“THE Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost is an extraordinary poem. In a deceptively simple narrative style, it relates the discussion between a farmer and his wife over whether to offer shelter to the itinerant labourer whose work has been somewhat unsatisfactory in the past.
Silas has arrived at their doorstep, “a miserable sight — and frightening too”. Warren is unwilling to offer him employment again, but Mary’s kind heart won’t allow him to turn away a man who has “nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope”. She believes that he has “come home to die”, which feeling gives rise to the well known phrases: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there They have to take you in,” and “I should have called it Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.” Warren is persuaded to offer Silas work in order to keep his pride, but this offer is redundant: Silas, worn out by life and aware of reaching sanctuary at last, has died.
In a strange, lyrical way, this poem sums up the joy and the challenge of the “welcoming church”: the grace-filled obligation to accept in Jesus’s name every person who seeks entry to the worshipping community, no matter who they are or what they might believe. Every church leader, I suspect, secretly prides themselves on their welcoming attitude to stranger and seasoned churchgoer alike, and, if we are occasionally troubled by a feeling that perhaps not everyone feels instantly “at home”, then how easy it is to reassure ourselves that the fault lies, if not with the congregation, then certainly with one or two trickier members of it.
Enter the mystery worshipper — the offspring of the Ship of Fools website, begun in 1998 and still operating today. In this project, “volunteers are invited to take part in church services worldwide, from Singapore to San Francisco, from Brisbane to Bombay, to file a first-timer’s impression of how it was to be in church that day.” The aim is to “help churches get better at what they do”, using honest reporting from a visitor’s point of view.
This concept has been taken a step further by Lichfield diocese, which took part in a trial for the Everybody Welcome training programme for churches. A team of trained mystery worshippers were invited by churches to visit them “as strangers” and report on the welcome that they received. Armed with an extensive questionnaire, covering many different aspects of welcome, the mystery worshipper would report back to the host church on their experience. Since its beginning in 2008, more than 200 churches in the Lichfield diocese have been visited.
The pandemic naturally put a pause on such events, but Richard Barrett, the executive assistant to the mission team, has been part of the project since its inception and remains enthusiastic about its benefits. He reminded me that the mystery-worshipper scheme is only a part of the Everybody Welcome project, a broader all-member programme, complete with workbooks and course guidelines.
The Everybody Welcome website www.everybodywelcome.org contains links to guidelines and questionnaires for this project, but it doesn’t have to be this complicated. One of the most successful mystery-worshipper events that I led involved a small town congregation’s simply not holding the main morning worship one Sunday. Instead, the entire congregation was encouraged to visit a church that they had not been to before and to report back. More than 40 people did just this, reporting a mixture of interactions, from one young couple who were told to move seats not just once, but twice, to another person who was so enamoured of the service that they were in two minds whether to join that congregation.
This type of event approaches welcome from the opposite side from the Lichfield Project: instead of one person who visits a church and experiences the welcome, an entire community become “strangers”, bringing that experience to bear on their home church.
There were several outcomes from this exercise, many of which were practical, but the most valuable outcome was less tangible: an increased awareness among the whole church community of what it feels like to be a stranger in church. The sense of vulnerability, of uncertainty of welcome, and of relief if that welcome was forthcoming fed into a renewed determination to offer a genuine welcome to every person who arrived at the church door.
An exercise such as this might well develop into a willingness to embark on the lengthier and more demanding Everybody Welcome programme. Even if this doesn’t happen, a church might well experience a growth in understanding of the nature of church community, as well as the less worthy but none the less real delight in actually being authorised for once to seek out the speck in other people’s eyes rather than be made constantly aware of the log in one’s own.
The Revd Dr Sally Welch is the Vicar of the Kington Group in the diocese of Hereford.
