Parakalein

Just about every religious group that I know, have visited or been part of over the last 50 years have a sign out front that says a number of versions of this statement:

All Are Welcome!

Everyone is Welcome!

There is A Welcome Here for You.

Why is it then that few people feel welcome.  I recall the first church I pastored in CT was located within half a mile of a University that was alive with students learners and seekers of truth.  When I asked the board at the interview what hey had down to make students feel welcome they respond,
"We chose this piece of property to build our church on so they would know we care and that they are welcome here".  To this day I find this surprisingly predictable.  Welcome is both a noun and a verb.  It is something I am and something I do.  When I suggested that we go on the campus with a epic presentation entitled "Cry 3" which was a creative multimedia production on three screens simultaneously showing pictures of "Despair, Fear and Hope", they agreed.  After the showing, we began a college ministry and within weeks had 20 students in attendance.  We went to where they were, gave them a sense that they were welcome her and that we cared in an active and proactive way, soon they were coming to church.  They came not because of the preaching or the church's identity but because they felt welcome.

I was recently on Cape Cod and a church there had cancelled their early service in favor of cheering on Bicyclists’ who were in the Pan Mass Challenge which  is the largest single charity fund raising event in the USA.  They raised nearly $50,000,000.00 dollars/funds for cancer research and treatment.

It reminded me that when I pastured a church in Albany NY several years ago we gave water to runners as the marathon course came by our churches front door.  One runner was so impressed that we were out there creating a sense of welcome that he actually came into a service the next week in sneakers and shorts and running shirt, to see if he would be welcomed.  He, though dressed differently than any other person in the church that day, felt welcome.

The IFS model provides a model for churches to become more serious about doing what they are saying.  In other words creating a sense of welcome for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, sociological-economic position, political posture, personal habits, sexual preferences, level of neatness, need to control, entitled or excluded, even regardless of faith orientation or the lack of it.  Imagine if regardless of anything people really felt welcome.  The principle of Welcoming all parts has helped me to help the United Church of Christ and its leadership to identify more and more ways in which by welcome here to fore excluded people who engage in certain excluding practices are now thankfully welcome.  The church is to be a place of inclusivity, of “judgment free zone” the essence of which is to welcome all parts.  Really!  To welcome them so that hey can in the presence of light and love be released form their burdens and freed to live life in the most abundant way.  Which are the words of Jesus, Rumi, Buddha etc.

In a unique way, I have become the IFS Guy at AAMFT Conferences, at Social Work Conferences, and Clergy groups, and at the New York City marathon where for the last 27 years I have led a Worship Service that is progressively designed particularly influenced in the last 10 years by the IFS “All are Welcome” model: into what Thich Nhat Hanh calls an “Interbeing-Interfaith Experience”  It began as a service "for runners by runners”. It was not the church doing something and asking the worshipper to fit into a mold or structure of Worship.  It was the Worshipper creating a mold and model into which he and she felt welcome.  One Worshipper lsat year commented on the welcoming nature, the connectivity of the service, and the energy of oneness:  "This is the way the church needs to be". Not done for them but by them. In Thich Nhat Hanh's book "Living Buddha, Living Christ" there is congruity of thought and teaching and a "We are one" orientation that is refreshing. This is the IFS Way and I think more and more the Jesus, the Buddha, the  _______, Way.

Jon Lennon wrote over 50 years ago, Imagine

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/imagine.html#.VeKXeEdy5Nk.email

The World Lennon imagined is a world we have the tools to help happen, the energy to assist in the happening, and the resources necessary for it to happen.

In the “Gloria Patri” sung in many a Christian Church in every Worship Service we have the words that point to the divine welcome of all parts and to the divine internal redemptive resources, energy and tools to assist it happening:

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost,

As it was in the beginning (All in balance, all in peace and harmony, all welcome and cared for) even now and ever shall be, World without end, Amen, Amen.

So shall it one day be, that, the Way it was in the beginning, will become the way it shall be. The only world that is “without end” is the world “with” balance, grace, truth, and redemption. It is the world where all are welcome.