Bathroom Evangelism
By Mike Zehnder
Sometimes
the lowliest of things can make a difference in mission.
Imagine
you're a guy going out on a blind date and you are meeting a gal for the first
time. It's been a while since you've been out on a date. You are very
apprehensive about dating someone you've never met - committing yourself to
being with someone you don't know for an entire evening - but your friends
insist she's worth checking out. Cautiously, and suspiciously, you agree.
You
arrive at her house at the appointed hour and you are quite surprised to be
greeted by someone who doesn't look like she was expecting you. Her hair and
clothing is so unkempt you wonder if you have the right address, but she
welcomes you to come inside and you begin to mentally assess your blind date. You
don't want to draw hasty conclusions - maybe her personality is incredible - but
your first impressions of her appearance are immediately negative.
You make
a mental list of things that seem strange about the way she looks, considering
you put on your best jeans, your best shirt, spend time with your hair, and you
even polished your shoes. Her hair is a greasy, stringy mess and is tangled,
like she didn't even bother to brush the back of it. The blouse she is wearing appears
old, worn out and washed out. Worse, it's wrinkled as though she had been
sleeping in it before you arrived. Something is on the front of it: "Oh my
gosh, those are food stains!" you realize. While you're wondering why she
didn't wear something newer or at least cleaner you notice her fingernails are
broken and that the polish on them is uneven and worn - there must have been
numerous dish-washing events since her last application of nail polish.
All your first
impressions are screaming "turn back and go home" but what can you do? You're already
inside. You have tickets and you're committed to at least spending a few hours
with her because you're meeting up with your friends. You get in the car and
that's when you realize that the odor you had noticed in her house wasn't
something smelly about the house - it's your date! She has body odor; she
didn't even shower for you! "Why did I ever agree to go on a blind date in the
first place!" you mentally chide yourself.
That
scenario takes place every Sunday in many churches around America as
first-time visitors arrive. The church itself - people and facilities - is the
"blind date" and the bathrooms are the "first impressions." After all, before arriving
parents send their kids off to Sunday School or take them into worship they
want to make sure they are going to last for an hour without needing a potty
break, so the bathrooms end up making the first impression for first-time
guests.
What kind
of impression will your bathrooms make to these unchurched visitors, these gifts from God who have been drawn by
the Lord through various means to seek Him? Most of us have forgotten what it's
like to be an unchurched visitor and we can excuse the things to which we've completely
become accustomed. After all, restrooms seem way down the list of what's truly
important. But for the unchurched, arriving on that first date, every little
detail is under fierce inspection and everything is going to get noticed. Studies
have shown within seven minutes first-time guests are making decisions about
whether to go out on a second date with you and it is very difficult to shake a
first-time impression.
Clean
the restrooms for mission!
Long
after your sermon or solo is forgotten, people will still remember the unpleasant
smell in the restroom, the dark crud along the baseboards and corners, the sticky
feel of the floor, dirty porcelain and countertops, missing soap or towels, and
things that are broken. The restroom might be considered the test of "who you
are when no one's looking." Do you care about the whole individual or just the press
of the crowd?
Too many
church bathrooms look like the barnacles on the underside of a great ship that becomes
exposed when the hull surges above the water as it moves forward. These
unsightly barnacles need to be scraped off because they expose poor maintenance
and create drag. In a church, dirty restrooms are like barnacles. Keep the
underbelly clean with sparkling, good-smelling, and well kept bathrooms!
Clean
your restrooms like you would want to dress and smell for a first date. This is
a time to put your best foot forward. A church with a smelly, unkempt bathroom
is no more likely to get a second chance than a smelly, unkempt date.
If you
are a mission planter in a rental facility such as a school, people are going
to give you more leeway in their judgments. After all, they understand that
these are not your facilities, and you are not personally responsible
for broken towel holders and less than perfectly cleaned floors. If your
parking lot is unattractive, weeds are growing and trash litters the place you
get a certain "pass" from the first-time visitor.
But if
you are in your own facility, an unkempt building, bathroom, or parking lot
says to the first-time visitor, "We weren't expecting you!" A church at its
best is like a family who is expecting guests. Everything is clean, even the
carpet has no track marks because it's just been freshly vacuumed. Lights,
music, smells, and lighted candles create a cheerful mood that says, "We knew
you were coming so we got ready for you."
Some
churches, even new mission plants in less than perfect rental facilities, have
taken bathroom attractiveness seriously for all the reasons listed above. Volunteers
arrive early to sparkle things up and make the restrooms smell great. Some take
their cues from high-class hotels and place creature-comfort items like mouthwash,
combs, hairspray, lotion, Kleenex, colognes, and even cloth towels for hand
drying on the countertops. The point of these details is to say, "We have been
expecting you. We want you to know that you are our honored guests!" This is
called the "wow factor."
I believe
we have encouragement to attend to physical details like these for the same
reasons that Paul, the greatest missionary the world has ever known, advised Christians
to be wise in the way they make the most of every opportunity with outsiders and
"...that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior
attractive" (Titus
2:10).
We want
to do whatever it takes to carry out mission in 21st century America
and give attention to the humblest of details, in the same way that Paul
carefully measured his missional actions when he said, "I have become all
things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Cor. 9:22).
