“You’ve got to be kidding me”

What to do with visitors–lesson one!

Erin Lane's avatarholy hellions

photo (13)So, I’m working on my manuscript for a book on belonging, and I’m writing about the rituals of going to church from an outsider’s perspective. Because that’s what I felt like my first year at a new church: an outsider, a newcomer, a loner.

I’ve been thinking about ways we can make our faith communities more hospital to outsiders. Last week, I wrote a friend on staff at my church to ask,  “Why do we print the Apostles’ Creed in the bulletin but not the Lord’s Prayer?” It’s awkward enough for a Catholic like me to say “trespasses” in a sea full of “debtors” but how on earth is someone who’s never uttered an “Our Father” not supposed to feel like a total dunce when everyone’s reciting it as spot-on as a teacher’s pet?

Since I’ve been attending church for the last year without my husband, I’m also…

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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