Transforming Church

Now is the time to train your various teams to initiate, encourage, and follow-up “significant conversations”. The greeters and ushers take visitors to the brink; and the musicians, servers, and small group leaders take them deep. Set them up, hand them off, take them deep, follow up.

Seekers will decide whether they will ever return based on 30 seconds of conversation in the parking lot or front door. Look them in the yes and speak from the heart. Share the core message, and answer the hidden question that lingers on their lips. Most Christmas guests are:
- Broken and looking for healing;
- Lonely and looking for intimacy;
- Lost and looking for purpose;
- Anxious and looking for hope;
- Victimized and looking for self-esteem;
- Grateful and looking to put a face to the Higher Power.

Prayerful preparation and careful listening are required for greeters and ushers, in the days and weeks before they take up their positions on Sunday or Christmas Eve, to sensitize them enough to know which is which. A word, glance, smile, handshake, verse, lyric, symbol, or single sentence can set up the seeker for grace.

Now train your elders and Welcome Center staff to hand them off to the right leader, team, and ministry. Let them know there is a program, resource, coach, or contact that will help them address their need and resolve their spiritual crisis. Their skeptical, of course, so now they enter worship looking to verify the credibility of your promise.

The musicians are the key leaders who will cause seekers to take the plunge into Christian living and church membership. Sorry, preachers. The members might listen, but the seekers are too busy looking around, quieting their kids, and longing for the music to start up again. Train the musicians to align body language and facial expressions with meaning of the words and the rhythm of the music. Glow! Laugh! Weep! Shine! Show how much you have surrendered to Christ! Never allow the musicians to recess following the service. Let somebody else put away the instruments and bring them coffee. They step forward at the front of the sanctuary and wait. Be available. Let seekers approach you. Tell them why you love Christ. Listen to their questions. Plunge into significant conversation.

Take them deeper during the refreshment time. Train the servers to articulate the core message. Deploy the elders to work the crowd. Let the musicians follow-up the conversation in the sanctuary with even deeper conversation in the fellowship hall. Seek out the seeker. Fly to them. Avoid your friends. Go to the stranger.
“Wasn’t that a great anthem? I especially loved this verse …”
“Did you see that cute kid? I love our Sunday school because …”
“I saw 10 people crying during the intercessory prayer.Do you know why?”
“What I like most about Jesus is …”
“Hi, my name’s Tom and every Christmas I try to make five new friends. Would you like to be one?”
“My senior’s group is getting together later tonight … would you like to join us?”

Remember that God doesn’t ask you to be an extrovert. God requires you to be a missionary. Start a conversation, and point the way to some group, resource, mentor, or discipline that might resolve their peculiar quarrel with God.

Most churches miss this glorious opportunity to connect with seekers and visitors because their leaders are so busy focusing on themselves that they fail to see strangers. They talk with their friends, spend time with their families, worry about members, and become self-absorbed in their own private spiritualities. You can (and should) do that the other 11 months of the year. This month of December should be dedicated to strangers. That probably will raise the stress level of many church members and church leaders. This is precisely the time when they want to arrive late and leave church early … and God calls them to a higher spiritual discipline to arrive early and leave church late.

Now is the time for a full choir, not half a choir; for the most opulent refreshments, not the leftover salads; for legions of greeters, not the oldtimers recruited five minutes ahead of time to pass out bulletins. So many pastors are worrying about the times of worship for Christmas Eve, or the quality of music, or the finely honed sermon. Yet none of that matters unless the spiritual leaders have been motivated, trained, and deployed to multiply significant conversations.

Incarnation happens when healing, intimacy, purpose, hope, self-esteem, and thanksgiving are mediated by a real live human being. That’s you … the church member and the church leader. You are the vehicle of incarnation … not the liturgy, anthem, sermon, children’s pageant, or decorations. To paraphrase scripture: “Wherever a seeker and mentor are gathered together in significant conversation, there am I in the midst of them.”

This article written by Tom Bandy, www.easumbandy.com, copyright 2007 by Easum Bandy & Associates, is reprinted here with permission.