I was blessed to have Dr. Elmer Towns teach two of my doctoral classes. One class was on prayer, and the other addressed doing ministry in the current age. One day in class Dr. Towns talked about the walls churches build. Many churches do not realize they have build walls around their churches. In most cases, they were not created to keep people out, but that is what they have done. As he discussed the walls he went around to each person in the class and asked them to give a number between 1 and 10 of how high the walls were around their churches. Some said their walls may have been about a 3 while others admitted to having walls that would be an 8 or 9 in their churches. Dr. Towns then encouraged us to identify the walls that are keeping people from our churches and to tear them down to build bridges into the communities God has given us to reach. From all the classes I've had in my lifetime that one has stood out as one of the most important in shaping how I view ministry.
We often hear churches promoted as the friendliest church in town. My experience in 14 years of doing judicatory ministry was that many of these churches were only friendly to its members. Many times I would visit a church and my wife and I would be ignored until the members found out who I was. Conversations would be going on all around me, but no one would speak to my wife and me until the pastor introduced us. I have no doubt that people who attended these churches as a first-time guest were treated the same. It was so bad I developed a workshop on church hospitality and offered to lead it to some of the churches I served. When we ignore people who visit our church it is a wall that sends a message to people that they are not welcome.
Another wall is built through some of the language we use in our sermons and Bible studies. Whether we mean to or not our words can tell listeners that some people are not welcome in our church. Some churches seem to major on attacking the world outside the church and persons or ideas with which they disagree. Young people in particular are very sensitive to that kind of language, and this approach to ministry builds a huge wall that keeps young people out of the church.
My wife and I experienced another type of wall when I was in the Navy. We were not Christians or attending church. My ship was in port for an extended time of overhaul when a neighbor invited us to her church. We attended one Sunday with our one-year-old daughter. Almost as soon as we sat down someone offered to take her to the nursery. She was not making a sound but sitting on my lap. We thanked them for their kind offer but said we would keep her with us. On three different occasions early in the service someone came to us and wanted to take her to the nursery. She had never made a sound the entire time, and I was getting very frustrated at a church we had never been in before wanting to separate us from our baby. We never returned to that church nor did we go to any church for years afterwards. Their actions created a huge wall between us and church for a long time.
These are just three of the examples of walls that can exist in a church. There are untold number of other walls found in churches. The fact of the matter is that your church has walls that are keeping people from attending your church. Even worse, some of those walls might be keeping people from a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Every church needs to identify what walls might exist in their church and find ways to remove them. It could take time because chances are these walls are invisible to those attending your church. You might begin by asking first-time guests who never returned to tell you why they didn't come back. Urge them to be honest with you and explain that their honesty will help you better minister to others in the future. You may find these walls to be deeply entrenched in the DNA of your church which will also make it difficult to tear it down. Until the walls are removed your church will be limited in its ability to minister to those in your community.
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