Dear all,

I wonder what you think of on a Sunday straight after the Benediction. You have received by faith God’s declaration of blessing…then what?

The lunch needs to be put on, the work that’s looming on Monday, I’m starving, the children are driving me mad, what was that preacher on about…

Occasionally, I preach in churches where there is a stillness and silence, no one speaks for a time and there is a slight awkwardness as the Minister makes his way to the back before the piano or organ plays. I used to think that this was because of the powerful sermon that I had just preached, but it just turns out that this is their pattern. No one really knows when to move! It is a good thing where people take time to pray and reflect on what they have heard. However, I don’t think it is mandated in the bible that we have a period of silence after the Benediction and it has never been our practice at IPC Ealing. After the Benediction, the pronouncement of God’s blessing upon his people, there is normally the joy of people talking together and children racing for biscuits.

However, we all know that it is really easy for people to slip out of church quietly, for folk to want to come to church anonymously, to get into the habit of not really engaging with anyone, coming, sitting, hearing, consuming but not having meaningful contact with anyone in the church.

A little bit like when we are in the supermarket and we have the choice of the self service check out or going to the till with a real life human being on it. Tragically, many of us will choose the non human option and disappear from the shop as quickly as possible. There is something in us that wants to remain anonymous.

I want to encourage us to use this time immediately after the service, to be thinking of others.  At the moment in church life, and for the last year or so, we have had an unusual amount of visitors. They have come for all sorts of diverse reasons. Some have moved into the area and decided to come to church, others have come in the most random ways. I’m always amazed and humbled as to how and why people come to us. It is often completely independent of what we are doing in seeking to reach out. God teaches us the lesson again and again that he is the church builder.

It is one of the reasons why those who do the ‘welcoming and greeting’ have such an important ministry. 

Each week we pray for, and are genuinely pleased when, people come to church. Surely it is a good thing to show and express that to them.

I am not talking about what it is like when we go into shops and are greeted with, ‘How’s it going? Let me know if I can help you?’ Or even worse when they compliment you to set you off guard and engage you by saying ‘nice hat’.

We want people to come to know God as their Father. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world and he is calling out people from every tribe and tongue and nation (Revelation 7:9). All sorts of people from all sorts of places are being brought into the family of God. People who are like me and people who are very unlike me. So when it comes to Christ’s church, I am to be welcoming of all. There is something very unChristlike when you go into a church and everyone is exactly the same. It is one of the tragedies of London churches where there are different services for different types of people – young families in the morning, older families with teens who like to play sports on Sunday mornings so have their own service late afternoon, twenty and thirty somethings looking for love on Sunday nights. The church gets segregated, and people never actually get to meet one another or be in one another’s homes. The true family of God will be and must be diverse and so it is important that we welcome all sorts of people to our church and hang around to meet them.

We all have different personalities. Some of us are more outgoing than others and most of us find speaking to people we don’t know slightly unnerving. Even our language in calling people we don’t know ‘strangers’ encapsulates is. There is something very powerful in someone quiet, or someone speaking in their second language, nervously welcoming someone else.

The term social anxiety is used more and more in our culture. Covid and online life brought it to the fore, and yet the Bible envisages our gatherings together to be warm in affection, that we express joy in God and in one another. Five times the New Testament tells us to greet one another with a holy kiss – (Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:26 1 Peter 5:14). Culturally of course this will look different. JB Phillips famously said in his translation of ‘greet with one another with a holy kiss’,  ‘give a hearty handshake all round’.

So can I encourage you, at the end of services, look around at the people sitting next to you, or behind you, or in front. Express to them it’s good to see them and if you’ve not met them before, introduce yourself. It is awkward I know, but really powerful. God has brought them to church and he could use you in bringing them into his family. 

For those of us in the church, we all need encouragement. Paul, in his letters, expresses thankfulness for his brothers and sisters. Even saying how thankful we are for one another is a powerful spur to keep going in the Christian life.

If you are reading this and are in the habit of running away after church – can I plead with you to stop running! Allowing yourself to know and be known is part of the Christian life.

Of course, all of this is grounded in a Welcoming God – A God who welcomes sinners, who runs to the prodigal son, who rejoices in sinners returning home, a friend of sinners. A God who in the person of his son, calls us to himself.

When we welcome and greet one another, we are being God like.

Your Minister and Friend,