Hello, I am a newcomer at your Church.

You cannot know the reason why I am here this morning. It may be as simple as a move to your community or as complicated as a personal crisis that leads me to seek strength from God. In either case, I am here. And I will remain here and come back to worship with you next Sunday and the Sunday after that, and the Sunday after that . . . if you will do some things for me. Won’t you please . . .

Smile at me during coffee hour. I know you want to see your friends and settle that piece of committee business. But I may find it hard to believe that you truly care for each other unless I first see evidence that you care for “stranger in your midst.”

Tell me good things about your church and your minister. I want to believe that I have come to a place where people love each other and where they believe that they are doing something exciting and important for the Lord.

Notice me even if I am not a “family.” I don’t want to feel invisible just because I am unmarried, a single parent, a teenager, or an older person.

Talk to me again the second week when I come back, and the third and the fourth. I am still not a part of your parish family. Please don’t feel you have “done your duty” by me, just because you made a point of greeting me the first week I was there.

Invite me to become a part of some church group or organization. I need more than worship every Sunday. I need to know that I am accepted and affirmed by a group of people within the church who know me by my first name and who care about me as an individual.

If you can find it in your heart do these things for me, I will come back . . . the second Sunday, the third, and maybe forever. I will worship with you, and I may join your choir, work at your fair, teach in your church school, contribute to your canvass, and become a highly involved member of your church, and, in doing so, I will find my own life immeasurably enriched.