THE MAGNETIC CHURCH
RECENT ARTICLE:
Mary W. Cox
Director of Communications
Diocese of Southeast Florida
525 NE 15 Street
Miami, FL 33132
305-373-0881, ext. 18; episcorat@aol.com
From the April, 2007 issue of The Net, the monthly newspaper of The Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida. Click here for .pdf 1st page, .pdf for 2nd page.
#1: PARISHES LEARN THE RULES OF ATTRACTION AT “THE MAGNETIC CHURCH” By Mary W. Cox, Editor
“Episcopalians,” says Andrew Weeks, “are good at using words that just kill people’s
enthusiasm.” Weeks, whose evangelism workshop “The Magnetic Church” was this year’s
Bishop’ Spring Conference, gave participants fair warning: They were to unlearn six of those
“killer” words—should, must, task, job, right and wrong—and would be loudly hissed by
everyone in the room if they used one.
Lay and clergy teams from 49 congregations, 185 participants in all, gathered Feb. 16 and 17 in
the Schofield Chapel at the Duncan Center for a lively and energizing presentation that provided
much to unlearn—and much more to learn—about becoming an inviting and welcoming church.
Weeks, a self-described “cradle gothic Episcopalian”, told the story of his own journey from a
being a person who “knew about God” to a personal encounter with God and a calling to be a
full-time lay evangelist. A church where he was truly welcomed by people who truly cared
about him made possible the transforming events in his life, he said.
“My job is to equip you” to be that kind of church, he told the group. He promised that “you’ll
go home knowing one of two things: You’re already doing evangelism and you didn’t know it;
or you’ll find something new that you are called and equipped to do.” Churches that don’t want
to grow will die, Weeks warned, but added that “church growth” as a primary goal of
evangelism will fail. The goal is offering the opportunity for people to experience the love and
power of God in their lives. People out there are in bondage,” he said, “and we have a
responsibility to answer that call.” He led the group in laughing at their own negative images of
evangelism—“confrontational”, “coercive”, “money-money-money”—and their fears.
“What are you afraid of? Rejection? There are people who won’t like you for the stupidest
reasons, so you might as well give them a really good reason.” “At its core, evangelism is
nothing more than walking together,” he said. Weeks outlined a number of factors that will help
a church be successful in attracting and incorporating non-churched persons into the life of the
congregation: willingness to risk change, a strong sense of mission and identity and a focus on
hospitality, with emphasis on God and faith in daily life. Quality worship, whatever the worship
style; an eye-catching, well-placed church sign; and a well-designed, up-to-date website are also essentials.
“Be Episcopal,” he said. “Don’t try to be the community church…be outrageously, excellently
who you are.” The workshop was peppered with specific suggestions for small, effective
changes: “You want to have shorter vestry meetings? Have no chairs.” “Have lay readers
practice.” “Have 10-year-olds read 10-year-olds’ prayers.” “Get the announcements out of the
middle of the service—it’s really bad theater.” “Light stained-glass windows from inside.”
“Don’t have visitors stand…it puts people on the spot. Instead, have greeters stand.” “Paint the
inside of the doors red, too.”
A portion of the workshop focused specifically on the ministry of greeters, as small groups
spread out around the Duncan Center grounds to practice “evangelism greeting”, playing the
roles of visitor and greeter and paying attention to what worked and how they felt. “You may
have one only opportunity to represent God to this person,” Weeks said. Greeters need to “get
beyond packaging” and treat each newcomer as “a three-week-old child of God”, he urged.
Participants also had a hands-on opportunity to critique each other’s printed materials: bulletins,
newsletters and brochures, looking for clear, understandable communication. Attractive design,
consistent image or logo throughout, and no “mystery words” were some of the guidelines
Weeks suggested. He sent participants away with some parting suggestions: “Fire all your
committees and replace them with teams—committees talk about, teams execute.” “Let’s be
willing to acknowledge our dependence upon God.”
“Go back and paint something!” “Risk being foolish for God…you will infect people with your
newfound graceful silliness.”
#2 WHAT DID THEY “PAINT” AFTER THE WORKSHOP?
Andrew Weeks challenged participants in “The Magnetic Church” to "go back and paint
something" and to be "working on something" by the following Tuesday. Nearly two months
after the workshop, what are kinds of changes are congregations making?
Chapel of the Venerable Bede, Coral Gables: "The Sunday bulletin has been made more user-friendly, with an explanatory note at the beginning referring to the Red Book of Common Prayer
and the Blue Hymnal. Within the text of the bulletin, "BCP p.nnn" has been changed to "page
nnn"…We've changed the font to Verdana (sharper, cleaner looking) and now use a font size of
11 instead of 10…We have moved Coffee Hour from the kitchen to the part of the patio
immediately outside the Chapel door. The result is that more folks linger for Coffee Hour when
it's ‘right there’!…One of our members is a graphic designer. She is working on some sort of
logo to use consistently on all of our publications.”
St. James-in-the-Hills, Hollywood: “We moved the announcements from before the peace to the
beginning of the service and it seems to be working…Our bulletins have fewer inserts and are
more reader friendly...We included an index of the front page of our newsletter...We invited Fr.
Jeff Beebe (Rector of Meadow Park Church, a new church plant in northwestern Broward
County) to be our guest preacher at the Easter Vigil service”
St. Columba, Marathon: “We made a new banner for the church (with nice big letters), we are in
the process of making three new signs, we have moved a welcome table to the front entrance of
the church, stocked with name tags, and timely info about the church, we had a booth at the
Marathon Seafood Festival (with our new banner!), I (Deacon Debra Andrew-Maconaughey)
have gone on the radio (that really helped), and we are forming a newcomer committee.”
St. Paul’s, Key West: “We looked at our bulletin and changed a lot of the ‘mysterious
words’…we omitted Sursum Corda, Preface and Sanctus and page designation #S-129 since it
was redundant and no one could find it anyway.We also wrote out Book of Common Prayer
instead of using BCP, which visitors probably were scratching their heads about. We spelled out
where the parish hall was when we invited visitors to the coffee hour… and also encouraged
members to be greeters.”
Trinity Cathedral, Miami: “Our newly formed Building and Grounds Committee decided the
first thing to do to let people know the cathedral is here and alive was to paint the concrete
columns of the perimeter fencing and the patio walls near our garden in an eye-catching South
Florida color (see article 2 link above for photo). The impact was immediate. One person from
The Grand (located right next door) attended our Sunday service and told the dean he never
knew the Cathedral was there. We've also pressure cleaned the patio and walkways and will be
pressure cleaning the front entrance and walkway.”
St. Joseph’s, Boynton Beach: “The Saint Joseph’s Magnetic Church team held a meeting the
week after the conference to pool notes and ideas from which we will springboard our
implementation. We brain stormed the following ideas: Create a process for visitor follow-up
beyond bread delivery; improve church signage and lighting; improve property lighting; joint
training for greeters and ushers; improve written communications for visitors; centralization of
information to be disseminated to visitors with increased visibility as to where visitors should go
for information; improvement of church website. So far we have made the most progress on the
website. Our new more user-friendly URL is stjoesweb.org. In addition, all our email addresses
will have the same suffix. We are also working with a contractor on repairing some broken
concrete pillars on our campus fencing that fronts the main road where visibility is highest.”