Through the Eyes of a Visitor

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I seldom get to attend any church but my own.  They say if it's your house (church, business, etc.) you can fail to see what's wrong right in front of you.  Recently, I had a broken gate at my house.  That's never good, but, it's really bad when you own a pool.  A solid gate is a must to keep anyone from wondering into your back yard at all times.  It was broken, and even though I noticed it, I didn't.  They say if you can ignore something for 14 days, you can ignore it forever.  It becomes invisible.  I'm pretty sure there's lots of invisible things at Crosspoint 
Church.  My hope was to be a real VISITOR and, hopefully, look at church through VISITOR EYES.  

 We did the whole nine yards.  If the church asked visitors to turn on their flashers, we turned them on.  Parked in the Visitor Parking.  Got the tour and took the mug home.  Let me share my experiences at two different churches, as well as my translation into "Visitor-ese".

 OBSERVATION:  The auditorium was only 10% full at the start of the Service
TRANSLATION:  "What goes on here isn't very important.  Otherwise people wouldn't be so 
                                  non-chalant about when they drag in.  Why did I get in such a hurry to get
                                  here?"

 OBSERVATION:  The guy in the Visitor Parking gave us an umbrella, walked us into the 
                                lobby, introduced us to the lady at the information desk who gave us 
                                information, a free gift and walked us to the auditorium door, showed us
                                where the restrooms were, answered any question we asked and handed us
                                off to the person at the door and handed us our program.  She told us if we 
                                like it loud to sit on the floor, not so loud, to sit in the balcony.
TRANSLATION:  "We were the most important people in the building!"

 OBSERVATION:  The pastor talked about how he didn't want to be known as a money-
                                grubbing preacher...then passed the buckets...followed by the Executive 
                                Pastor coming up and and taking up a second offering.
TRANSLATION:  "One of them is a money-grubbing preacher."

 OBSERVATION:  One church was predominately white-collar.  One was predominately blue-
                                collar.
TRANSLATION:  "Whichever I'm not, I don't belong there."

 OBSERVATION:  People were actively involved as participants in the singing portion of the 
                                service.
TRANSLATION:  "These people really believe this stuff.  They're serious.  It's kind of 
                                   contagious!"

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