A friend of mine retweeted something first posted by a lady called Rebecca McLaughlin. This was the tweet.

My husband has three rules of engagement when we go to church. 

1. An alone person in our gathering is an emergency 

2. Friends can wait 

3. Introduce a newcomer to someone else 

Let’s all be missionaries at church today!”

This is an exceptional tweet.

Exceptional because I’m not sure I’ve heard many people say it…..ever. It’s exactly how I would love people to think and act when they come to a church service but it seems like it is the polar opposite of what most people think about when they attend a service. I’m not gonna lie, before I was on church staff I felt exactly the same and even since being on church staff I struggle to do it.

Far too often we attend services and we are the focus. We are so focused on seeing the people we want to see, enjoying the service for ourselves, thinking about what the best seat for us would be, ensuring we get the best donut before the kids steal them and we often ignore anyone else in the process.

And then we wonder why new people who come to our services don’t always feel welcome!

But can you imagine what church services looked like if everyone took the approach Rebecca’s husband when attending?

It would mean an end to those conversations where a newcomer wasn’t noticed or didn’t speak to anyone. It would mean that in every service, every new face would meet someone and that someone had done it of their own accord, not because they were in a ‘greeter’ t-shirt.

Can you also imagine what that newcomer would do the next week they came along? Exactly the same thing that happened to them. They would find an alone person, introduce them to someone else and catch up with their friends later.

The only way a church can be a welcoming church is if all of us take on the responsibility of making it welcome. This can’t be achieved from a centralised approach alone, this is an ‘everyone’s in’ kind of deal. So to take Rebecca’s advice….

Let’s all be missionaries at church today!