The Open Church: The Long Walk

The hardest moment in a church’s relationship with a new person isn’t getting them through the door.

It’s the Sunday two months later when they quietly stop coming and nobody quite knows why.

This happens constantly. A person comes forward, gets welcomed warmly, maybe fills out a card. And then they drift. Not because they had a bad experience. Not because they lost their faith. Because nobody in the building made them feel like they were known — specifically, personally, by name — and the pull of inertia is stronger than the pull of a community that doesn’t yet feel like theirs.

Growing up, my parents had a habit after Sunday service. They would find whoever was new — a face they didn’t recognize, someone standing a little off to the side — and they would talk them up. Get to know them. And almost always, somehow, those people ended up at lunch with us.

As a kid I just thought this was normal. You went to church, you met people, you went to lunch with strangers. It felt natural because my parents made it feel natural. What I didn’t understand then was that it was ministry. Nobody asked them to do it. The church didn’t have a program for it. It was just something they felt called to, and they answered that call every single Sunday without making a production of it.

My mother especially had a gift for it. She would take new people under her wing — not in an overwhelming way, just in the way of someone who genuinely wanted to know you. She would listen. Really listen. And she would pray for them, specifically, for the things they had told her. People remembered that. Some of them are still at that church.

That’s what the long walk looks like at its best. Not a process. A person.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: when the want is genuinely there, structure helps it go further. A simple system — knowing who came for the first time, following up within a day or two, keeping track of who came back and who didn’t — gives the people with that gift something to work with. It means the new face doesn’t get lost in a busy Sunday. It means my mother, if she missed someone that week, would know about it.

The nurturing still comes from the church. The structure just makes sure the church doesn’t accidentally let someone fall through.

The churches that hold onto people have usually named this honestly. They’ve said from the front: we are not good at this. People come here and we don’t always make sure they have someone to come back for. That kind of honesty, combined with some simple accountability — a few people whose job is to be a consistent presence for new faces, someone watching for who came back and who didn’t — is enough to change the pattern.

It doesn’t require a large staff. It requires people in the congregation who are genuinely gifted at making others feel at home, and the permission to do it with intention. Every church has them. The question is whether those people are being invited to exercise that gift the way my mother exercised hers — not as a program, but as a calling. The right tools just make sure that calling doesn’t go to waste.

Here’s what the long walk actually looks like in practice.

A phone call in the first 48 hours. Not from the church — from a person. Just: I’m glad you were there. Someone watching the door the following Sunday, looking for a familiar face, and when they see it, walking over. An invitation to something real — not an orientation class, but coffee, dinner, a Sunday lunch with people who actually want to know you.

And then staying with someone through the in-between — the stretch where they’re not quite new anymore but don’t yet feel like they belong, where most churches lose people because there’s no defined role for someone in that space.

My mother filled that space without a title or a talking point. She just showed up, asked questions, and prayed. It turns out that’s most of it.

That’s the open church. Not a building with the right systems, though systems help. A community of people who understand that bringing someone in is only the beginning, and that the real work is the long walk alongside.

It’s slower than a campaign. It outlasts any program. And when it takes root, it changes not just who stays but what the church means to the people already in it — because a congregation that makes room for strangers tends to rediscover why they’re there in the first place.

That’s worth building toward. That’s the whole point.

Richard Alvarez is the founder of Grow Congregations, a church growth platform built for churches that are ready to be found.