A "Welcome card" can facilitate invitation

Most people who enter a faith community for the first time and stay do so because another lay person invited them. Beverly Bammel, a missioner at St. Francis, College Station, Texas, in the Diocese of Texas, says "This only makes sense. How often do we ask a friend their advice about a movie, a book, a doctor, or any countless number of things? We turn to someone who has first sampled the services or goods, someone with first-hand experience. Often we don’t even need to know this other person very well, and we’ll follow their advice."

She offers a practical tool any church can use to help members invite others to come and worship.

In the narthex of St. Francis, College Station, we keep “Welcoming Cards.” We encourage parishioners to take a dozen or so to keep in their wallets or purses. And when one of those Holy-Spirit moments occur, they can offer an invitation to visit St. Francis. They can tell them of our two primary worship services – Sundays and Wednesdays, and tell them how much they’d like it if they saw them again – at St. Francis! That’s all you need to do. Just invite them and give them a Welcoming Card.

I realize this can be scary. Many of us may not be comfortable in this type of situation. No worries. Just keep your Welcoming Cards stashed away. Don’t try and force yourself to begin passing out Welcoming Cards to everyone you meet. Wait for one of those Holy Spirit moments when your conversation “goes there” and suddenly you have a natural and comfortable opportunity to make the invitation. When that happens, make the invitation and give them a Welcoming Card. It’s that simple.

She notes that Bishop Andrew Doyle keeps cards for churches around his diocese.

Read the rest here.

Oprah meets Dr. Phill meets Bishop Sheen

The Hollywood Reporter says that Fr. Alberto Cutie, aka "Father Oprah," is starting a weekday syndicated daytime talk show. It will show up in the New York City and Los Angeles markets on local Fox-owned stations, and maybe in other markets.

Father Alberto Cutie, a bestselling author of self-help books and radio talk show host as well as a former Roman Catholic priest, will join the ranks of gabbers and host a daily syndie strip devoted to life matters.

"It'll be everything from sex to salvation," Father Alberto told The Hollywood Reporter Tuesday in Miami during the NATPE TV trade show.

Hopefully it'll invite "greater dialog" with the audience, he added. Sorta Oprah meets Dr. Phil meets Bishop Sheen, the only other religious personnage who ever fronted a national TV show. (And that was in the 1950s!)

The show is being licensed by Debmar-Mercury and the first station group to step up for a launch test is Fox.

The show will preview on a number of as yet unspecified Fox stations this summer. The Fox test markets will include N.Y. and L.A., the country's top two markets. Other non-Fox outlets may be invited to join the test as well.

Jack Abernethy, CEO of the Fox TV station group, said there has been a crying need for an inspirational show for stations for many years. "Something not dogmatic or rigid but uplifting and helpful to viewers. Such things are big business in other media like book publishing and the radio but not on television," he pointed out.

Father Cutie is not new to this kind of of work. He developed a huge following on Telemundo and in syndication in Latin America when, as a Roman Catholic, and became known as "Father Oprah."

The fact that an Episcopal priest has snagged a syndicated television project like this for a mass market audience (in two languages, no less!) is a very big deal. If it passes the test markets--mainly to see how well Cutie is received among non-Hispanic viewers who did not know him when he was on Telemundo--this will be a huge entry for the Episcopal Church in an audience that we do not often reach out to, in a forum that is new to us.

See also The Episcopal Cafe on this story.

Tuning up your parish's web presence before Christmas Eve

The launch in mid-October of Vital Practices has yielded plenty of usable ideas. Case in point: a brief consideration of how parish web sites can welcome visitors on Christmas Eve with greater hospitality and more usable information.

Points:

• ... Review your web page, voice mail, banners and signage through the eyes of someone visiting your parish for the first time.
• ... Take a page from NPR’s digital media developers and go to a coffee shop, laptop in tow, and buy coffee for a stranger who is willing to poke around your website. Does their impression of your parish match up to your own sense of what the parish is?
• ... Select your parish’s top stories from the past year and feature these on the homepage. These provide wonderful insight for potential visitors into the nature and values of the community they will be visiting on Christmas.
• ... List your Christmas service times and include photos from last year’s service. If you don’t have any, make sure to ask someone to photograph this year’s event and save these photos for next year’s outreach.
• ... Include the service times for the major feast days that take place from Christmas through Epiphany. These are great opportunities for folks to return.
• ... Commit to a longer term review of your parish’s hospitality, perhaps by following some of Kathy Copas’ insights in this article.

Read the rest here.

H/T to Torey Lightcap writing on The Lead at the Episcopal Cafe.

Why I don't go to church

Central Christian Church of Las Vegas, Nevada put this video out on YouTube.



This effort does a good job addressing probably the top 7 or 8 reasons most often heard from people who are spiritual, and perhaps leaning towards church attendance but who don’t go. The ones who are positively disposed to the idea, but perhaps haven't made that first step.

It does not address the resistance of those who have been spiritually abused. Neither does it deal with those who have questions or serious obstacles to belief itself. But you can't do everything at once, even in this medium.

Maybe that can be the topic of the next video or two?

This is why Jesus quotes the BCP!

That's because Jesus was an Episcopalian.

Well, okay, maybe he wasn't...but maybe we secretly suspected!

Here is a sixteen-part video series introducing the Episcopal Church. It is based on the book by the Rev. Christopher Yaw. Here is what he says about the videos.

The point of this audaciously anachronistic title is not to claim Jesus as our own (how very un-Episcopalian that would be!), but to inspire us to see how Jesus is found in the many and varied expressions of faith that two thousand years of Christendom has birthed.

One such expression is the Anglican tradition in America, better known as The Episcopal Church. We are known more for substance than self-promotion - evenhandedness than extremism. Too often we are not easily noticed, found, or understood, which is why I wrote this provocative sounding book and companion website.

Today is an exciting time to be an Episcopalian. We have a renewed commitment to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked - standing up for equal rights and radical hospitality - worshiping in the beauty of holiness and making disciples who take Christ into the world.

Despite the polarizing forces at work in this age of transition, we are solidly emerging as a distinctive and dynamic alternative for many Christians. My hope is that these 16 video teachings can help newcomers and inquirers get a better sense of how The Episcopal Church endeavors to do Jesus' work in the world, to the praise and glory of His name.

Here are the rest of the videos and here is the book, Jesus Was an Episcopalian and You Can Be One Too.

Put the "mass" back in Christmas

Another nice, locally-made video from the folks at King of Peace Episcopal Church, King Island, Georgia.

Tailgate Eucharist

The Rev. Canon Dan Webster, canon for evangelism and ministry development in the Diocese of Maryland, talks about his experience of setting up a Eucharist for football fans in the parking lot of the Baltimore Raven before a home game.

It had been sometime since I had visited a parking lot before a National Football League game. In my previous career, and even during seminary, I followed television camera crews into special parking lots and flashed press passes at the media gates. So I guess you could say I had never "tailgated" at a Charger game in my hometown of San Diego or, for that matter, anywhere else.

I saw something called a Ravenswalk at Baltimore's M&T Bank Stadium, filled with bands, merchants, contests, games, food and fans. Lots of fans. It was the Baltimore Ravens' home opener and we at the Diocese of Maryland thought we should offer Holy Eucharist in the parking lot for Episcopalians who have to choose between church or football on the handful of Sundays the Ravens are in town.

One of our parishes had done this three seasons ago. The rector then, the Rev. Scott Slater, is now the canon to the ordinary. He encouraged us as we had plans in the works when he joined the staff this summer. It was actually our communications director, Sharon Tillman, who was the catalyst behind this. Not surprisingly she and her family are Ravens fans.

So we looked for an Episcopalian who has season parking passes in a lot near the stadium. We actually found Liz Diffenderfer from the Cathedral of the Incarnation. She has season tickets and knows folks in the Ravens front office. She tried to find us a location that would be semi-permanent so we could tell folks where we would be each Sunday where we might set up a portable tent and table to distribute tracts about the Episcopal Church.

That didn't work. We settled for whatever parking space Liz could find in Lot C just north of the main entrance to the stadium. We set up a portable table that Liz brought underneath her van's hatchback to protect against the rain. Sharon invited those around us to join if they wished. It reminded me of the parable of the kingdom in Matthew (22:2-10). "Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet." (22:9)

It was the 18th Sunday after Pentecost and the gospel reading (Luke 16:19-31) was about the rich man and Lazarus. The reading brought a chuckle when the rich man was described as "dressed in purple and fine linen." The Ravens' predominant color is purple. But it also was an opportunity to discuss being aware of the invisible people in our lives.

We weren't the only religious folks there that day. A local Chabad House of Lubavitcher Jews was celebrating Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. They had rented a pickup truck and built a sukkah in the truck bed. They asked people at random if they were Jewish and if so then invited them into the sukkah to pray.

Our prayers follow the form on pages 400-401 of The Book of Common Prayer. It is similar to a Eucharist you might experience at an Episcopal camp but without the music. There was plenty of music coming from the stage at the Ravenswalk. Some of that music seemed to be particularly meaningful to those faithful gathered in the rain to break bread and pray before kickoff.

We can now tell our congregations where we will be on Sunday mornings when the Ravens are at home so their parishioners may join us. We can also have brochures available for those curious about who we are and what we are doing. By our example we might attract some who have never been to church and don't know why it's important.

The medieval cathedral was the gathering place of the community. It was the focus of art, music, dance and debate. It was clear to me on that Sunday after Pentecost that many in our culture see the football stadium as a modern cathedral. We can let it be that way and leave it to its own liturgy or we can add our own. I prefer to "go into the main streets and invite everyone."

This makes me think: what with Sunday mornings becoming more and more the time when local sports, kids soccer, school sports take place, what if more of us set up "tailgate Eucharists" in the places where people gather? Thoughts?