"Let me in, let me in!" (Does your church have an obvious plan to welcome others into its life?)

Few things are as intimidating for many people as just going to church.  Churches should do everything in their power to make it as easy as possible for people to start the journey.  It is a remarkable commitment for anyone to make in this era.  Imagine the frustration of being willing to behave in a completely counter-cultural manner and take church membership seriously only to find the whole thing maddeningly confusing.

Many churches have no obvious plan to guide people once they decide to attend church. Church leaders need a well-marked pathway to guide people from mere membership to meaningful servanthood.

Kinds of obstacles:
Insider thinking - The longer people are part of a congregation the more acclimated and entitled we become and the less we think about the terrifying risk others are taking trying to crack our code and get in.
Unhealthy ownership - A few people do all the ministry and really prefer it that way because it allows them to exercise control over the church, rather than to actually empower the body of Christ and consequently welcome God to bless and breathe life into His work.
False Assumptions - This would be expressed, "Oh everybody already knows that we have a nominating process and that we have needs.  They're just lazy and disinterested."  Everybody doesn't know how it works.  How can they unless they have been shown and told?

Ways to let people in:
Develop an intentional assimilation strategy - I hate to use the term assimilate because it reminds me a little of the Borgs on Star Trek, but there has to be a way to help people overcome the hazy fog that lies over the path to maturity and servanthood.  Here are some suggestions:

• Communicate the steps for membership in the bulletin and via projection each week and talk about it from the platform.
• Develop a new member orientation process that includes:
• Information about the local church and denomination distinctions, including a copy of a church covenant.
• The opportunity to learn to express a conversion testimony.  
• An understanding of Biblical membership requirements.
• A Spiritual gifts inventory (teaching on spiritual gifts).
• A printed instrument to connect new members to the ministries of the church.  This should be directly connected to what they have learned about spiritual gifts.  It should be understood that this will be shared with the nominating committee.
• A church leadership directory.
• Make the new member orientation mandatory.  Thom Rainer makes the case in his book High Expectations that people will usually respond positively when the bar is raised to require Biblical membership standards.  It increases church health.
• Make the New Member orientation process as accessible as possible.  A church might have the Membership class(es) as part of the small group study time.  It might also be done with a welcome meal on a Sunday afternoon.  
• Developing a new member training causes the church to think about its vision and values.  This is a healthy thing.  New members can see that the church leaders are being purposeful in leading the congregation to reach people and train them to follow Jesus.

Regularly communicate the church's plan to help people get in - The pathway to mature servanthood needs to be obvious and it needs to be constantly restated.  It needs to be publicly displayed and repeated again and again in every form of media the church uses: website, printed bulletins, newsletters, Facebook, email, sky writing. It has to become a part of the culture and has to be explained and retained.  It needs to be visually displayed and constantly referenced.

Conclusion - It should be understood that this is just an aspect of what it means to make membership intentional and meaningful.  This isn't new stuff, either.  Churches have been practicing this approach for a long time.  Years ago I cobbled together membership material from a variety of sources to develop a plan to help people get in.  With the advent of Google, there are nearly limitless opportunities to pilfer good ideas from other leaders.  When people make the commitment to become church members help them get their foot in the door.  This is good leadership.