Opening Our Door: A Paradigm Shift in Being Church

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Many years ago, I was on the staff of a large church which was asking the question, “Where are all the visitors?”  The church was well positioned in the heart of the city, well-known, and very visible.  The front door rested on top of a hill, located on one of the busiest intersections in town. At the time it was estimated that 30,000 people passed these doors each days. We all wanted to know why people weren’t flooding in.    

The church was planted about 60 years ago. Since then the bushes and trees have grown tall, blocking a clear view from many sight lines.  There was plenty of signage on the front of the building, but the church was in decline.  I can remember a three-month period where we spent way too much time discussing the front doors.  Should we paint the doors the iconic red that to many have been a symbol of welcome and inclusivity? Many were convinced that if the door could be made more visible and welcoming, the church’s problems would all disappear. We wanted to know how to open our doors so people could come flooding in. 

Seven years later, that church is beginning to see signs of new life, resurrection as we call it.  No trees have been removed and no bushes have been cut back. The doors of the church are right where they have always been.  But a shift has begun taking place. The church has become intentional in building relationships with the outside community. The church has found valuable partnerships with other churches, with schools, and nonprofits.  The staff and congregation have used technology and social media exceedingly well to connect to others, building networks of relationships with people outside of the church walls. They are beginning to make a shift.  

It is no secret that participation in faith communities is declining.  Average Sunday attendance in my own tradition, The Episcopal Church, has declined by 24% in ten years.[1] The comments I hear from faith leaders today often begin with the same premise as the church I worked at years ago.  Fear and anxiety about survival are the driving force for much of church programing. More and more churches are looking for ways of opening the doors to get people into the pews. 

But what if there exists a whole new purpose for having an open door policy? What if the real benefit of opening our church doors is to move ourselves out into the world to be church?  How can we see our Christian identity not grounded in where we gather for few hours on a Sunday morning, but our expression of God’s love conveyed in every relationship we encounter?  

This is the paradigm shift that the Church must make.  An assumption can no longer be made that people will find a church to be involved in.  We can no longer wait for people to come in our doors. This shift means we must leave the church in order to share the Gospel.  We must build relationships with our neighbors, not with the expectation that they will follow us back on Sunday morning, but instead so that we can learn their story in order that we ourselves are transformed.  We must divest from doing charity work that makes us feel better about ourselves and invest in relationships that foster wellness in our communities and our neighbors’ communities.  Maybe we have to move from being an Incarnational Church to being Incarnational communities, communities that stretch far beyond the walls of our infrastructure.

My hope is that this blog can be a catalyst for change, a collection of stories of people and communities already participating in this shift.  Can we all help open the doors of Christendom to not only share the Good News, but to embody the Good News as we work to see the Kingdom of Heaven in our very midst.  If you have a story, I would love to hear it.