How to Be a Welcoming Church: Leanne Friesen

Making our churches a welcoming place for new people is so important. We want the people who come through our doors to feel the love of God through us, to have a sense of belonging that will bring them back and into deeper relationship with Christ. But what does a welcoming church actually look like?

Leanne Friesen is the executive minister of the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec and an expert on this topic. On this episode of the podcast, she shares her insights with us.

Visit Leanne's website.

Download Leanne's handout, "More Than Comfy Pews."

Learn about Leanne's new book, Grieving Room: Making Space for All the Hard Things After Death and Loss.

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen  

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. Making our churches a welcoming place for new people is so important. We want the people who come through our doors to feel the love of God through us, to have a sense of belonging that will bring them back and into deeper relationship with Christ. But what does a welcoming church actually look like? What should we be doing? And what should we avoid doing? Leanne Friesen is the executive minister of the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec and an expert on this topic. Prior to her current role, she spent 18 years as a pastor, both researching and putting into action best practices for being a welcoming church. And on this episode of the podcast, she shares her insights with us.

Hi, Leanne, and welcome to the Salvationist podcast.

Leanne Friesen  

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah. So, some of our listeners might recognize you from the INSPIRE Conference and Congress, where you gave a presentation on the topic of becoming a welcoming church. Do you have any personal connection to The Salvation Army?

Leanne Friesen  

I do. Some won’t recognize my last name, but I grew up Leanne Reid, and I was member of Trinity Bay South Corps in Newfoundland, and I grew up Salvation Army—my family's all Salvation Army still. And so, lots of connections to the Army, and it's still very much one of my homes. 

Kristin Ostensen  

Wonderful. So can you tell me a bit about your current role? 

Leanne Friesen  

Absolutely. I am so honoured and delighted to have grown up in The Salvation Army. But in my mid-20s, I found myself attending seminary to do a master of divinity degree. And while there, it became really clear that God was leading me in a slightly different direction. And I found myself feeling called to pastor in a Baptist tradition. And there's many different types of Baptists, and my particular branch of Baptist is called the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec. I served as a lead pastor in that tradition for 18 years at a church in Hamilton. And a few months ago, I became the executive minister of what we call the CBOQ. So technically, that's like the General, only our denomination is significantly smaller. So, the equivalent would be more like a commissioner for the Army folks out there.

Kristin Ostensen  

So, today we're here to talk about becoming a welcoming church. Can you tell me a bit about why this topic is so important to you and your background in it?

Leanne Friesen  

Absolutely. So as a pastor of a church for so many years, for 18 years I was in the same church and a church that would look like many of our Salvation Army churches—in its neighbourhood, trying to be a place that will be relevant, eager to see new people engage and participate in ministry and find Jesus Christ, find the hope of God. And early on in our ministry, we began to ask ourselves in this church, what does that mean in terms of the church today? How are we going to do this in our congregation? And this was something that, as a young person in church—I started pastoring relatively young—I’d come out of a number of church planting experiences that were really wanting to be innovative and try new things, reach a younger generation, reach non-Christians. And beginning to think about, well, what does that mean, when you've got a church that's been established for a while? It's got its systems, it's got its structures. It's trying to find its place, and it's not just starting from scratch. It's not—you know, sometimes we hear about these really, sort of innovative and new and cool expressions and we think, we're not really doing that. And I came to really believe that the role of hospitality in churches was one of the key components to how we would create spaces where people with no church background, or perhaps a negative church background, would find a place in church communities. And by hospitality—although this is part of hospitality—I don't mean, Oh, we make a really good meal, or we have people for dinner, we have a potluck and we invite everybody. I mean, thinking about what it means to enter your church, for someone to enter your church community, and the experience that they have, that would truly feel welcoming, that we would create a space where someone with absolutely no connection, would find, I feel safe here and this is a place I want to come back. So there's that old movie you probably know about, Field of Dreams, and there's that line: if you build it, they will come. And I don't believe that's true of churches. Not everyone's just going to show up to church doors, because we want them to. There's another step before what we're going to talk about today that's important, about reaching your neighbourhoods, building relationships with people that aren't from churches. But if it gets to the point that someone does walk in your door, I care very deeply about what happens in that church experience. And that was a journey that we went on in the church that I was a part of. And that church that I pastored in did very much start as a mostly aging congregation, really eager to reach out to its community. And by the time I left the church, most of the church was new. It had been there in about, probably 80% of the church had been new in the last 10 years, a large majority of those from a non-Christian background or a very limited Christian background, and the vast majority were young, were under 40. And that's not the only sign of church success—I want to be really, really clear about that. And I don't even love the word “success” when it comes to church. But what I thought we saw what was, instead of asking the question, if we build it, they will come, we wanted to say, well, if they come, will they stay?

Kristin Ostensen  

Right, yes. And you went spent four months actually visiting different churches and experiencing life as someone on the outside.

Leanne Friesen  

Yeah, so about 10 years into my church's ministry, when I was pastoring more than 10 years, I took a four-month sabbatical, which was a ton of learning and renewal. And one of the things I decided to do was visit a bunch of different churches because I wanted to understand the experience of being new to a church. I have to say, it was probably 95% disheartening. Personally, for me, it was wonderful in the sense that I love worshipping at these churches. I'm a pastor, so I'm very, very comfortable in churches. So even though sometimes I'd have awkward experiences, I could laugh at them and know what was going on, take them with a grain of salt. But I will be honest in saying I often came home and went, oh … Oh no, because I kept thinking, if it wasn't me, if it was someone that was genuinely new to church and they walked in that door, oh that would have been a rough experience. That's not to say any of these were poor churches, bad churches. They were wonderful churches that clearly had loving people. But often, the experience often just made me go, oh, that would have been tough. And to give a couple of examples, sometimes they're really, really simple things. And I remember going to just a small community church, about 25 people in attendance. I walked in and they were just basically over the moon to see a new person—you could tell everyone was like, there's a new person here! Which can be a little bit disarming sometimes. They were very, very warm and friendly. Where do you want to sit? Here's a bulletin. And I said, Where's the washroom? And they said, Oh, it's downstairs, and someone pointed to a door. And I opened this door, and the door shut behind me. And I was in a pitch black, couldn't see a hand in front of my face hall. And that's just a really simple thing. And they said the bathroom was downstairs, so I just, I was literally just kind of feeling along the wall for a rail, got downstairs, felt along the wall for a light switch. And again, because I'm used to church, I felt comfortable being like, I can turn a light on in this building. I turned the light on, I could actually only find a children's washroom, I had to use a child's toilet. And so the whole thing, again, it made me laugh, like it was funny. But then I thought, what if I was new? What if I’d never been to a church before? And so those simple little things like, how about if there'd been a sign telling me where the washroom was, so I didn't have to ask someone where it was? How about if the lights had been turned on everywhere in this space, so that when someone walked into that space, they could see where they were going? But you see, the default with that church was: everyone already knows this. And that's a tricky thing that we often do in churches, we go: everyone knows that. And I think the first shift to being a welcoming church is stopping that statement, and behaving every week like everyone doesn't already know that—now we'll probably talk about that a bit more later. Another one of the experiences that actually was just hilarious, was at a church just a few blocks from my home church. And I walked in and nobody said a word to me. Now, this church had just amalgamated between two congregations, so I do think there was some confusion about who's old congregation, who's maybe that person from another church—some people might not have realized I was new. Nonetheless, I went in on my own, sat at the back, no one speaks to me. So I'm there for about 10 minutes, and no one’s said a word to me, just waiting for the service to start. And then, I look beside me and there's this woman kneeling beside me. And she just says—no “hello,” no nothing else—she goes, Excuse me, I'm so sorry but we're out of jam. 

Kristin Ostensen

What? [laughs]

Leanne Friesen  

And that's all she said. Now, Kristin, you're like, what's going on there? You see, I know what's going on there because I've been to enough churches. And a lot of churches will sometimes have a welcome gift for new people. 

Kristin Ostensen

Ah, OK!

Leanne Friesen  

And I was like, Oh, they give jam as their welcome gift. Because I'm going to tell you that was a trend for a season, that you’d give a bottle of jam to someone new. And I was like, this dear old soul, bless her heart, has come over and they're out of jam—but with no context. All she said is, We're so sorry we’re out of jam, with no explanation. I said, Oh, that's OK. I said, I don't need jam. I said, Actually, I'm just the pastor of the church a couple blocks over, because I didn't want her to feel bad. I said, I don't need jam, you know, I'm just visiting today. Oh, she said, Well, when we get the jam, I’ll bring one over to the church. I said, No, no, that's OK. Please give it to your other visitors. Well, what's so funny about that is that, the rest of the service, nobody talked to me. There was a social time—no one spoke to me. Like, there was a time when they got everyone to turn and greet each other. I stood up, I looked around, one or two people did a quick handshake, and then they talked to each other to the point that I just sat by myself. Jam can't undo those things. And it was interesting that I felt so profoundly unwanted. And I thought, again, nobody knows who I am. For anyone else's knowledge, this could be my very first time in church. And so sometimes we do these things that we think will be welcoming, but they're not. And the last one that I'll share—and I'm not trying to criticize these churches—it was actually at a really big, very healthy, vibrant church, evangelical church. And they got off and they said, Welcome newcomers, we're so glad you're here. And we give all our new people a Tim's card. So please go to our welcome booth for a Tim Hortons card. So I go to this beautiful welcome booth, and there's nobody there. And we look around and we look around. And after a few minutes, someone goes, Oh, are you looking for a card? And I said, Oh, sure, thanks. And she goes, OK, let me find one for you. And she pulls one out of a drawer and she says, so before you need the card, could you fill this in? And she gives me a piece of paper so that I can give my name and email. So you know, there's this attempt to contact me. And then she goes, OK, great, here's the card. And she leaves. She doesn't ask me my name. She doesn't say, Are you new here? Where are you from? What brings you here today? That's not welcome. Like, bless their hearts. Again, it was summer—everything can be an anomaly. Maybe every other week is fantastic. Maybe the welcome person was away. But sometimes we think, Oh, wow, what a welcoming church—they gave this Tim’s card. But actually just walking in, and someone actually engaging in a way that was meaningful, would have been more welcoming. But even then, I don't even think those are actually the most initial important parts of welcome. Because some people will go to a church, and they don't want to be overwhelmed with people saying, you know, if they're brand new to church, sometimes, Are you new? Where are you from? What's your name? That can be overwhelming. So there's a lot of other steps on that road beyond just, are you saying hello to people? Are you greeting them? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, yeah. Well, in your presentation, you talked about four key areas to consider when we're looking at churches through the eyes of someone who's new, either to church or to that particular church. And those four areas were space, language, materials, and culture. So I’m wondering if we can walk through each of those, starting with spaces—how can we make our spaces more welcoming? 

Leanne Friesen  

Yeah, I'd love to do that. And you know, before we even get into those—I said this in the workshop, too, I said, we need to add the secret one. But actually the most common starting place—and you're probably going to know this, because if someone is looking for a church, and they're brave enough to find the church, and they don't have a connection to it, what's the first thing they're going to do? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Google it. [laughs]

Leanne Friesen  

They're going to google it, right? And they're going to the website. So, before you do anything else, look at your church's website. And I encourage people to get together with their leadership, maybe a couple of volunteers, and do these things together and go pretend you're new. So, grab five people, pretend you're new, and look at the website. Can you find what time the church service starts? I was speaking at a church last week—I spent 10 minutes trying to find on their website when the church service starts. So, really basic, have a really easy page, like “New to Us,” that someone can click on. Here's what people wear, here's where you park, here's when we start. If you always start late, tell them, Yeah, if you come a bit late, it doesn't matter. Do you have children's ministries? What are the things that if you are brand new, you need to know? So think about what you'd be thinking when you go to a church. Do people dress up here or do they not? What does it look like? All those kinds of dynamics. So if you're feeling really brave, ask a friend, a neighbour, who doesn't go to church, doesn't go to your church: would you go to my website and look at it for me and give me an honest review? What are we missing? So after you've done that, then the next question is space. So, same thing, grab your leadership some night, drive into the parking lot, and walk through that building as if you've never been there before. What do you need to know? And so that's part of hospitality. So, hospitality includes not just: are there parking spaces? But also: do I know where I'm allowed to park? Do I know where to go if there's nowhere to park? After I park, do I know what door to use? Some of us will know this, right? We have old buildings. Sometimes it's like a maze, figuring out what door to use, right? Churches have like 50 doors. Have you ever had that experience? And you're like, you go to one, and it’s locked; you go to another and you're like, I'm in the basement? Where am I supposed to go? So, those are really easy things to fix. Maybe you have a greeter in the parking lot, or put a sign: “Use This Door.” That this is again where some people go, everyone knows that. But remember, you're trying to create an ethos that not everyone knows it. When you get into the space, really important questions like: Do people know where to sit? Is there signs to the washroom? As I already mentioned. Are there clear spaces for people who are wheelchair users or walker users? The church that I was in had a lift—where I pastored until this May—had this lift to get to the other side of the building where the washrooms were. And that's how we, people who use, are wheelchair users had to get up three stairs. But the lift had a key for safety—you can’t just have kids pushing buttons. And for ages, there was no sign, there was no information by the lift of how you use the lift. And the strategy was, someone going: “There’s someone by the lift,” right? So you've got to picture, if you're new, you walk into this church and you’re a wheelchair user, you've got to go to the washroom. Now you're at this lift, everyone's looking at you. “How do I use the lift?” “Oh, let me find someone.” And now it's a scene—that's non-hospitable. So asking what you can do. Maybe there's a number that they text. Maybe you announce those things. But sometimes welcome is just about, do you know how to use the space? Do you know where to find things? Or does the space itself send a message that only certain people belong? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, for sure. The next thing, of course, you talked about was language. And in the Army, we're a big fan of our acronyms and special terms. I remember when I first started working here, I was posting an international news release, or an INR as we know them, that talked about the Army opening fire somewhere. I absolutely did a double take. [laughs]

Leanne Friesen  

Well, you know, the Army definitely has a very special set of lingo. And those of us who grew up in Newfoundland will remember—and not even just Newfoundland—but, you know, you go far enough back, and we talked about firing off a cartridge and staying in the quarters. And people go, What? What's that? But listen, it's not just an Army thing. It's everywhere. We've got our Baptist language. But the thing is, more and more people have no connection to church whatsoever. So it's not just denominational language—it's Christian language. And so there's so many things we say, that simply do not make sense if someone has no church background. And that can feel somewhat, you know, overwhelming to even start listing it. You know, if I get up and I say something like, we're all meeting in the foyer after the service for cookies. What's the foyer? Where's the foyer? If I say, Oh, this week's Bible study’s at Kristin’s house. Who's Kristin? Where’s Kristin? How do I find out how to get there? There's lots of ways we use insider language. And then even if we say things like, “in the time of Moses”—who’s Moses? “The Old Testament”—what’s the Old Testament? And I know it can seem a little overwhelming, but it really is simply a matter of, again, thinking through the eyes of a newcomer. And so again, when I was pastoring this church, every Sunday, Kristin—and it became a bit of an ongoing joke—I always tried to talk with the assumption that there could be someone there who knew nothing about the Bible. So if I was preaching, if I said something like, “This week, we’re reading, the passage is from Luke 14:3”—but I'm just throwing that out, I'm not even sure what's in Luke 14:3. I would say, “Now, the Book of Luke is one of many books in the Bible. The Bible is a book of many smaller books. And Luke is one of those smaller books. And so if you don't know how to find that there's a table of contents at the beginning of your Bible that you can use, or you can just listen if you want.” Now, some people go, Oh, wow, that sounds really strange. My church grew to love it, and they began to make fun of me—they’d quote it. Other people to get out and be like, “The Bible is a book of many smaller books.” But when we heard people new to faith coming, they'd say, “You know, when I came, I just breathed a sigh of relief because you explained everything. I realized I didn't have to know everything.” And that applies to everything that we do. “There's a Bible study at Kristin’s house. Kristin’s a member of our church. Now, if you don't know where that is, grab me after the service and I'll help you find it.” It’s always acknowledging what's going on. “We're meeting in the foyer. That's that big space at the back of the building.” Now, again, it can get tedious. When I did this workshop at INSPIRE, we were brainstorming this, one of the things that I said, I said, Listen, the Army has a ton of language—you're not going to get rid of it overnight, you could spend all day explaining everything. Maybe you have a little glossary at the back. Maybe you have a little handout that says, “New to The Salvation Army? Here's some of the terms we use.” Someone came up with that suggestion. So there's lots of creative ways you can think about recognizing what people might need help with. So again, it's that shift from insider language. One tip is, again, any sentence that starts with, “We all know that”—just avoid it. And to me, that's hospitality. All of our churches have lots of traditions, lots of things. And I don't think that means that you have to throw all those things out. No one's saying to just get rid of it all—I'm not saying that. We're saying, make a space for people who don't understand. And sometimes it can be as simple as saying at the beginning of the service, that you may not understand everything we say today—maybe you're new to church or this tradition. If you have any questions, just ask me after the service. I mean, that just covers all your bases, right?

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, you're making it OK for people to not know and to feel comfortable asking questions. Yeah, but one of the things you mentioned, of course, was materials—and I think you mean sort of physical materials, like handouts. Or can you explain a little bit more about what kinds of materials would help people feel welcome?

Leanne Friesen  

Take a look through your bulletin. Do you use acronyms? If you use an acronym, change it to the full word. Look for things like, oh, it says the location, it says someone's house or it says a night or it says a room or a spot, like, “We all meet in the fellowship hall”—putting the brackets where the fellowship hall is. Or add, “Here's who to ask, if you don't know who that is.” So, you can just go through and very quickly see those things. So, that's why I invite people to think about the materials—what are you handing out? So, what's on your website, what's happening when you walk in the building, what needs to happen in the space, what's going on with the things you're handing out. And of course, the last one that I mentioned was just the culture of the church. And that can be a hard one to undo because some churches are naturally welcoming. And some churches will say they want to be welcoming, but they just actually want new people to come and do things their way and the way it's always been done, and just prop up the ministries that they're already doing. And so, we really need to ask ourselves, if we actually are open to new people. And what that means is not just, oh, great, some new people will come and bring kids so we have a Sunday school again, because I like having kids in church. But are you OK If the new people come and things are a little bit different? What about if they sit in your seat? What about if they sit on a leadership group or a ministry that you're part of? What about if they have new ideas? What about if it changes the dynamics of the relationships? What about if you don't know everyone's name anymore and you look around and you go, I don't know everybody here anymore? That's when we need to start looking at the broader question of the culture we've created in our church. We have to start shifting to a culture that's not—if we genuinely want new people. To be fair, maybe your church doesn't want new people? I would challenge you on that. But you know, you have to first admit that maybe you do want new people, and you'd like to have that space. And then it becomes a matter of, are we actually just trying to do this for ourselves? Or do we care about what's going on outside? And so the culture shifts. And there's a couple of examples I can think of around that. About halfway through my time at the church, we did a renovation. And of course, that's a big undertaking—you spend a lot of money, you care about it. And we had renovated our sanctuary, we'd had these old, the building we bought was an old, kind of rundown Anglican building. So old wooden red pews, needed updating for a long time, and we put in these lovely chairs that were more versatile. And so, I was walking through one day, and that ladies Bible study was meeting—they moved up to our building to that point. And as I was walking through, this lady said to me, right after the renovations, bless her heart, she said, “Leanne, I have to tell you something: you keep forgetting to tell everyone not to bring their coffee into the building on Sunday mornings on the new chairs”—which was an adorable statement. “You keep forgetting not to tell people to bring coffee on the new chairs.” Well, there was a lot of assumptions there. The assumption was that we were going to tell people, so she assumed that. now our church was very relaxed, And we had an ethos of saying, Sure, if you want to bring a coffee, bring a coffee. And so, I immediately stopped what I was doing, I sat down and I said, “I'm not going to do that. I don't have any intentions. I haven't forgotten. We're actually OK if people bring coffee into the new space.” “Oh, but the new chairs.” I said, “I know that they might get stained.” I said, “But we've decided that someone feeling welcome when they walk into church is more important than protecting a chair. That's the decision we've made as a church, because,” I said, “if you just go to Tim Hortons, and you buy this big coffee, and you walk in, and as soon as you walk in, the first thing someone says is, oh, sorry, you got to throw out your coffee. You can't bring it in.” I said, “How do you feel?” And she goes, “Well, probably a bit embarrassed.” “We don't want people to feel that, do we?” “No.” “So if they come and they spill on a chair, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? We'll clean it. [laughs] You know, maybe there'll be a bit of a stain.” But I said, “That's the decision we’ve made.” And you know, that made sense to her as we talked more. But that's a different culture. You know, it's funny, I wrote a blog about this at one point, and this one woman commented—I have no idea who she was, it was an anonymous person. She said, “Well, I'm sorry, you're wrong. New people don't want to hear people slurping coffee behind them during worship.” But I think it's safe to say she wasn't talking about new people. She was talking about herself, right? Because I don't think new people often, if they're brand new to church, as funny as it can sound—I'm not making some hill to die on with coffee here—in the number of years that we had new people join our church, the first thing they would say, when I'd say, oh, you know, what made you feel welcome? They’d go, I was allowed to bring my coffee, which I think is hilarious. I was like, what a small thing. Now, maybe that will be your church's culture, maybe it won't. But it's a shift of culture. For us, it was a shift to say: this person feeling welcome matters more than protecting a certain space in a certain way. Now, again, I'm not saying that won't work for every congregation. But think about what that looks like in your congregation, to create that culture that says: You belong here. We're glad you're here.

Kristin Ostensen  

Absolutely. And speaking of your blog, I was reading one of your blog posts on this topic, and you encourage churches to relax about things that don't matter that much. And I wonder if some churches might hesitate to try new things because they're afraid of accidentally relaxing about the things that do matter—which is fair. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how churches can figure out what those things are. How do you balance trying new things, while holding on to the things and the traditions that do matter?

Leanne Friesen  

Well, my personal opinion is that you don't do everything all at once. I think practically, you know, if you are trying something, you can try one thing at a, like, you don't need to go in tomorrow and, all of a sudden, you're doing worship differently, you're getting your announcements and things different. You know, you can start with: we edited the bulletin, how did that go? Oh, that was a nice shift. We can start with: I'm going to start speaking a little different from the front on Sunday. You know, that acknowledgement of, hey, if you're new this week, here's what you need. And always being open to feedback as you go along. And again, as you're listening to the feedback then, but the question is, is the feedback about what made them uncomfortable, or was it actually an issue of ecclesiology? And ecclesiology being the theology of the church. So, a woman saying, “I don't like someone drinking coffee” is very different than, “What does it say about worship if we're drinking coffee during worship?” And those are different questions. So, to me, the second question is a valuable question. Someone saying, “I just don't like it if someone's drinking coffee around me,” is not a question of, what does it mean for us, about what God has for us as a church? That's someone who needs to work through their personal preferences. I will be honest that I'm a big fan of experimenting and trying things, right? So I love the word “experiment.” So I often say to people, just try it for a month and see how it goes. And then you're not asking people to commit forever, you're not panicking them. But the other piece is also helping people understand why you're doing it. And so if you're going to do these things, and you're in a pastoral role, you got to make spaces for those conversations, like I had with that woman about the coffee. And being gentle and kind and not just, We're trying to do a new thing—don't you care about new people? Acknowledging that for them it comes with loss and grief sometimes, often fear. Why isn’t church what it used to be? But this is where I think education helps as well. And so, we also need to be aware that the realities of church have changed so dramatically in the lifetime of many of our congregants. And so, some of us may be familiar with the idea of the “nones and dones.” So, “nones” are people who identify as no religion. And in Canada's most recent census data, 2021, I want to say it's 34.7% of Canadians identify as no religion, and that's an over 20% increase in the last 20 years. The fastest growing religion in Canada is no religion, is saying I'm nothing. So we've got to think that we've got people in our church that grew up with, well, on Sunday, should go to church and that's the right thing to do. And we're just going to tell my kids that it's the right thing to do. And when they have their kids, they'll bring their kids back because it's the right thing to do. And that era is done, it's gone. And the era where people come in, and they understand church, or they have a base of Bible stories—if they haven't grown up in church, that era is gone. Because most people, more than likely, if they're brand new, they are in a place where this is something that they have little understanding about. I actually probably should make clear that when I'm talking about “hospitable,” as a church, I'm not talking about being hospitable so you can steal Christians from other churches. If there's someone who is new to a city, or they're in a situation where they need a different church, of course, you want to be kind and gracious to them. And if that's what God has for them, yes, show them hospitality, of course. But often, we forget that hospitality, as the Bible defines it, is hospitality to the stranger. And the stranger, in our context, will be the person often who is strange to faith. And by that we mean, they don't know much about it; it's new. And so if they're brave enough to show up at your church building, I think we have a responsibility to the kingdom to care well for that, to nurture that, to say, “What a gift has been entrusted to us.” And I did see it in our congregation, that the more we did this, the more new people came, and I almost picture God going, OK, let me nudge you to this church. And we were far from perfect—far, far from perfect. There's so many areas we could grow, so many terrible moments that we had. But ultimately, our task is to say, “God, this person's come in the door—what a gift you've entrusted us with. This precious soul, this precious life that needs you has shown up in our church—that’s incredible. How are we going to steward that well? How will we do what God has called us to well? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Well, for churches that are looking to try new things and become more welcoming, what would you say is a good first step?

Leanne Friesen  

Honestly, I think that what said initially: get your leadership team together and do an experiment. Be like, OK, we're all going to show up on Sunday and we're going to walk, we're all going to show up one evening and we're going to walk through the church, and we're going to ask ourselves the questions. And start with the low-hanging fruit, by which I mean the easy ones. Is there no sign for the bathroom? Put up a sign saying where the washroom is. It not clear what door to use? Put up a sign saying what door to use. So, start with the things that are really manageable. And as I said, if you feel really brave, you know, get someone to be like a secret shopper. And I think that's—and this is such a fun way to engage your neighbourhood, to say to one of your friends, Would you come to my church one Sunday? You never have to come again. And would you just tell me your experience? What a way to say you're open to learn! And then bring them back to be like, tell us what was it like when you came. Don't tell your board you're doing it, don't tell anyone else. Just let them have at it and learn from that. So those are easy places to start. And as you start making changes, remember to be open to explain why you're doing what you're doing. I have a handout to walk through this process that I've shared with lots of people through the years that you can do with a church leadership, whatever that particular group may be called in your church. And I'd be happy to share you that if you want to put that in the show notes as well. 

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah, I would love that.

Leanne Friesen  

And it's just a way to ask yourself the questions. When I did this workshop at the Congress, what moved me was there was a great turnout—I did it to a full room. And everyone was excited. You could feel the energy in the room, and I was like, everyone cared, right? No one was like, Yeah, we don't care about new people. It doesn't matter. Right? They were like, yeah, no, we care. And I actually think most of our churches care, which is good news.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing all this extremely helpful, very thought-provoking information with us. It's really been a pleasure to meet you and talk with you.

Leanne Friesen  

Thank you. I hope it's been helpful.

Kristin Ostensen  

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. If you want to learn more about Leanne’s work on this topic, you can find a link to her website in the show notes, along with information about her new book, which is called Grieving Room: Making Space for All the Hard Things after Death and Loss. For more episodes of the Salvationist podcast, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.