is formed and grows.

So perhaps being Wal-Mart ready is not the whole thing. Maybe the pivot we all need to think about is how we can eat and drink with outcasts and those society calls sinners. Rather than entertaining people, the ministry we can all do is to connect with people as they are and form bonds of friendship and watch true community grow.

Neil Mancor (Congregational Development Coordinator, Anglican Diocese of Montreal)