Presbyterian Loafers
Posted February 17, 2007
A few weeks ago, I attended Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock and listed myself as a first time visitor on the attendance registration sheet. An hour or so after the service, a visitor's team showed up, bearing a Saran-wrapped homemade loaf of bread. I haven't had a chance to return to 2d Pres, but I can vouch for their culinary skills -- they're excellent breadmakers.
I'm curious how other houses of worship welcome first-time visitors. If you know of a congregation anywhere in the U.S. that goes out of its way to greet newcomers, please let me know about it.
Comments
I visited a church once and got a loaf of bread--the creepy thing was that I was 25, single and living in an apartment by myself at the time. The person who was sent with the bread--he showed up at my place--was a single guy my age, nice enough and all that, but then he kept calling me asking me out. I had just broken up with someone and wasn't all that interested. He didn't threaten me or stalk me, but I wouldn't necessarily have given him my phone number had he not been given it by the church (along with my address, of course).
They knew I was single and this still happened, and it made me sort of mad. A gesture of hospitality is lovely, but I have to question the security of that particular method of greeting newcomers. I was very hesitant to list myself as a newcomer after that when I visited a church, even though I like homemade bread as much as the next person (perhaps more).
I hope you get to visit Fellowship Bible Church in Rogers. That's more of where I'm 'coming from.'
Or wherever it is. I see there's two, and one's in Little Rock.
The traditional Episcopal response to visitors has been to ignore them, in the hope that they will go away, which has no doubt helped the Episcopal Church avoid the great growth that has so plagued the more friendly churche, and kept it to a manageable size.
My impression is that the ice is beginning to crack, though, and I'm sure many Episcopal Churches are as Rotary Club-like in their pursuit of new visitors as any other protestant group.
All that and now U2, too . . . I guess this really is no longer our grandparents' Episcopal Church.
The Church of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal) in Brentwood, TN, does something like that with a bag of goodies for all first time visitors. While the bread is store bought, it is a very reasonable approximation of home made.