They’re Facing Inward: My Google Search for ‘Open Church Doors’

So I’m wondering if you’ll join me in a fun project of sorts. . .

I recently wrote a blog post about religious Nones and Dones, pondering if people of these persuasions might play a role toward reforming what church looks like in the future.

As I wrote that post, I searched for an image of open church doors. I wanted to place such an image at the conclusion of what I wrote, as I was encouraging churchy folks to go out, meet their neighbors, and listen to the Nones and Dones that surround them.

And that’s when I noticed something absolutely intriguing. . . A Google search for ‘Open Church Doors’ leads to a host of images of double doors swung open. They’re lovely. Undoubtedly, these images have been taken to convey a sense of welcome or simply to showcase the beautiful architecture of church buildings. But it fascinated me that. . .

Nearly every image of open church doors
is viewed from the perspective of looking inward toward the Church itself.

Now this isn’t exclusively true. I did find a few images looking outward. These were the types of images I wanted to place at the conclusion of what I was writing. But they were in the vast minority.

As I scrolled through the images of my search, I was absolutely fascinated by this trend. I decided right then and there that we need more images facing outward rather than inward. So will you help me with a project? This may even be one small Lenten practice for you.

Churchy folks,

1) Will you take a photo of your church building doors swung open from the perspective of facing the outside? And then. . .

2) Will you tweet that image (#openchurchdoors) or send it to me (revannarbor@gmail.com) along with a one sentence prayer for your surrounding community?

In a week, I will post all the images on my blog, along with those prayers.

And then,

3) Would you consider placing that image on your church website? We could add these images to the search engines and give an important perspective.

Thanks, and feel free to share this idea and invite others into participation.

–Renee Roederer