Welcoming others at the new evening worship site

[Andrew Field]

Friends,

A brief encouragement/coaching for this weekend's San Jose site preparations: 

On Sunday we will have an opportunity to wind back the clock. If you weren't around in the first year of Grace Church, I suspect it will feel a lot like that: new people, joyful celebration, lots of questions, people experiencing gospel freedom, confusion about the building... everything that surrounds the word "NEW"!

Except: many of us have been together for years. Therefore we have to be deliberate in our conversations on Sunday evening. If we're running around talking to each other only, sharing how fun and new and exciting this all is... and subtly ignoring new people who have ventured out to a strange new church... then we may make them feel excluded. That goes against the mission and purpose of this new site and even against the gracious, undeserved gospel embrace that we've been given through Jesus.

Remember, friends, all of this hard work and prayer and planning and hoping IS FOR THEM! 

More importantly, it's for JESUS. It is certainly NOT for us. 

1 Peter 4:9-10 "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms."

Some practical thoughts for all of us:

• Pray this weekend that you will be able to welcome several new people to our community. Treat them even better than you'd want to be treated if you were a new visitor.
• We all share in common with visitors the newness of our site and our identity as a congregation. Use that common 'newness' as a bridge.
• Expect that visitors don't understand our church's mission, lingo, theology, way of doing things. People will come from many different backgrounds, so just avoid assuming where someone is at. 
• My prayer is that many people who are not yet Christians will attend, so help them see Jesus in our midst and help them know how they can get their questions answered.
• I'll be talking more about Community Groups in future weeks, but in your conversations mention groups as a way to plug in.

God's blessing and peace to all of us. It's been a busy week at the church office, hindered by power outages and federal holidays. Our staff team is eager to get started and see what God will do!

Drew

Andrew Field | 650.248.3464 | afi...@gmail.com