Now I know what it feels like…

…for a person with no church background or experience to visit a church for the first time!

I was visiting one of my fellow church planters in a different city yesterday. He’s done an absolutely amazing job of building relationships within the community — so much so that he has people coming up to him and asking when they can come visit his church (they launch worship later this fall).

Anyway, one of his community connections was with the local Kiwanis group. Now, I’ve heard of the Kiwanis, but had very little idea of what they actually do. Sadly, after spending an hour at one of their meetings, I still had no idea of what they were about.

What I did experience was a set of unfamiliar routines, rituals and language. I was more than a little surpised when, after the pledge of allegiance, they pulled out the Kiwanis songbook and we started singing (acappella!) some tunes from the 1950s.

Pretty soon people were standing up and fining each other — dropping $1 bills into a bucket. Later on, the same thing happened with things called “happy dollars” and “sad dollars.”

Early in the meeting, the President set a few pieces of chiclet-type gum in front of each person’s placemat. Later in the meeting she began to call out those in the room who had a green chiclet in front of them. I looked down at my own chiclet and saw that it was, indeed, green! Now, I’m a pretty outgoing guy, but I was definitely hoping that I would not have to participate in whatever green-chiclet ritual was about to happen next. (Wisely, they knew I was a guest and skipped over me.)

The whole meeting was filled with jargon — from the roles of the different officers to the names of other groups (something called the Kee-Wins?). Only once did the youngest member of the group (and the only other person in the room under the age of 50) attempt to explain these terms for my benefit.

The point of this post isn’t to pick on the Kiwanis Club. I asked my friend after the meeting, and the group really does some good work in the community.

What I learned is how easy it is to exist as part of a sub-culture that is completely foreign to outsiders. And all of that made me wonder how much we do the same thing at my church. We want to be sensitive here, but it takes a lot of conscious energy and effort to avoid becoming a subculture — even a friendly one that has a very real, very needed role in our community.

So, thanks to the Kiwanis, and to my friend, for opening my eyes to how the unchurched see my church.

The Now I know what it feels like… by Church Planting Journey, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.