This last weekend we all had to be on our A-game. It was the opening of church shopping season and churches were filled to the brim with prospective ‘buyers’. This was no Sunday for your b-grade team on the stage right?! This was no time for a vague under prepared sermon! This was time to shine and show your wares as you bid for the custom of these spiritual consumers! It started disastrously for us.

The set up crew at our church don’t understand the finer nuances of church culture at this time of year and decided to leave a few rows out at the back. The usual tardiness of regulars turning up late combined with church shoppers who did not want to sit anywhere near the front to cause a human traffic jam that would have gone amiss in a Bali market place.

As I surveyed the packed auditorium I couldn’t help but wonder just what we now stand to inherit. Long standing church members look on with a mixture of exitement and horror as they see the face of the church literally changing before them.  Those who are not in the business of establishing new friendships feel the greatest sense of disenfranchisement.

A certain percentage will be tyre kickers, and no matter how good our A-game was they will be moving on and doing the rounds in the coming weeks. If they come back you know they will stay. Used care salesmen despise tyre kickers. The Urban Dictionary defines tyre kickers as:

A prospective purchaser of a car who does not know what he or she is looking for when examining the car. From the pointless gesture of kicking the tyres often employed by such.

I don’t mind tyre kickers all that much. I don’t ever put on the hard sell, in fact I promote our fellow Baptist churches very well, extolling their virtues in a display of magnanimity which I’m sure is never reciprocated! You kinda know that tyre kickers are just kicking tyres. No purchase is intended, just kickin’. Once they’ve kicked enough tyres, they may just choose your church – but you’ll need to consider yourself lucky mind!

I’ve been in pastoral ministry long enough to know that a new family walking through your door will either prove to be a wonderful addition to your church through simply being people of great character who are a blessing just by breathing, without putting their hand up for any ‘ministry involvement’. At this time of year I struggle to keep an open mind, and to accept and embrace people no matter who they are and what baggage they bring with them. Some people come without any baggage at all. Some come with hand luggage and others with enough luggage to make even Paris Hilton blanch.

I find myself hoping that they are all functional, mature, self maintaining, all singing, all serving ministry material. I realise though that God may want someone dysfunctional and unlovable to come through the door so that we can love them, care for them, and help them back onto their feet. In my experience God gives us both, and if I’m honest I’m even a mixture of both.

Caring is costly. It may even cost you an alabaster jar of precious perfume or two…