Dear local church,

You do weird things.  And please don’t tell me you have no idea what I’m talking about.

• You eat tiny crackers and drink tiny glasses of grape juice.
• You sing.  Loudly and passionately.  And it’s 8:30 on a Sunday morning.  Seriously, who sings, out loud, where others can hear them before 9:00?
• You ask people to come down front.  Nobody at my son’s baseball game has ever asked me to make a big life decision right in front of the whole stadium.
• You tell me I need to go somewhere else, into someone else’s home, to really connect.
• You pass a bucket for me to put money in.  Do I have to pay to worship here?
• You lay hands on people to pray for them.  Never seen that one done in a helpful way in a PTA meeting.  Never.
• You preach from the Bible, and keep referring to it as an authority in your life, but I don’t see it like that.  It’s a bit strange that you would put such weight into such an old document.

I’m not saying that these things are wrong.  They’re just weird to me.  I need you to help me understand why I need to do them.  Why they’re important.  Why you do them every week.  Why I need to join in.  Why I feel like such an outsider when I’m there.

I don’t want to be an outsider. Nobody does.  I’d like to feel like I’m a part of you guys…but I need you to be patient.  Walk me through understanding and doing.  It took you lots of years to get where you are…help me get there.  But don’t assume that, after 2 weeks, I’m going to “get” it.

Because when you don’t help me understand, you push me away…and it seems you don’t care that I come back.

Signed,

 

-Church visitors