<Decided to place a post that I put on our family website here. https://bobandceliamunson.wordpress.com/>

US at least, most houses have more than one entrance. The side door or garage door is commonly used by family members— the family door. Often the front door, seeming the main door of the house, is used less and is more to welcome guests. Churches are often the opposite. The front door to the church is welcoming/inviting to the church family (family door) but not a door that guests want to pass through. Let me explain.

Earlier today I was at church where a missionary to Japan was speaking. He was talking about the outreach church where they serve. He said that their front door for visitors was not really the double-wide glass door in the front of many/most churches. Rather it is the side-door that goes to a coffee shop. The church has a coffee shop that it uses to— in addition to serving coffee and treats to the community— provide a way for the Japanese people to interact in a non-intimidating way with Christians. He noted, quite correctly, that the doors of a church can be quite unwelcoming. Consider a reversal of roles. Suppose your Muslim neighbor invited you to visit his mosque. What is the likelihood you would go? I have attended mosque before… but my training required it. I, like most Christians, would feel that the doors to the mosque wall off a somewhat strange and unwelcoming place. And truthfully, Muslims don’t typically do a good job of eradicating that unwelcoming aura.

Christians, however, don’t do much better. While Christian churches often try to figure out how to get visitors to come through their main doors… most are nervous about this. Will the visitor find…

• A welcoming and loving family?
• An exclusivizing group that builds it’s self-perception around some dubious point of doctrine?
• A fear and anger-fueled political echo chamber?
• A dying gathering of insiders who repeat empty weekly rituals?

The front door in this church in Japan is not the main door— a door that is only really welcoming to members of the church family. For them the “front door” is the entrance to their coffee shop. In the Philippines, I live upstairs of a coffee shop that holds two church services there a week.

The doors to a cafe are more welcoming to the curious… but other doors also work. The Philippines has a large Christian population. Many (most?) are nominal, but that still means that there is a great interest in understanding the Bible. As such, for many churches in the Philippines their front door is actually the many front doors of members’ homes. Where I live, people won’t respond to invites to church, but will often respond to invites to home bible studies. Frankly, it does seem as if both the Mormons and JWs in the Philippines also have given up on trying to get people to visit their houses of worship. Instead they try to arrange home Bible studies.

Another church front door is one’s website. People who are uncomfortable with a cold call visit to a church will happily check out their website. Is the website inviting and informative? If so, that opens up the church to the curious. This is in fact how we found our membership church back in 2000. Internet church shopping wasn’t big back then, but I found it very useful.

I will add a caution here, however. I have noticed a trend in recent years of making the website very focused on existing members— ministry opportunities, church news, and announcements. I have visited a number of church websites where it was hard to find something as critical as, “When is our Sunday morning service?” Even finding the church address took some doing. Church staff should look at their websites and ask, “Does our website presume insider knowledge?” If it does, your website is a family door (for members) not your front door.

It is not bad that a church has a family door… a door that welcomes church members. That is healthy. It is okay if it is the main door of the church. However, there should be a door that truly makes visitors feel welcomed. Such doors will rarely be part of the church building.