A church that I used to attend got an idea for community outreach. They would hire a religious magician to perform at a church service. The magician had a magic act that illustrated Bible stories.

Everyone in church was told to invite their friends and neighbors. They thought that if they could get people to attend church for the first time, the people would continue to attend.

I wondered what they would do with someone who actually came to church for the first time. I was thinking that the church should have some sort of a small group orientation/bible study. When I asked the “what if someone comes” question, I was viewed as being negative. Oh well.

And sure enough, on the magician Sunday, as it was called, a family with no church background attended. And guess what? The church didn’t know what to do with them. And since the church did not have any idea what to do with the new family, they decided to sent them all to Sunday school.

Now, Sunday School may have seemed like a safe way to welcome new families, but it wasn’t. Unfortunately, the people of the church had been born and raised in the church and had no idea of how the church was perceived by others outside of the church.

Sunday school, for the visiting children, was not a warm and welcoming place. In fact, it could best be described as one giant clique. The visitors were not welcomed by the other students and were more or less ostracized. Likewise, the teachers did not want the disruption of new students in their classroom.

And the parents didn’t fair much better. They were given a cup of coffee and dumped into the adult Sunday school class.

Adult Sunday school was a cross between the assembly of the Sanhedrin and the Diet of Worms. And again, the family was not really welcomed. At best, they were tolerated and at worst, they were viewed as an annoyance. In an assemble whose sole purpose was to solve all of the theological issues of the world, there was no room for polite conversation.

Needless to say, the family did not return again. Hopefully, they found a nice church to attend.

The church could at least say that they made an effort at Evangelism.