The local church must be catholic

The local church must be catholic
Henceforth I am going to boycott local churches that are not catholic. How can I say something like that? First of all let me explain. “Catholic” here is taken to mean “common”, “for all”, regardless of background, age, looks, standard of living.
The scary thing is that the local church very often does not live up to this very straight forward requirement. When a stranger comes in through the door – and there are many ways in which we could define a stranger, because in a particular group most people will know exactly where the border line is between those who already belong and those who immediately would be seen as strangers – we know it is a stranger.
Any responsible person in that local congregation should react like this, once a stranger walks into that church: that person should be welcomed as if he/she had been waited for, for a long time, as if he/she had been expected long ago; that person should be given enough information as to feel comfortable in the new setting, yet should be given enough time and space in finding his or her way into the worship that is taking place.
Let us confess today and say that the local church most of the time does not live up to its calling of being catholic. Most local churches in the world are in fact marred by other loyalties, for example by a national or ethnic character. What frightens me is that these loyalties would decide who is accepted and who the stranger is. I remember a particular congregation in Sweden, where we also had a few recent immigrants coming to church, a few of them from Africa. They were welcome in a general sense, but there was no such explicit welcome as I have indicated above. No one would show any resentment about their being there, but also no one seemed to introduce them properly into the fellowship. When I approached two of them, a father and a son, they were very shy and it appeared that they did not dare to take communion for fear this would be disliked by others. I was shattered but could not do much, as I was just an ordinary congregant at the time.
I ask myself, those few black students that come to the new, nearly all white charismatic church up the road here in Rondebosch, will they bee seen and welcome as those who have been expected for long? White churches in South Africa, here and there, get a sprinkling of black visitors, and they are in fact visitors as no one takes them in so that they become full members of the church.
If a busload of blacks came into a white church unannounced, panic would break out, but it could well be a panic that would be contained at least for that occasion.
I ask myself, if a white family would venture to come to church somewhere in the Cape Flats, something which is almost unheard of, would they be unreservedly welcome? Many blacks would have problems with how to handle such a family, they would have to struggle even to know how to relate to such people, even when it comes to the most fundamental ways of communication.
This is my theology of catholicity. Each local church on earth has to bear a mark of catholicity in the sense that there always is eagerness and an expectedness to receive the one who in effect is a stranger. The local church must be vigilant and prepared, for one day it will be visited by Christ (the king) who said: “I was a stranger and you made me welcome” (Matthew 25.35c).