Stuff Christians Like

I grew up outside of "the church" and Christianity for the most part. Having lived my entire childhood, adolescence, teenage, and early adult years in blissful ignorance of the Christian subculture around me, it seems that missed out on a lot of the collective awkwardness of growing up in church. Having been in churches for about 8-9 years now, however, I like to think I've got some experiences under my belt.

While I take my relatively newfound faith in God very seriously, its only by being diligent enough to differentiate between His truth and the ramblings and trends of His well intentioned but sometimes completely off-the-wall followers. Christian church culture, therefore, is fair game for open mockery...

In celebration of said subculture, I discovered that a new blog has emerged, in classic form, by ripping off the idea of another blog. Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce you to our new favorite, slightly sarcastic blog, Stuff Christians Like. [click on the link already]

Were I to add my own post to the already long list, it would be this:

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STUFF CHRISTIANS LIKE
#1000 Greeters:

At some point in every church's history, someone expressed the concern that new people may not feel welcome. So the position of 'greeter' was born. Much like the greeters at Walmart, greeters sole responsibility is to say hello and make you feel more welcome, and answer any questions. Unlike Walmart, there isn't an ulterior motive involving a statistical reduction in shoplifting, but just a genuine hope that their greeting will put you at ease and help you feel comfortable, and a desire to demonstrate some level of love, respect, and helpfulness toward everyone who walks through the door. In that respect, I can get behind the greeting thing.

However, some churches take this position to extremes. By using the position of greeter as the default "getting plugged in" ministry, and apparently taking the position that "more is better", they have literally lined the entries with greeters, so that walking into a church is more like running out onto the field at the Superbowl! We've been to a few where you literally shake hands and say hello to 8-10 official greeters before finally making it inside... Sometimes they even fan out into the parking lot (and I'm not even talking about the people directing traffic)!

Unfortunately, although its good to see a people getting involved, when it comes to somewhat canned greetings and forced smiles (which you just can't help when saying hello to hundreds of people), I have a limit of about 2-3 greetings before it quickly goes from "making me feel welcomed" to "creeping me out". At the churches we've gone to regularly in the past, we usually have one at each door, so you say hello to a max of two designated greeters. I don't know if that's by design or we just go to particularly unfriendly churches, but I like it.