May 28, 2008

Rep'in Your Church With Pride

Here's a little story for you.

The other day, I was in my local FedEx-Kinko's, where I spend a lot of time. Bruce was helping me ship some packages, and then an unnamed man came in, sporting a polo with a company logo. It's a big-time company that I do business with regularly, but I had never seen this man before.

He proceeded to hassle Bruce while he was helping me, and then he loudly complained that it would cost $7 to ship his package. This went on for probably 15 minutes as he loudly moved things around, sighed for an audience and complained some more. All in all, he made himself look like an idiot and was a jerk to Bruce from FedEx.

I'll never shop at my local [company where he worked] store. I will go out of my way to do business with them online or in the next town, and I will probably let whoever I deal with at the company know how he acted.

All that to say this: the things you do when you wear your church logo, write from an @yourchurch.org email account or say after letting people know what church you go to matter (OK, all that stuff matters period). That is church marketing, and you're going to fight an uphill battle if you don't represent your church proudly in your community.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 2:29 PM
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May 22, 2008

Church and High Gas Prices

Here's a thought: Maybe more folks will be in town over the summer for church because of the spike in gas prices.

At least that's what the Minneapolis Star Tribune is positing. Less road trips and flights due to high gas prices might mean more people around on Sunday mornings for services. So how will you reach folks who are feeling the pinch of high gas prices?

Well, some churches might consider raffling away gas. The church in the Star Tribune article encouraged folks to bike to church and added bike racks. Others have paid gas stations the difference to have volunteers pump gas at a discounted cost (and give a car wash to boot!). Some churches have even given away free gas (back when it was approaching $3/gallon).

Or you could preach a sermon about how expensive gas is, but we should fill up our souls at Heaven's pump for free.

At the very least, don't tone down your marketing efforts for the summer. Create experiences for the people who can't normally leave town; give them family activities to do without taking the long drive. Churches have a big opportunity as gas prices go up, how will your church use it?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:06 AM
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May 15, 2008

Little Tweaks, Big Gains

Tiny adjustments can make a big difference. Sometimes if you just slow down a little bit, you'll see big gains:

• American Airlines is saving $4 million by having their planes taxi with only one engine on.
• Southwest slowed its flights by one to three minutes and is saving $42 million.
• Con-Way Fright shaved 3 mph off the top speed of their trucks and saved $13.3 million and are only adding 20-30 minutes to shipments.

The obvious application for churches might be to drive the church bus slower, but I'm thinking bigger picture. Instead of focusing all your energy and effort on the big splash, focus on the little things. This should be encouraging advice for cash-, volunteer- and time-strapped churches that can't pull of the big splash. It's OK if you can't.

Instead, focus on the little things. Communicate consistently. Double-check your work. Greet people with a smile. These small steps will have a much bigger impact with less effort than any massive initiative you could launch. (links via 37Signals & thoughts)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:19 PM
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January 29, 2008

Lessons Learned: Being Banned From Church

by Brian Gaffney, Guest Blogger

The article "Banned from church" appeared on the front page of the "Weekend Journal" section of a recent Wall Street Journal. The piece is about churches that are reviving the "ancient" practice of shunning, or expelling members who are believed to be in deliberate conflict with the laws and leadership of their local church.

While I take issue with the story's tone that suggests that the church is more intimidating than inviting, when I looked more closely, I also found some useful lessons for becoming a more effective communicator for Christ:

Continue reading "Lessons Learned: Being Banned From Church"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:34 AM
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January 25, 2008

Seth Godin on Church Marketing

Scott Magdalein had the opportunity to ask blog marketing god Seth Godin three questions. Two of them were about church marketing. Although the questions and answers are somewhat basic and baseline, it's always interesting to get a peak inside the minds of "outsiders" with lots of wisdom.

Posted by Brad Abare at 11:28 AM
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January 22, 2008

(Not) Celebrating MLK Day

This is an open question to local churches everywhere, specifically predominantly-white congregations: Where were the MLK Day celebrations?

Firsthand, I heard of none*. A news search led me to the celebration of Willow Creek Community Church and Salem Baptist Church. The largely white Willow Creek and the largely black Salem Baptist joined together to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to promote unity.

This seems like a wonderful day to move towards breaking the "white church/black church" stereotype, and I'm not quite sure why more historically-white churches didn't follow suit with Willow Creek.

It provides great occasion to ask ourselves, what message are we sending to others not like ourselves?

Continue reading "(Not) Celebrating MLK Day"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 8:49 AM
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January 21, 2008

Jesus Billboard is an Eyesore

This is fun: A Minnesota newspaper does a story about the city cracking down on "eyesores" and the accompanying front-page photo features a billboard for a local church with "Jesus" in giant letters. The photo was meant to show the various billboards crowding Highway 22 (and it does--you can see six separate billboards in the photo), but more than a few folks took offense to Jesus being described as an eyesore.

So class, a few questions for discussion:

• Is this billboard an eyesore?
• Are billboards generally eyesores?
• Can a billboard be redeemed by Jesus? (Does putting Jesus on an ugly billboard make it less ugly?)
• How come no one complained about the cropping of the photo which rendered the url as: "www.jesusass"?
• Could your church's billboards (or bulletins or web sites or whatever) be labeled as eyesores (whether the medium or the design earns the label)?
• How would your church respond? (Not sure if Jesus Assembly of God has or will responded, but at least their billboard matches their web site and apparently their building.)
• How come none of these letters to the editor (save one) address church marketing issues? And what is all their complaining accomplishing? Is that the message of Christ--that we're easily offended? (As one blogger put it, "Let's get it straight: Defending the honor of a billboard that says 'Jesus' in eight-foot-high letters is more important than, well, gosh, just about anything else." Ouch.)

More than a few angles here, from a specific church doing marketing to how the Christian community responds. Break into groups and discuss. (link via Eyeteeth)

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 3:12 PM
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October 22, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: Looking Back

Many of you were with us through our entire series on Church From a Visitor's Perspective. Others of you haven't checked it out yet. For those of you who missed it, here's what we've been looking at the past few weeks.

Church from a Visitor's Perspective
A Visitor's Perspective: An Embarrassing Problem
A Visitor's Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox
A Visitor's Perspective: Watch your Language!
A Visitor's Perspective: Verbose Nomenclature
A Visitor's Perspective: I Must Be in the Front Row!
A Visitor's Perspective: One is the Loneliest Number
A Visitor's Perspective: A Visit from the Mystery Worshipper
A Visitor's Perspective: The Strangers Among Us

David Zimmerman, our guest blogger who penned this series, had some great lessons for us. As always, so did you, our readers. Here are a few of the many comments you guys added to the discussion ...

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: Looking Back"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:09 AM
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October 12, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: The Strangers Among Us

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 9 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

After all these articles on visiting churches, I have to confess what is probably obvious--I want to go to church, I love Jesus and I want to worship him with his people. Because of this bias I am much more forgiving when I attend a church than someone who is still investigating the gospel.

There is another perspective available to you, however. A couple months ago an independent Seattle newspaper (The Stranger) sent 31 reporters to different churches (OK, they weren’t all churches but they didn’t make the distinction). This article is an excellent read as we talk about church from a visitor’s perspective (although if you are offended by the “sucks” on this site, watch out!). It is one thing to hear my opinions as a visitor to a church but it’s a completely different perspective to hear it from self-avowed atheists.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: The Strangers Among Us"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:56 AM
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October 8, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: A Visit from the Mystery Worshipper

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 8 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

I don’t know if any of you share my experience, but I was introduced to Church Marketing Sucks from my favorite magazine--The Wittenberg Door. This magazine keeps me grounded in reality and reminds me that the church and I desperately need Jesus because we are so messed up. This same thing is true about another web site I heard about from The Door--Ship of Fools.

Whenever I visit the site, after checking the daily percent of rapture and shopping through the Gadgets for God, I make my way to the Mystery Worshipper. The Mystery Worshipper is a secret team of church-reviewers who visit churches all over the world. They have a standard set of questions that they ask of each church service--questions that I think all churches should constantly be asking of themselves. After all, most visitors will be asking these questions too.

How full was the building? If you’ve ever shown up early to a church with only a few members or shown up late to a church with too many people you know how the capacity of the building can make you feel about the service.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: A Visit from the Mystery Worshipper"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:33 AM
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October 4, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: One is the Loneliest Number

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 7 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

In my last article we left our church visitor trying to figure out where to sit. So far they have overcome the basic intimidation of coming to church in the first place and the apprehension of meeting a bunch of new people. If we can make it easier for them to find a good seat in our worship service, we will be doing them a favor by giving them one less thing to stress about.

If our visitor is lucky enough to arrive early they will have a good choice of seats, but the dilemma will not be any easier. Where will everyone else sit? You don’t want to be the only person sitting in a particular section. If you choose the wrong seat and everyone is sitting everywhere else, you will be immediately pointed out as a visitor--which is the kind of embarrassing situation you are trying to avoid in the first place.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: One is the Loneliest Number"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:00 AM
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October 1, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: I Must Be in the Front Row!

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 6 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

Imagine, if you will, entering the doors to a new church. Your apprehension is not calmed after being greeted by someone with a nametag designating them as a “greeter” and being handed a bulletin. You hesitate as you walk through the door--and for a moment consider bolting. By the grace of God you enter the room where the service will be and look over a sea of chairs. Which one will you pick?

For those of us who regularly attend church, this is no dilemma. We know where people sit and where they don’t. For someone who rarely attends church, this can make an already intimidating event downright scary.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: I Must Be in the Front Row!"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:24 AM
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September 25, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: Verbose Nomenclature

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 5 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

Besides ancient language we also exclude visitors with our Christian-ese. These are words almost exclusively used in Christian circles. These can include theological terms, religious words and various other words that are not found in our everyday vernacular.

Sometimes we are well meaning, but we use pious words that might exclude people by making them feel less righteous. “Bless” is one of those words. I am still shocked when someone tells me, “Have a blessed day.” I guess it feels like they are pointing out to me how good of a Christian they are--and implying that I am less pious than they.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: Verbose Nomenclature"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:17 AM
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September 20, 2007

What if Church was Fast, Fun & Friendly?

Brenton Balvin recently went to work for Target and noted that Target strives to be a 'fast, fun and friendly place to work and shop' and maybe churches need to be fast, fun and friendly.

In the light of our current series on church visitors these are great concepts to keep in mind:

• Fast - You'll probably accuse me of being too consumerist, but how many visitors can sit through a 45-minute sermon? I know I can't.
• Fun - Has church ever been fun? And would an outsider consider it fun?
• Friendly - We all think we're incredibly warm and friendly, but that's because you know everybody.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:53 AM
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September 19, 2007

A Visitor’s Perspective: Watch your Language!

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 4 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

Within a week or so of moving to the South, I had a flat tire. My roommate, who was from India, took me to a local garage to get the tire patched. Out of the shop walks a character right out of your strongest stereotype. In order to get at the screw piercing my tire the mechanic proceeded to bark some directions at me in a language I couldn’t understand. By the contorted expression on my face he concluded that I didn’t understand him, so he added some confusing gestures to his drawl. Only after my Indian roommate translated (English being his sixth language, not counting Southern Drawl) could I follow his directions. At that point I realized I was an outsider.

Few things make people feel like an outsider more than the language used around them. If this is true, how does the language we use in church make our visitors feel? To avoid excluding people we have to pay attention to verbose nomenclature that we use in our worship service--since this is the way most people are introduced to our church.

Continue reading "A Visitor’s Perspective: Watch your Language!"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:48 AM
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September 17, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 3 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post here to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

There’s a paradox when it comes to welcoming a visitor: on one hand, they want to anonymously investigate the church without pressure; on the other hand they don’t want to be ignored.

My wife and I were enjoying a church we had been visiting for a couple of weeks. Over that time the church allowed us to visit freely without making us standout as visitors. However, the only time anyone said “Hello” to us was when the whole church stood up to “pass the peace.” When we eventually tried to find a Sunday School class (or something) to connect with some other people, we couldn’t find anyone to ask. We eventually found a table in the lobby with a sign declaring it to be the “Welcome Table” but no one ever showed up. Even though we liked the church, we never returned.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 1:19 PM
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September 13, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: An Embarrassing Problem

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 2 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

What do you think is the most pressing issue for a first time visitor to your church? The doctrine? Now I am a doctrinal stickler, but I’m realistic enough to realize that most visitors don’t care much about this. The music style? Good music can give a great first impression--whether traditional or contemporary--but most visitors will just sing along with whatever you have. The sermon? While a sermon could definitely cause people to leave a church, I don’t think this is the most pressing issue for a first-time visitor. First-time visitors care most about not embarrassing themselves.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: An Embarrassing Problem"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:24 AM
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September 11, 2007

Church from a Visitor's Perspective

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 1 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective.

Here's a little of my back-story: I was a church planter for a number of years, trying to plant a rather contemporary church for a very traditional denomination. After a couple of years of hard work and a shift in the powers that be, my mother church decided to close my work down.

After this I found myself in an unusual position--for the first time in years I was being welcomed into a church rather than welcoming people into church. Unable to shake my church-planting mentality, I was particularly sensitive to the way churches approached visitors. After visiting a few different churches, I started to realize something: many churches have forgotten what it's like to go to a church for the first time.

Continue reading "Church from a Visitor's Perspective"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:52 AM
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September 5, 2007

Skipping Summer Sundays?

An interesting story came to me via Slice of Laodicea about how one church handles their summer services.

For June, July and August, the San Francisco Journey moved to a once-monthly service schedule. You've told us before that there's no momentum at your church in the summer. Do you think switching to a monthly service schedule would help? Would it build momentum and excitement, or would it just afford an opportunity for people to fall away?

Overall, I just wanted to point out how one church deals with creating summer momentum. Some do more church, others do different ways of church, and someone thinks less church is the way to go. Hey, I'll bet their September 23rd kickoff will be pretty buzzworthy. What do you think, church marketers?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 1:39 PM
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July 13, 2007

Contagious Joy, Use It

"When hundreds of you come flooding out of the church after services every weekend, your heads are high, your shoulders are back and your enthusiasm is obvious. Take that same joy and energy and put it into the community."

These were the words spoken by a member of the local city council in the community where our church is located. The small group my wife Jamaica and I are a part of attended last night's city council meeting to present a preliminary proposal for portable shower stations that could be strategically placed around the city as a courtesy to the local homeless population; a city with one of the highest concentration of homeless in Los Angeles county.

Continue reading "Contagious Joy, Use It"

Posted by Brad Abare at 7:40 AM
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June 20, 2007

8 (Or So) Questions About Your Church Signage

by Brenton Balvin, Guest Blogger

When I was 10 years old there was a song by Tesla that was rocking the airwaves called "Signs." All my friends and I loved the song. You are probably thinking of the chorus right now...

Signs Signs everywhere there's signs Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind Do this, don't do that, Can't you read the sign

Continue reading "8 (Or So) Questions About Your Church Signage"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 9:50 AM
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June 11, 2007

Making A Good Impression

In lieu of a strikingly original and intensely thought-provoking original work of art, I wanted to give a little link love to an interesting post from Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight. He discusses first impressions in the realm of both web visits and brick-and-mortar visits.

Continue reading "Making A Good Impression"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:11 AM
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April 12, 2007

WikiChurch

There's been a little experiment going on over at the Swerve blog. They advertised a project to improve Wikipedia's article on church planting. This was of particular interest to me.

I've been frustrated for awhile at the lack of quality in church Wikipedia articles. Essentially, Church Wikipedia-ing Sucks. (Hmm ... sister site?) I'd checked out the quality of Wikipedia articles for various well-known churches in my area and in the states as a whole. It's not pretty. So I thought I'd outline a few things from a Wikipedia amateur that your church can think about.

Continue reading "WikiChurch"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:29 AM
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April 2, 2007

Understanding Attack Blogs

by Bill Seaver, Guest Blogger

There's a new and unfortunate trend in church disputes that you've likely heard of by now: the attack blog. Attack blogs are most commonly established by members within the church who take issue with some aspect of the church leadership or direction. In some cases, the attacks come from outside the church, like in Mark Driscoll's case last fall, but the majority of cases seem to be from within.

I personally know of four churches that are dealing with this to some degree right now. Here are two examples from Bellevue Baptist in Memphis, Tenn. (these are not blogs in the purest sense of the word but are text-only web sites that serve the same purpose).

The issues that prompt the attacks vary, but in each case the church is under fire from a small group of individuals who disagree with the leadership (either the pastor himself or the leadership as a whole). Also, in every case the churches had no idea what hit them.

Continue reading "Understanding Attack Blogs"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:53 AM
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March 28, 2007

The Problem with Potlucks

The potluck dinner is a staple in many churches, but that doesn't mean it's good. A longtime friend of mine (we bonded over Petra) has been blogging about food and condemned the potluck, pointing to the message it sends:

If food is relational what are we saying to our friends and neighbors when we invite them to church and offer them overdone Mostacholi à la bland with a side of 15 layer Jell-o dessert? Are there no cooks in the House, are we without culinary prowess?

Check out his entries on food being relational and spiritual for a little more context.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:38 AM
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February 28, 2007

Battling Frumpiness in the Pulpit

She could have called the site Church Fashion Sucks. But Beauty Tips for Ministers works, too. Victoria Weinstein, a Unitarian Universalist minister who goes by the handle PeaceBang, launched the fashion blog to encourage the "defrumpification of the American clergy."

Weinstein makes it clear in a recent Boston Globe story that fashion isn't the greatest concern for clergy, but it still matters:

"Anyone who is in a position of leadership has to consider what image they're projecting, and that goes for clergy too," she said. "The problem with frumpiness isn't so much aesthetic as it is a problem of looking as though you are not paying attention to the world and that you are not part of today's world ... They will not be willing to hear us in the same way if we look like we walked out of 1972."

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:50 AM
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January 25, 2007

First Impressions: Presentation vs. Promotion

by Brenton Balvin, Guest Blogger

A friend from church has been sporadically carrying on a conversation with me about first impressions. He knows that I am a big first impressions guy and he positions himself somewhat antagonistically as someone who cares more about what is happening in the hearts of the people at church than what happens in the parking lot or with the font on the church bulletin. Unfortunately we can't seem to come to any reconciliation despite my contention that good first impressions and the authenticity of church attenders are complementary and not contradictory.

Bob Franquiz seems to echo my convictions in his book review of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Continue reading "First Impressions: Presentation vs. Promotion"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 2:25 PM
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September 14, 2006

When Church Signs Suck

by Joel Bezaire, Guest Blogger

One of the first impressions that a church gives a passer-by is its church sign or marquee. In recent years, it has become chic for churches to quote presumably pithy sayings on these church signs. It is my assessment that most of these church signs "suck" (by CMS' definition of the word), especially when taking the "Church Marketing" perspective. What follows, then, is a Top Ten List (of sorts) that outlines when church signs suck.

1. When a church sign makes its author seem smarter than or superior to the reader, it sucks. What potentially new parishioner wants to attend a church that humiliates those that read its sign? Example: "It's a new year, why don't you do something new: go to church."

Continue reading "When Church Signs Suck"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 6:02 AM
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August 9, 2006

What's Broken in Church?

Watch Seth Godin riff on what's broken (watching a Seth Godin riff is as good as reading one!). It all comes from the site This is Broken, which has loads more great examples. Seth offers up a few reasons why things may be broken:

1. Not my job - It wasn't someone's job to fix it, so they didn't.
2. I didn't know - Someone didn't know it was even broken, which is probably the scariest (do you use your own stuff?).
3. I'm not a fish - The person who designed it never uses it.
4. Broken on purpose - This is kind of the odd category for something that's supposed to be broken.

So what's broken in church?

Continue reading "What's Broken in Church?"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 3:16 PM
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August 25, 2005

Attracting a Crowd to Your Church

The latest issue of Rev magazine has an article from Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan of Granger Community Church in Granger, Ind. adapted from their book Simply Strategic Growth. The article includes a number of ideas for drawing crowds to your church, including:

• Address specific needs. Like marriages, raising families, money, fulfillment, etc.
• Entertain people. I can hear the gasps at this one, but they make a good argument.
• Make children a priority. Granger is well known for their incredible children's ministry. Sponge Bob would be jealous.
• Raise the energy level of worship. Though I have to disagree with their suggestion to turn up the volume. Background music that's too loud puts me on edge and hinders my ability to converse.
• Give people hope. Grace, not condemnation. People should leave challenged, but encouraged.

And the idea I find most intersting: offer multiple services regardless of how full your church is.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 11:39 AM
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August 12, 2005

Integrating Visitors into Your Church

There's been plenty of discussion on our Reasons to Use Direct Mail post. One of the comments hinted at some research about visitors and I followed up with the commenter, Alex, to get the stats. He sent me the link to an Assimilation Study done by Mission Portland. (I hate the word assimilation. It just reminds me of the Borg. I prefer integration.) The study looked at 15 Portland area churches in 2000 that combined account for nearly 10% of the worship service attendance in Portland. It's a fascinating read, but here's a few of the juicy bits:

• Over 70% of visitors come to church because of a personal invitation. We've heard similar stats before, but it's always good to hear it again.
• Only 12% of first-time visitors will return the following week and eventually become members. This stat is from Herb Miller's 1997 book, How to Build a Magnetic Church. The study suggests that some congregations can get to 20 or 25% retention.
• Being intentional. It's obvious, but if you want to integrate new people into the life of your church you have to be intentional. You have to be intentionally bringing in new visitors, you have to make them feel welcome, and you have to follow-up. It takes a lot of effort, and if you do a halfway approach, it just won't work.
• Relational. People usually stuck with a church because they formed relationships. By far one of the best ministries for fostering relationships were small groups.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:59 AM
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June 29, 2005

I Want to Be With Your Spouse

This sounds ridiculous, but I don't think I have ever seen my pastor's wife with him in any service I have attended. I've been going for nearly three years. I have seen her, and I know what she looks like (I think), but I never see them together, not to mention brought up to say hi, greet people every once in a while, or stand next to him during worship.

I understand shy spouses, protective pastors and schedule conflicts. (I know my pastor's wife is the main church administrator so she is behind-the-scenes a lot.)

Regardless, your spouse should be seen—and recognized as being with you—if not regularly, occasionally. I don't have any fancy research to back this opinion up, but I think it would go a long way in promoting and fostering community.

Posted by Brad Abare at 10:43 AM
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