Review of a Church Book

Becoming a Welcoming Church by Thom S. Rainer is a 100-page easy read to help leaders evaluate their own church. Here are some suggestions based on my reading of this book and because of my social media background:

  • Keep your website updated. Make sure your social media points to your webpage and vice-versa. If you have blank pages, empty promises of content that never appears, or outdated information, purge it from your site. People judge your church by your social media and website presence. Thom Rainer, a church expert, says people visit that first.
  • Don’t Swarm. You are not a hive of bees. If a young family walks into your older church, having every person beat a path to them sort of freaks families out. It freaked us out when we visited a small church.
  • #MeToo Movement. Many pastors and religious leaders are being taken out by accusations of sexual abuse. Thom Rainer suggests putting a child protection policy on your website to reassure families that where their kids hang out while they are in service is safe.
  • Holy Huddles. The book asks each person to honestly look at their church. We all say our church is friendly but is it really? Obviously, if a pastor from the pulpit has to tell the congregation to say hi to someone they don’t know, the leadership sees what we don’t see–our holy huddles. Do we go out to lunch with the same people every week? Do we make time in our busy schedules to transform our communities by getting involved? Are we making good, online conversations or saying “Amen” and reacting rather than conversing? This Sunday, watch your pastor. What is he doing? He is making the rounds to say hello to people.

Additionally, someone joked how the church is a century behind the rest of the world and it has a long history of looking upon suspicion of every new thing that becomes available from guitars to social media. The best days are ahead of us, not behind us. Don’t exclude technology from your belt of tools for sharing the Gospel.