Sometime back our family decided to take a vacation from our normal Sunday routine. No, we were not planning a trip out of town. Rather, we were planning a trip in town — to visit a neighboring church. You see, unless we intentionally plan an out-of-town vacation, we rarely have a glimpse at how churches in our own communities are doing church.

On one hand, that is a good thing. I love my church and believe in the ministry model, leadership, team and volunteers. I am humbled to be a part of a dynamic team that serves our community each week. So, our planned in-town trip to another church during a Sunday morning had nothing to do with looking at greener pastures or comparing our model to another model.

On the other hand, I realized in being a part of doing our church, I had missed a perspective that prior to my full-time vocation was afforded to me on a regular basis, whether I realized it or not — I could be a mystery visitor at a local church.

After some time to reflect, I had a couple of observations:

1. “It helps to look above the fray.”
   As a leadership, we must guard against becoming so insider busy that we lose focus of the culture outside of our walls. That is not to say that we pander to every visitor’s request — the music is too loud and the video is out-of-focus, therefore we should change our ministry model. Instead, I believe it is extremely helpful that at least once a year, leadership set aside a Sunday morning to see how church is done at another local church.By visiting another church I had the rare opportunity to reflect and consider the context of our own community. That is, how the people inside our church think about and process the way we chooe to do church. And, since I was a mystery visitor at another church, I suddenly had a first-hand experience of how a visitor may perceive our church on a given Sunday.

   I believe part of our leading from the Spirit of God is to understand what God is doing beyond our church walls. I walked away from my mystery visit with even more questions — “Why are people coming to this church? Why do people like or dislike it here? Is our spiritual growth model tied to spiritual health and relationship, or are we perpetually in recovery? Are we perceived as authentic, or does it come across as a production? Is the language and tone of the communications insider or outsider focused? What would this church feel like to me in six months?” These are questions I asked of my mystery visit, I want to begin to ask them of our church, too.

2. “Stick to your core knitting.”
   I once worked for a boss who would remark to clients, “stick to your core knitting — it is what got you here in the first place.” He really meant to say that before you change anything that you do, you need to understand who you are and what you are good at and then improve upon it.In church communications and spiritual-growth development circles, a common phrase is to adapt and adjust your ministry model to “close the back door.” That is to understand why people enter and leave and in the process, to identify how you can keep them inside. I believe there is wisdom in tracking and reviewing different ways to reach people. But, I think the benefit comes from first knowing who you are and then using the additional insight to fine-tune. I like measured change — and yes, it can still be big. I just believe you have to know what makes you unique and how changing something can improve what you do, not detract from it.

   I believe chasing down a successful or innovative ministry model can slowly move a church with growth potential farther away from their core knitting. I think we all can agree, change for change’s sake is rarely beneficial.

I enjoyed my mystery visit to another church in our community. I want a chance to do it again, at least once a year. The important thing when visiting is not to compare or judge the way another church does church. This is hard. Especially, when so many questions can rush to the forefront of one’s mind. I think the big picture question to ask is, “who has Christ called us to be in our own community and how can we learn from such an experience?”

In other words, how can we understand ourselves better and deliberately become everything God has intended us to be — right here in the Spanaway, Puyallup, Parkland area? There is so much more we can be doing to communicate God’s truth to our community and I’m glad to be a part of a team that gets that.