The Hospitable Church vs. The Church of the No Trespassing Sign

I've written before about churches and "No Trespassing" signs; this post talks about the homeless, our churches, and doomed church-parishioner matches.

Our church council does more than just make budget decisions.  We also do some Bible study, and that Bible study is created by our pastor to help us think about some of the larger issues facing both our individual church and the larger Church. 

Lately, we've been thinking about hospitality.  Our Gospel for this Sunday also addresses hospitality.

When we think about hospitality, some of us think about the greeters who hover around the doors, the greeters who should be on the look-out for newcomers.  Some of us think about the genuinely different people who might come to church and how we would make them feel welcome:  our grandmothers might have fretted about the people who showed up dressed in their jeans, while some of us in more modern churches might wonder about how to make transgender people feel at home.  They're variations of the same question, even if people don't see it that way.  Difference makes a lot of us feel threatened, and we react in different ways.

Of course, the more practical amongst us might point out that hospitality begins in the parking lot.  If I arrive at your church, will I know where the door to the sanctuary is?  When I get inside and need to use the bathroom, is there a sign?  And then, when the service begins, what processes do you have set up to guide me?

I've been going to church most of my whole life, so I know my way around a hymnbook.  But many people don't.  And the paging system of Lutheran hymnbooks is downright baffling to a person who has never used one.  Why can't we just have simple pagination all the way through?  Start with page 1 on the first page and carry on.

No, instead, in our latest Lutheran service book (it's more than hymns!), to make things even more confusing, we have  a section with no page numbers at all (the Psalms section), in addition to the already confusing fact that we number the hymns and the front matter has a regular page numbering system.

Of course, by the time the next service book comes out, perhaps we won't use books at all.  Perhaps I am the last generation who feels frustration with the physical book.  Maybe in 10-20 years, people will use their smart phones, and maybe there will be q r codes from the pulpit that will guide us.

And then the hospitality team will have to decide how to welcome the people who have no smart phone.

Yes, the questions of hospitality and how we welcome the stranger will always be with us.  Some people might argue that the Church has greater problems facing it.  But issues of hospitality and community building--these are the essential questions, as Jesus tells us again and again.  Jesus spends no time on the sexuality issues that threaten to rip our modern churches to shreds.  Jesus spends time creating spaces where all sorts of people will feel welcome (unless they choose to feel threatened, of course). 

We should too.

Church of the No Trespassing Sign

Last night I was at an inner city church. We had some time before we served dinner to the homeless, so I talked to some of the members. They've been having a recurrence of the disputes that they sometimes have with the residents of the high end condos that sprung up during the housing boom. Those residents hate the homeless, and some of the residents seem to think that if the church stopped helping them, the homeless would go away.

I was incredulous at first. These folks bought inner city condos. Some of them bought condos that were made possible because low and moderate income housing was demolished. What did they think their inner city experience would be? Something different than the real estate developer told them, to be sure.

I'm always a bit suspicious of churches where I don't see the poor and the destitute, or worse, where I see no trespassing signs. I belonged to one of those churches once. The argument about the no trespassing sign was one of the early signs that I needed to leave. Once I suggested that we serve a pancake breakfast and post signs to let people know we were doing that. One fellow church council member said, "How would we keep the homeless people away?"

I said, "Why would we keep the homeless away?"

It was a doomed church-parishioner match. I see that now.

I also know that churches have to walk a fine line. The inner city church members I spoke to last night told me that the church allows four of the homeless men to camp out on the little porch by the church office door. It's covered, fairly sheltered, but still, it's hard concrete and no bathroom. I wonder how those men feel, huddled against the church door, thinking of the better space denied to them just beyond the door.

I think of the nation's churches, vacant for so much of the week. I think of all the abandoned strip malls, all the vacant houses across the nation. I wish that I could come up with an elegant plan that would be so flawless that we'd all adopt it, and the homeless would truly have an option that would let them come out of the elements.