When my wife Patty accompanies me on a guest preaching engagement, she normally does not actually enter the church building with me. I try to arrive early enough that my hosts don’t worry whether I am going to make it and there are usually details about the service that they need to go over. There is no point having her hang around for that. More importantly, when the guest preacher’s wife arrives, people feel obligated to be hospitable to her and make a point of welcoming her. That kind of reception doesn’t say anything about how the congregation actually receives strangers. So Patty stays in the car reading, and enters a few minutes before worship as an anonymous stranger to the church. We both have an interest in finding out how, or indeed whether, the congregation actually welcomes new people to their church. We call this the Patty Test and we have done it for years.
A distressingly large percentage of the time, no one engages her beyond handing her a worship bulletin or hymnbook. If there is a fellowship time after worship, she quietly goes into the church hall and waits to be approached. She is frequently ignored. This happens even in churches that advertise themselves as “The Friendly Church” or claim, “You’re only a stranger here once!” Sometimes church members appear to be approaching her only to walk by with outstretched hand to someone they already know. “Tell me how your daughter is doing!” they say, while totally ignoring Patty. It probably is a friendly church… if they already know you. Patty tells me how the congregation fared on the test during the drive home and in certain cases, if I know the host minister well, I pass on the results.
Now, anyone who has met Patty will bear witness that she is herself a friendly, sociable person. There is nothing off – putting or unpleasant about her personality. I am convinced that the problem lies with the congregation more than with Patty. The Patty Test is like a blood pressure test; it is one indicator of the health of the church.
As I cross the country this year, I am constantly being approached by church members who are deeply and rightly concerned about the health of their congregations. They can look around them, add five or 10 years to the average age of their church membership and draw their own conclusions. They are ready, I think and hope, to do what is necessary to help their church regain its vitality. A number of these active Presbyterians will say to me some version of, “Is there any help for a congregation like ours?” Or they ask, “Are there any resources that could help us?”
I hope there are good programs out there and I am very sure that those of us who teach in theological colleges need to concentrate more on forming effective leaders who can help congregations that long for new life. But help is not only “somewhere out there.” It doesn’t take a program or a new minister to pass the Patty Test. Because in the end, the Patty Test is a small indicator of whether there is love in that church. In the time of persecution in the Roman Empire, it was recorded that unbelievers said of Christians, “See how they love one another.” They loved God, loved each other and lived that love in a way that even outsiders could see. And they flourished. It could happen again.
