On Not Poking Fun at Visitors on Easter

Last updated on: April 22, 2015 at 10:03 pm by Sarah Conrad Sours

On Not Poking Fun at Visitors on Easter 2015-04-22T22:03:53-06:00 Sarah Conrad Sours

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Our Easter service this morning was lovely.

I’ve been to Easter services at more than a dozen different churches, in most of the major branches of Christianity, and there’s been something lovely in all of them. I found myself taking a moment to remember some of those beautiful moments–bits of the cumulative Easter liturgy of my heart that I was missing only because I can be part of but one local church at a time.

One thing was missing from our celebration this morning, though, that I didn’t miss one bit. Though I’ve only been without it a handful of Easters ever, its absence was one of the loveliest parts of the liturgy this morning.

There were no jabs–subtle or otherwise–at the so-called C&E Christians, the folk who show up to Sunday morning worship only once or twice a year. No shaming, no jokes about how “we’re here the same time every week,” no contrived stories, oh-so-casually worked into the sermon, about how the pastor remembers being a child and wondering “who these people were that he hadn’t seen since last Easter.”

There was only celebration for the joy of a full house, a few gentle stage directions in view of the extra bodies and chairs in the sanctuary, and the same word of welcome that they would have heard any other Sunday of the year.

Image copyright Sarah Sours

The kindness and respectfulness of this approach should speak for itself, as should the probable efficacy of it. Please, let the last thing a person hears in church, when he has worked up the gumption to come after months or years away, be mockery or shaming.

(I think Adam Hamilton has made a good case for what they should hear instead: words of genuine welcome, combined with the surprising announcement that the next four to six weeks’ sermons have been planned just for them!)

It struck me that my church leadership’s approach here is instructive for all of us in leadership and mentoring roles–pastors, managers, teachers, owners, employers, parents alike.

We (I include myself here, as I am probably the worst of the lot) tend to pounce on those who are most vulnerable, precisely when they are at their most vulnerable. We (still a me-included “we” here) tend to vent our frustrations on those who are getting it wrong precisely at the moment they’re trying to start getting it right. And we (yup, talking about myself again) are experts at quietly provoking the sort of bad feelings that will continue, rather than end, relational conflict, for no other reason than the self-satisfaction of continuing to believe that it’s their fault for staying away rather than our fault for making it impossible for them to come back.

What if we took the gentler approach instead? What if we took those moments of vulnerability, of hesitant contrition, and even of half-resentful duty-fulfilling, and turned them into moments of transformation?

What are your profession’s version of C&E Christians?

Who are the vulnerable, coming to you rarely, always full of embarrassment and shame and hoping for better than they’re expecting?

Who are the screw-ups, making a half-hearted and likely-to-be-short-lived effort to reform themselves?

Who are the thorns in your flesh, standing in front of you once again and waiting for another bad interaction to confirm their disinclination to work with you rather than against you?

How might you change the script this time around? This “Easter”–this salary negotiation, this office visit, this annual evaluation, this report card season–what might you do to say, “Hey, I’m glad you’re here”? (Leave out the implied “finally,” you know?) And how might you show that you’ve been making plans in their absence–plans to address their concerns and facilitate their growth?

How might you surprise them with the news that you are, in fact, on their side?

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