Top Ten Quotes: Welcome
I’ve long said that there is a disparity between those who write about guest services in the local church and those who are practitioners of guest services in the local church. While I’m grateful for my brothers-in-arms who blog, write, publish, and podcast in this space, I know that the vast majority of guest services leaders are female.
That’s why I was thankful to see Jen Oshman’s book debut earlier this year. Welcome: Loving Your Church by Making Space for Everyone is not so much a how-to as it is a why-to. I found her reminders to be encouraging, practical, and applicable to all of us, no matter how long or short we’ve been in the trenches.
Here are my top ten favorite quotes:
- …because God has welcomed you, it falls to you to welcome others. Not only that, but in the way God has welcomed you, he now calls you to welcome them.
- It turns out that a true welcome is not just a hand extended on a Sunday morning but a way to live the Christian life.
- …you don’t select the people who join your local church—God does that. And he makes a family that is at times delightful, and at other times requires patience and tenacity and trust that God really does know what he’s doing. Our local faith families are beautiful and good and hard and quirky and stretching and everything in between.
- …we have an opportunity now to be a porch light in a dark night.
- …it can be easy to take advantage of our status as “insiders” without realizing it. Unless we are intentional about being otherwise, we easily get comfortable inside our own faith families and just stay put.
- As I follow Jesus, I am not above serving in any capacity—whatever it takes to create an atmosphere of welcome.
- When we invite others in, it is because the Spirit in us has prompted us to do so.
- A welcoming atmosphere in our churches grows by contagion.
- The idea of creating strategies and systems may feel cold to you. Providing such structures may feel like the opposite of being Spirit-led. But creating these practical means and methods allows us to be better welcomers. It’s like pursuing a spiritual discipline.
- I’m not suggesting that we make visiting a church so convenient and attractive that we demolish the gospel. But I am encouraging us to remember what it’s like to be an outsider and to do all we can to open wide our doors.
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