Ushers are God's stand-ins and ambassadors. That's what I told our usher team at their meeting after church last week. I had told the security guards a similar thing a couple weeks previously, and I believe it more strongly each week that I watch visitors walk through the door in church. While my attention might be focused on the refinements of the liturgy and music as a way of focusing God's message of reconciliation and welcome, many visitors may have already made up their minds about what we preach through our behavior, based on how they were met at the door.

The security guards noticed that it's so easy to slip toward a curt "Sorry were closing!" or "Take off your hat," or "No flash!" especially at Trinity where nearly three million people pass through the door each year, hoards of them doing something that the sign says they shouldn't --talking on their cell phone, wearing a hat, carrying a Coke. And the Usher team reported that somewhere along the line they had been instructed to withhold bulletins from visitors who were not planning to stay for services.

You, I told them, because you are standing at the threshold and are the first person people speak to when they enter, hold a huge amount of spiritual power. Because you are wearing the badge, people will project onto you all the assumptions and expectations they have gotten about God before they walked in that door, positive and negative. How you respond will either challenge or reinforce those assumptions. How you tell them to take their hat off, and how you by your actions show them they are welcome, may make all the difference in their experience of Trinity, and even of divinity.

My own case in point: awhile back I attended a big wealthy church in midtown Manhattan. I was traveling directly to the airport from the service, so I had brought a carry-on with me to the service and was dressed in casual traveling clothes. As I climbed the steps to the church an usher was setting out a sign on the steps. He looked at me with narrowed eyes, and I explained: I'm not a tourist and I'm coming to church, I just have to go to the airport from here. The usher looked me over, still without a word, and then cocked his head toward the door and turned away. I was surprised in the moment how deep this silent message hit me in the gut. I felt misunderstood and misread, and most of all I felt like I conspicuously didn't belong. I also felt angry, and I pushed on.

I got to the top step and encountered another usher. This one immediately turned to me and said, smiling, "Good morning. Here I'll take that and put it in this closet here and you can pick it up after the service." I sensed that he had a directive that prohibited luggage from being brought into the church, but the way he approached me made his No feel like a Yes, and I felt so welcomed by him that day that I'm still telling this story to you now.

In both instances I marveled at the strength of my reaction: how exposed and rejected -- and then welcomed I felt, and it showed me once again how vulnerable and sensitive we humans are, especially at thresholds to sacred precincts. Those thresholds are powerful places, and those who keep them hold extraordinary power.

This fall at Trinity we're going to mount an increased focus on what happens to a visitor during those critical three minutes that they are entering the church and what happens to them during the three minutes after the Dismissal. I'll post here what we're learning, and I encourage you, at Trinity or your own home church, to stand near the door and watch what kind of powerful little movements and exchanges are happening at the threshold, and then put out your hand...