When you're a member of imposing-looking church like mine, you sometimes have to be extra keen to smile at people as they walk in – especially if they're new or visiting.
We have a beautiful Victorian building, but to those who aren't regular churchgoers, or to those who might have been burned by Church in the past, a very 'churchy' looking church can be a real barrier to getting inside and meeting the actual people.
So we do everything we can to be warm (even when the heating's broken) and offer a broad smile and a decent cup of tea or coffee. We don't always get it right, but more often than not, we hope people feel welcomed by our congregation.
Warm welcomes were on my mind after I read a survey today from pro-LGBT campaigners in the Church of England that claimed many people feel disenfranchised and unwelcome at church. The initial figures made for depressing reading – with many feeling unwelcome.
However, it was clear that the situation is more complicated than that – and in fact there were roughly equal numbers of those who thought the Church was welcoming and those who thought the opposite.
Dig a little deeper and it gets even more interesting. Those who were more likely to think Church was unwelcoming were younger and those who thought it was welcoming were older. This corresponds interestingly to people less likely to go to church (younger people) and those more likely to go to church (older people).
Looking further into the data, those who identified as Christian were twice as likely to describe their churchgoing experience as welcoming, compared to those who say they have no religion. Again, what we see is that those more likely to go to church think it is more welcoming than those who are less likely to go.
The key word in my previous sentence is "think". The question asked in full to respondents was, "In general, how welcoming, if at all, would you say most Christian churches in the UK are to the gay, lesbian and bisexual community?"
In other words, the people being asked needed to have no prior experience of ever setting foot in a church to proffer an opinion. They were asked a question and no doubt gave truthful answers on how they imagined the situation to be. However, those who haven't experienced a church recently (or even at all) are hardly in a good position to establish how welcoming churches are.
I have some thoughts about how welcoming mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and other places of worship would be to gay, lesbian and bisexual people – or indeed to other groups. But my experience of these places is limited (although I'm happy to say I've visited all of these kinds of places of worship and felt a warm welcome). I can't be expected to offer a nuanced opinion on how welcoming they are because I simply don't have the experience to do it.
At this point, those behind the survey might well argue that this isn't the point. That, in fact, perception is everything and it doesn't matter what the reality is – if people perceive churches as being unwelcoming to gay people (or indeed to anyone else) then that's the main thing here. I can see this point – if churches are perceived as being unwelcoming, whether because of media coverage, hearsay or some genuine bad experiences – then we have a serious problem.
The solution to this problem is for people to go and see. To get an idea of how welcoming a local church is, the best thing to do is to go and test out the welcome. The building may look imposing, like ours, the service may be unfamiliar, the people may be different – even a bit odd. Yet that's the Church – and in my experience, churches are mostly welcoming to all different kinds of people.
There's only one way churches are going to change the perception of being unwelcoming to anyone and that's to redouble our efforts: to greet people – whoever they may be – with open arms and to find a home for them, if that's what they want, in our midst.
This isn't about theologically believing the same thing – before we even get on to that discussion, let's make each other feel welcome. It really is the least we can do.
