David Daniels and his team are doing a great job at Pantego. It was great to be a part of their ministry for the day - God is doing some neat things through that ministry. But, the point of the post isn't to debrief my visit to Pantego. It's to tell you about two strongly-held opinions I have:
1. Everyone needs to be a guest at an unfamiliar church at least once a year.
2. Everyone needs to bring a guest to the church where you attend at least once a year.
Especially if you're a pastor or ministry "professional," you owe this to your church. But even if you're not, you owe this to your church.
On the first point, it's really important to experience the anxiety of walking into a new church - even a church with a good reputation - wondering what it's going to be like. Especially if you have kids for whom you'd love to not pay a professional counselor hundreds of dollars to debrief an awful church experience someday. It changes the way you show hospitality to people who are experiencing that anxiety in your church on any given Sunday.
On the second point, it's important to see your own church through the eyes of a guest. When you view ministries, processes, systems, and communication as you, everything seems normal. You're used to them the same way people who work in restaurants don't know their clothes smell like the restaurant, but someone else can smell them from a mile away. When you bring a guest to your church and find yourself explaining and justifying everything that happens, or begging people to participate in things that aren't natural connection points for them, it might be time to re-think things and you are poised to be a part of the solution rather than continuing the problem.
3 comments:
Great post, and something that anyone can put into practice, regardless of their line of work. I do Social Media at RadioShack - part of my job description is spending hours each week reading other blogs, keeping up on Twitter and Facebook with other brands and companies, for the same reasons you put forth.
It's important to see what other people are doing, and decide whether it works or not, or whether you like it or not. I also regularly ask different people for feedback on projects that I'm working on, be it a blog post, blog redesign, or even a Twitter update.
I don't do these things because I'm unsure of myself and my capabilities - I do it because I know that fresh eyes are the best way to spot inconsistencies and issues that would otherwise go unseen.
Love your thoughts. This is why I like to visit other camps. By the way, you need to come check out our Pine Cove Base Camp at Pantego in a few weeks. It's been fun to partner with a great church to bring camp to Arlington.
I love your thoughts here. Totally agree. This is why I like to visit other camps. By the way, you should come and visit our Pine Cove Base Camp at Pantego in a few weeks. It's been fun to partner with a great church to bring camp to Arlington.
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