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WELCOME!
When did you last feel welcome? How did it happen? How did it make you feel? Miroslav Volf in his book Exclusion and Embrace describes such a welcome as like an embrace. There are four steps to embracing. We need to open our arms and move towards each other, then encircle one another in a hug, then release and step back.
Jesus welcomed all who approached him with open arms so that he could embrace them; the Syro-Phoenician woman, Nicodemus the Pharisee, Peter the fisherman and Matthew the tax-collector. Jesus pictures God as a father running to embrace a lost son. He made people feel valued, loved and of significance.
Being welcoming is central to our identity as a Christian church. How might we become more welcoming to the “other” in whom Christ is already present, but who might be a stranger to us? Praying and thinking about welcoming is preparation for growing into what Jesus wants the church to be: a tool of God’s mission as we open our arms and approach the stranger.
We live in an age of publicity where, for many, the church is a strange and threatening place. The “identity and marketing campaign”, an initiative of the United Reformed Church, to be launched in November, will give churches of any denomination a chance to use the branding and advertisements that are being produced. These will declare a local church to be committed to welcoming all, as Jesus did.
Does your church open its arms to youngsters on the street corner and students in college and university, the newly retired and the isolated elderly, homeless drinkers who loiter in the car park and couples setting up home, the abused, divorced and unemployed who feel of no value as well as the secure and confident surrounded by love, the casual visitor to Sunday worship and those for whom the church is a closed book? How might it be more welcoming, more like Jesus?
In the words of Jesus: “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:40)
Rowena Francis, Northern Synod Moderator
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