A Welcome Mat Church

Spend a couple of weeks talking about the plans that we have for the future, as you know. And you saw the the plans that Dave has drawn up, based on a lot of suggestions and ideas that came from various committees and so on and so forth. You see the final result. Not all the plans are there, obviously, not all the working plans, but certainly a good view of what we're going to do. And of course, these things, they're plans, they're ideas, and they're representative of the potential for growth that we have here in the Choctaw congregation and in this particular area, poised for growth.

Tonight, I'd like to help us get a different perspective on this whole idea of church development and growth. Church growth has been a kind of a subject of a lot of study and research in the last 20 years. There are thousands of books. I mean, you go to a bookstore and you will get, I mean, literally, rows and rows of books that talk about church growth. There are videos and series and, you know, speakers that'll come and give you a whole weekend, talk nothing, except, about the subject of church grow.

How how to make a church grow. Is that like a cottage industry almost? And in the past 20 years, as a result, churches across America have hired what we call power preachers, you know, big time preachers to come in. And they have built new buildings and they've developed multi ministries and they've spent a lot of money on advertising and all of ministries, and they've spent a lot of money on advertising, and all of this. All of this, the goal is to make the church grow.

A worthy goal, mind you. So along comes the Institute For American Church Growth, recently, this last year. And they do a survey. A survey of 10,000 people who have recently become church members. 10,000 oh, baby.

I haven't heard a baby crying in this building in a long time. That's good news. Doesn't that sound good? Yeah. Come on, ladies.

Let's get going here. We don't have a lot of babies. I've done my duty, don't look at me. Yeah. So recently, you know, along comes this institute and they do this research project, 10,000 people.

And they were asked, How did these people come to become members of the church? You know, what was the thing that brought them into the church? At what point in their lives to make the decision? And when these 10,000 people were asked what was the predominant factor in their becoming church members, here's what they said, broken down by percentage. 0.5%, that's half of 1 percent said it was because of a gospel meeting or a crusade.

3% said they became members of a particular church because of a door knocking campaign or visitation. You know how members go around, knock on doors, invite people to church. 3% of the 10,000 said that's how they became members of the church. 3% said, because of multi ministries. When I say multi ministries, I'm talking about support groups, Okay?

Held in the church building or a food distribution. You know, the church give up food and invite people to church that they give out food to. Or VBS, 3% said that's how they came in contact with the church. 6% said it was the preacher. Somehow the preacher got them to come to church.

8.5% miscellaneous. I mean, too many little things. Things like advertising or their children, you know, the children of members being baptized. And 8.5 percent. And 79% said, A friend or a relative invited me to come to church.

79% of church growth was the good old fashioned, Would you like to come to worship with me and my family? All of the other methods are good, and they are productive. But all of them put together are not as effective to produce church growth as one person taking the time and the concern to invite another person, a family member, a friend, somebody, to come to church and then nourish them in Christ. Now I say this so that we can get the cart behind the horse. Alright?

That we can get the proper view of the things that we're trying to do. I wanna say this, I wanna go on record. Bobby, we're taping this right? I'm keeping this tape. I wanna go on record to tell you that a newly expanded and decorated auditorium will not bring people to worship.

Additional classroom space will not increase attendance at bible school. A fellowship hall and a beautiful new kitchen will not create fellowship. New administration offices, as comfortable as those may be, because ours are kinda hot in the summer and cold in the winter, as nice as that idea sounds will not make me a better preacher. Facilities for youth, sewing room, parking, meeting rooms, work rooms, all these things will not make us grow. These things are a result of growth.

They accompany growth. They facilitate growth. But they do not cause growth. And we better understand that from day 1. What causes growth is ministry in the name of Jesus Christ.

That's what causes growth. If church growth could be a formula, it would look something like this, The more people are involved in ministry, the more the church grows. I'll give you an example. We have 350 people roughly in this church. If 30% of the 350 people in this church are involved in some kind of ministry or other, then the church will grow at a rate of, let's say, 40 miles an hour.

If we were a car, you know, and we were speeding along. And if 40% of the people in this church are involved in ministry, then we'll speed along at 50 miles an hour, and so on and so forth. The things that we are building however, are in anticipation of the ministry that we're gonna do. We want a bigger fellowship hall because we want to have bigger events to bring more people in. We want a bigger auditorium because we want to hold more people and minister to them.

We want meeting rooms and more classrooms for children and better parking facilities because we want to minister more effectively to people. But these things all by themselves are not going to suddenly create the growth that we're looking for. Now I can say however, that in this church, the elders and the ministers have known about these figures and this approach, before. I mean, you know, I read this and it confirms what I already knew. The elders hear these numbers, and it confirms in their minds what they have already known.

And confirms that the approach that we have always taken and wanted to take is the correct approach. As you know, we here invest very little time in gospel meetings or big community type projects. We don't invest a lot of money and time in those type of things. We have only the basic food ministry. And the reason we have a food ministry is not because we think we're gonna baptize 50 people from that particular ministry.

We have a food ministry because we have people in this community who are hungry. Period. And we have food for them. When they come here, they fill out a piece of paper that gives us their address and so on and so forth, and we give them food. No questions asked.

We give them food because it's the right thing to do. It's a good thing to do. And if they want to come to church, that's great. And if they want to have a Bible study, we're ready for it. But there are no strings attached.

If they say on the little box, No, I'm not interested in Bible study. No, I don't want a visit from an elder. No, I don't want to meet with the minister. That's fine, they still get the food. And as the minister of this particular congregation, or one of the ministers now, I focus most of my attention on this congregation.

I'm not trying to have a high profile in the community. I don't belong to a lot of clubs. I don't go around, you know, trying to meet everybody. You know, that's not my point. My objective is to minister to you.

And my objective in ministering to you is so that you can minister to the community. That's the way that works. Now, we do publish a teaching article in the Sunday Sun with information about the church, but that's our only advertising, that and the sign out front. Most of our efforts are directed at creating an environment where a visitor feels welcome when they come, and they will come. We have 350 people and if every person in here would have just list all the people they knew at work and at school and their friends and family, so on and so forth.

We have almost an unlimited pool of individuals that we can bring to our congregation. And so our goal, our objective is to make everyone that comes here feel welcome when they come. We want everyone who comes here to know that they will receive an excellent bible class for their entire family. Whether you have a small baby, a teenager, or an adult, you will receive an excellent bible class taught by a person, a man, or a woman who is prepared and knows what they're doing. We want to assure that whoever comes here will share a meaningful and edifying worship experience.

Wasn't the singing terrific this morning? Isn't it great tonight? We wanna make sure every single time works like that. We wanna make sure that people will feel welcome, and they know that we care for them, and that we are interested in their spiritual well-being. They're not just passing through.

When they come here, they remember their visit with us. This is why our elders follow-up each visitor with a call or a visit within 48 hours. Any person that comes to this congregation will receive a letter or a call or a visit within 48 hours of their visit. This is why each visitor who is not part of our community, but comes from another town or another state or another country will receive a personal letter from me, thanking them for their visit, and hoping that they'll come back and be with us at some time. Because I think they're gonna become members here, well, if they live somewhere in New York state, that's not a very good possibility.

No. Because it's the right thing to do. It's the Christian thing to do. It's the good thing to do to acknowledge our visitors and our guests. We know that it takes time and effort to convince our friends and our relatives to come to church with us.

And when they do, we want them to feel welcome. We wanna make sure that it's worth their while. Is there anything more discouraging than trying to invite your brother-in-law to come to church for 6 months? Beg him to come to church for 6 months, and then when he finally comes, he's ignored, he's insulted from the pulpit. You know what I'm saying?

It's like a disaster. You're saying, Oh man, what happened here? We want you we, when I say we, I mean the ministers, and the elders, and the people that, you know, are leading in worship and teaching. We want you to know that we understand that it's an effort to make someone come with you. And we don't wanna fumble the ball when you hand us that ball.

We don't wanna mess up when you finally bring that important person to church. We wanna make sure that every facet of their experience in this place is good. They'll walk out of here saying, I know why you go there. I know why these people are important to you. We know that.

And we remember that every single time the doors of the church building are open. Statistics tell us that when people come, when your friends and your relatives come to church, they'll listen. And hopefully, they'll come back. And hopefully, they will agree to study the bible. And eventually, they'll respond to the gospel statistics of our own congregation, and we see that it's true in this last year.

Almost 20 people have been baptized. 35 people have placed membership. That's a tremendous number of people for a church this size. A church our congregation is 3 times the national average for any congregation in any denomination. And I'm not saying word denomination.

I'm just saying any Methodist, Baptist, whatever. Church of Christ. Three times the national average for any church in this country. The Choctaw Church of Christ, three times in its rate of growth. And that's because we care, and we wanna be careful in how we handle every single person that walks through this door.

People bringing people, people ministering to people. It's not fancy, you know. It's not very showy. It's kind of slow moving. Nobody in particular gets a lot of glory.

But it works. It works. And when the church grows, God gets the glory. And that's the way it should be. God is the one that should be getting the glory, not the preachers and not the members.

God gets the glory. And when God gets the glory, everybody is happy. Now, I'm saying all of this for two reasons. 1, I want us to remember as we go into this building program that we're talking about here, that raising the money and finishing the construction is not going to be the thing that causes the growth of this church. It'll cause the growth of the building.

But you, every single one of you, you are the ones that will cause 80% of the growth in this church by the service that you render to the church, and the constant flow of friends and visitors and family that you bring here, not just to sit in the pew, but people that you bring here to minister to. That we can minister to them through the word of God, and through teaching, and through encouragement, through fellowship, through service. Let's remember this. Let's continue to do this even when we're in the sawdust. Even when the one wall is down and exposed, you know, and you'll see it'll get dirty before it gets nice.

Those of you who are in construction, you know what I'm talking about. That little design back there looks nice and pretty. But I wanna tell you, before we get to that point, there's gonna be a lot of mud tracked through here. When that happens, let's remember the lessons I'm giving us tonight. Let's remember also to do the things that I've talked about after we finish, and we have a bigger and more beautiful auditorium.

Let's not just sit back. When that happens, that'll mean the work really has to begin. Now, the other reason I mentioned this is to remind us about presenting a proper welcome when we do have visitors. I think we do a good job. I just wanna remind us that we keep doing a good job, and we improve.

Now, we had a little meeting this afternoon with the ushers and greeters, and those people who want to work behind the information desk, and perhaps out in the parking lot, things like that. And they're the ones that are gonna lead the congregation in welcoming our guests. Now in this regard, Alan Poteet, he's a preacher in Pasadena, Texas. He writes about the duties of a church who are interested in being good at welcoming visitors. And he calls the church who wants to be good at welcoming visitors, he calls them a Welcome mat church.

You wondered, Well, how did you know, you saw the sign outside of Welcome mat church. That's what this is about. I want us to be a welcome mat church, where people really feel welcome. Alan Poteet says, If you wanna be a welcome mat church, there's some things that you've got to do and I wanna share those with you and then the lesson is yours for the rest of the evening. A welcome mat church, first of all, is a church that is aware of where it parks its cars.

Pretty deep, We did the deep stuff this morning. A welcome mat church knows where to park. You know, the very first impression that a person gets is not of the preacher. It's not even of the foyer. It's of the parking lot.

That's the first impression. That's why we put all this money and all this effort in fixing our parking lot because that's the first If the first thing a guy does when they drive into this church is hit a pothole and nearly lose his front end, he's not a happy person. You see, if the guy drives over here off of Reno and nearly leaves his transmission there in the pothole, he's not in a good frame of mind to hear anything that I've got to say from the pulpit. Now we've repaired the parking lot, and we've redrawn the lines, and we've built new and wider entrance ways, and we've added visitor and handicapped signs and all that stuff to make it easier for someone to get here. But visitors, you will find out, usually arrive late, or near the end, or rather near the very beginning of worship service.

And if they have to park in the volleyball field back there, they're not gonna be very happy. It doesn't begin your visit real well when you cannot find a parking space. Parking far away, leaving the close spots, you know, for ourselves is not the way to treat visitors. When the parking lot is full, let's say, on a Sunday morning and a visitor drives in and sees 5 extra parking spots in front or parking near the building that has been left untouched. Expecting that person, it says to that person, We're expecting you.

And we're happy that you are here. And we have made an effort for you. Just like when you go to somebody's house, you know, and they've cleaned the house up and everything, and they've made it look nice and spotless, and you say to them verbally, Oh, you didn't have to go to all that trouble, it's just me. That's what you say on the outside. But on the inside you're saying, I'm kinda glad you did because it means I'm important.

You went out of your way to make me feel welcome, you cleaned up the house. In their first minute with us excuse me. If the first minute with us is convenient, If even our parking lot tells people they are welcome, we have begun to convince them that they are important and that we care about them. It's not a big thing. But it's an important thing.

A welcome mat church, secondly, is a church that is aware of seating. In other words, a welcome mat church knows that seating is important for visitors. For visitors, parking and seating should be the opposite of members. Visitors wanna park close, but sit far back. Right?

They wanna park close, but they wanna sit far back. Visitors need the very best seats in the house. And for them, the very best seats I'll tell you right now, surveys show the very best seats in the house for a visitor, along the center aisle, from the middle back, along the sides. They don't want to walk all the way down to the front. The last thing a visitor wants to do is walk all the way to the front and be sat in the front here.

They don't want that. They also do not want to step in front of people and go, Oh, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. They don't want to do. They want to be able to leave easily when it's over. That's what they want.

They wanna listen, and then when it's over, they wanna get up and they wanna get out. Their first experience in arriving, coming into the building, and finding a seat, will determine much of their first impression of what we're about. And I'll tell you something, the bible says, You know, if you're faithful in little things, you'll be trusted with big things. It's not a big thing to allow parking and to get somebody seated comfortably. It's not a big thing.

But it'll tell someone that we know how to do the little things. And if we know how to do the little things, maybe they'll trust us with the big things. Maybe they'll trust us enough to tell us what their problems are, and what their needs are, and how we can minister to them. If we can't do the simple things for them, how will we handle the more complex problems that they may bring us later on? And then thirdly, a welcome mat church finds a way to meet its guests' needs.

In the past, churches of Christ have tried all kinds of ways to encourage guests. And I've been a guest in a lot of churches. I used to go around, raise money for missions, and so on so forth. So I've traveled across the United States and been in a lot of the big churches, little churches, you know. And some of the general things that people do with visitors, you know, they you walk in, they put a rose on your lapel.

Some places, they give you a badge that says, Visitor. They stamp you, Visitor. So that everybody can go, Oh, you're a visitor. Yes. Or, some places, they'll say the preacher will say, Alright, now all of our visitors, we want you to stand up.

And they get all the visitors to stand up. And I mean, they're doing this with a good purpose. They wanna point out the visitors, they wanna make them feel good. But you know what? Some bright guy decided to do a survey of visitors to find out what they wanted.

And you know what? Unanimously, visitors said, the last thing in the world that they wanted when they visited a church was to be pointed out. They don't want anybody to point them out. They don't wanna stand up and have everybody turn around and look at them, unless, you know, we do that if someone places membership because we want everybody to know who the new member is. But that's what the visitors say, that's not what I say.

You know what they did want? They wanted to be inconspicuous because they're busy. They wanted to receive information about the church. They wanna know about the church, but they don't want a big show. They enjoyed having one person explain different things to them and show them around.

1 person, they wanted to connect with 1 person. That's why we have greeters, and ushers, and information people. They wanted to come and go quickly in order to digest their experience and look at the information in private. Like squirrels, you know, when they come get the nuts and everything, go back home into their thing and kind of look at everything carefully. They didn't want to read the material here and get the big thing here.

They want to bring it home and think about it and look at it and discuss it in private. They said that they enjoyed being greeted by several people in the foyer and made to feel welcome personally by the members, but not by all the members at once. And they were very happy to be remembered on subsequent visits. I mean, you wanna score points, you know, if this is the wheel of fortune or some kind of game. If you wanna score points with a visitor, remember who they are on the 2nd visit.

Oh, you're Ralph. Weren't you here last week? Yeah, well it's good to have you back, boy. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. You have really scored points on that one.

A welcome mat church focuses on visitors as guests, as if you had a guest in your own home. I mean, if you had a guest in your own home, you'd greet them, wouldn't you? You'd make them feel comfortable, you'd make sure that you take care of their needs, you wouldn't embarrass them, you wouldn't ignore them, you wouldn't leave your guests standing in the living room and then go in the kitchen and talk to your sister, would you? You wouldn't do that. But I see that all the time.

I see that all. I see a guest and their wives or something standing there talking to each other, and all the brethren standing around talking to each other. That's terrible. We need to put ourselves in their shoes. We need to give them what they need to feel welcome and appreciated.

We need to give them not just what's convenient for us, We need to give them what they need. Why do you think they're coming here? I'll tell you one thing for sure. They're not coming here to hear me preach. Now, I hope that to be always able to deliver a good lesson, to encourage and inspire and convict.

But 99% of the time, people don't come here to hear me preach. They come here for fellowship. They come here to connect with other people. They come here to learn about God, to find love, to find acceptance. And they don't get those things from the preachers, they get those things from the members.

That's how a church grows. Paul said in Philippians chapter 2, verse 4, Each one of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. As I said, the greatest need that people perceive in our society today is the need to belong, the need to feel that they're welcome and appreciated. And that's what they're interested in when they come to visit a church. Surveys prove this because it's through friendly invitation of guests that churches experience their greatest growth.

Now, at Choctaw, we are known for this. And we concentrate our efforts in this area. Our renovations and our building will only improve our ability to receive guests more effectively. So let's remember to practice welcome mat, type hospitality in where we park, where we sit, and our personal interest in each and every member that comes through this, or each and every guest rather, that comes through these doors. And one great motivation for this is the welcome that we, ourselves, are sure to receive from our Lord when we meet him at his coming.

What a great welcome that'll be. As we close our service tonight, I encourage those who are not sure of their welcome. You know, we want to make sure that everybody who comes here feels welcome. But maybe when you're looking at your own life, and the type of welcome that you're going to receive from Jesus, maybe some of us may not feel sure that we're going to be welcome when we face the Lord. Maybe because, we have not yet confessed his name and repented of our sins, and been baptized.

If we haven't done that, we're not gonna receive a welcome from the Lord. Perhaps, we've lived improperly, or we've been slack in our service to the church, or we've lived in sinfulness in a public way. If we do those things, there's a reason why we can feel insecure about our welcome from the Lord. If these things are stopping you from feeling secure and sure that God will welcome you on that day, then I encourage you to be sure of your welcome by coming forward now, either to repent and be baptized, or to confess your sins, or to give the right hand of fellowship to us in this place, whatever you need to feel welcomed by the Lord.