Welcome?

Having just read a post about a local church trying to "normalize" human sexuality around a heterosexual model I began to wonder what it meant to be a welcoming church.

This church is very welcoming in the sense that it rolls out the red carpet to visitors, it invites them to be a part. If we believe the article it is not until later that new members are pulled aside and told that total commitment to God means a change in lifestyle (and possibly sexuality).

"We don't do that," I thought proudly to myself. And we do not. Despite being in a Diocese where we are not allowed to perform same gender weddings we, as a church, do not demand people to stop being who they are when they join us......or do we?

I wonder what hides in the corners of the way we think as a community? How might we become aware of those corners?

There are all sorts of apocryphal stories about Jesus turning up at Church on Sunday and being turned away because he was too poor, too dirty, the wrong race, gender, nationality? Those are, in some ways, the easy fixes.

Welcome, the old English word which turned into Welcome, means that we are glad in our hearts that someone has come to us. We want them there, really want them with us. This is a challenge which goes beyond self-congratulation that we are not like "those other churches."