I wanted to visit you, so that we might both receive a blessing.  2 Corinthians 1:15
I was a stranger and you invited me in. Matthew 25:35

This is God
My kids told me the little girl had been staring at me through the early part of the service before being shuffled off to the children’s program. But she was back after the service dragging her reluctant mother by she hand. I smiled as they came up and the little girl said, “There he is, Mommy. This is God.” She was pointing at me. The mother, terribly embarrassed at this point, apologized to me, a visitor, and explained to her that I was not God. But the girl was not to be so easily dissuaded. She’d apparently seen illustrations of God in her Sunday school material and I guess I looked close enough. I hurried to agree with her mother that I was not God, said a few more words about how wonderful God is, and her mother dragged her away, still apologizing to me over her shoulder.

My point? You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to be a good visitor. Things will go wrong. Mistakes will be made. Unexpected opportunities will present themselves, too. Graciousness is a good habit at any time, but especially if you’re visiting a church meeting. This is THEIR meeting after all. And you are the guest.

Sometimes it’s ‘grin-and-bear-it’. As a visitor, I’ve managed to be trapped in a few after-church congregational business meetings—the kind where the leadership won’t let anyone leave the service until a business meeting has occurred. Not a good place to be for a visitor who really doesn’t belong there. I suppose that if they allow a few visitors to slip out, it would embolden some of the cowed church members to sneak out with them. So I became privy to information that no outsider should have heard. I wonder how the congregants feel about being told that no one can leave the sanctuary until the business meeting is over?

And then there’s announcements, which not only often interrupt a good worship time but are meaningless to most visitors. Just enjoy the ride. It’s the way a community works together. (I mean real community… Not the synthetic kind that is tops-down. But the kind of community that happens naturally, organically, when you have a group of people pursing the same mission.) I don’t mean irrelevant information. Some of it is incomprehensible. Often insider church language—terms and expressions that are only meaningful to regular attenders—pervades announcement more than other platform-talk. “The Asuzers will meet with the BGD in the room where the PTs usually meet.” Honestly, it’s better to laugh inwardly, realizing that most insular groups concoct their own vernacular, and enjoy their linguistic creativity.

Thanks for reading. There are scads of sites out there blogging about how to treat visitors or be a visitor-friendly church. This is the only thing I’ve seen on how to be a good church visitor. I hope my ramblings on visiting local church meetings this past summer has found some utility in your life—if nothing more than a smile.