As a pastor leading your own congregation, you don’t get out much. Every Sunday, you’re tied down to your own assignment. The old saw about the pastor working only one day a week is tired, but it contains one great truth: he really works on that day.

So, when he gets a chance to sit in on the worship service of another church, it’s a rarity, a blessing, and in many cases, a vacation.

The pastor is visiting his parents, he and the family are on vacation, or they are en route somewhere. On this Sunday, he leaves the tie in the closet and dresses like normal people. He is looking forward to this. Today, he gets to sit in a pew and worship without being responsible for anything.

After leaving the active pastorate nearly 6 years ago, visiting other churches has become routine for me. Most times, I’ve been the guest preacher, but often I was there as a friend of the pastor. Sometimes, as with other ministers, I was on vacation, visiting my mother, or traveling.

In the last three Sundays, I have worshiped in three greatly different churches: Williams Boulevard Baptist in Kenner, Louisiana, the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, and Eutaw Baptist Church of Eutaw, Alabama.

The first is just across town from where I live, the late pastor of that church was a longtime friend, and the present interim pastor, Mark Tolbert, was interim at our church (FBC Kenner). I love that great church and decided to visit.

My pastor, Mike Miller, approves this church-hopping thing of mine. We’ve discussed it. I send my tithe, my prayers, my family, and I’m there fairly often.

The second church–FBC, New Orleans–is likewise pastored by a dear friend, David Crosby. That Sunday, he was preaching on an event that took place in the days following Hurricane Katrina and which continues to suck the air out of the atmosphere around here. I had been praying for him and wanted to hear the sermon.

The last church, Eutaw, Alabama, my son and I were en route back to New Orleans from spending the weekend on the farm with my mom and the family. We had planned to stop for church along the way and this church, located 30 miles below Tuscaloosa on the interstate, was perfect. Rick Williams is the pastor, but we were meeting for the first time. My father-in-law grew up in Eutaw, so we figured that half the people around us were related in some way to my son.

What other pastors do irregularly–visit another church–I’m doing as a matter of routine. It occurs to me that we might make a suggestion or two as to what the visiting preacher will want to do. That’s what follows:

1) Go to worship.

You see things, get ideas, pick up inspirations, for your own ministry back home. But don’t go for that.

Do what you want the members of your church to do: bring an offering, pay attention, sing the hymns, be fully present.

2) Go as a brother.

The last thing the host pastor needs is a preacher in the congregation dissecting his sermon and planning to talk about it when he returns home.

In our denomination, I am known in preaching circles to some extent, although definitely am not in the upper echelon. But one thing that often concerns me is that from time to time when a pastor learns I’m in the congregation, he will become overly self-conscious about everything he does that day. I’d like to tell him, “Friend, I’m on your side. I’m pulling for you. I’m not here as a critic.”

If this happens when I’m visiting, how much more the bishop of denominations that have them, or the president of our seminaries or other well-known preachers.

Pray for that pastor. Take your Bible, open it, read along, take notes, worship. Fully participate.

3) Don’t mystery shop the church.

From time to time, a pastor will ask a friend from another congregation to attend and make notes on the friendliness of the ushers, the cleanliness of the bathrooms, the appearance of the exterior, and a hundred other things. Mystery shopping can be a valuable tool for fine-tuning the fellowship.

Unless you’ve been invited for that purpose, don’t do it. Relax. You’re on vacation today.

4) Be friendly. Greet people. Smile. Enjoy yourself. Enter into the singing.

Remember how you felt when you were the preacher and learned the pastor of a congregation was in the audience.

It mattered to you.

That home pastor will want to do his best today. He will probably offer up a prayer that you will have a great experience and possibly the two of you become great friends.

If he’s normal, he will wonder what you will think of his sermon or the service. But he will quickly recover. If he sees you entering into the service joyfully and taking notes, he will be encouraged greatly.

Anyone who encourages a pastor has done a good thing.

5) You’ll get some good ideas, but don’t go looking for them.

Go to worship the Lord.

When it’s all over and you’re in the car on the highway, a few things will stand out in memory. You will decide to put greeters where that church had them–or where it didn’t. You will decide to check on the pens in the pews and the dirt under the bathroom sinks, because that church did a great job–or it didn’t.

You will decide to pump up the energy in your greeting and opening prayers because that pastor set a great example–or a poor one.

But you didn’t go looking for any of those things. You went to worship and you were successful. The other little things are lagniappe.

6) Afterwards, pray for that pastor. Drop him a note. Tell him something about his sermon or the service that ministered to you. Don’t fib.

7) When you are the visitor, give encouragement. When you are the host pastor, accept it.

Perhaps 20 years after it occurred, I found out that the pastor of one of the largest and most influential churches in Texas had dropped in on a church I pastored one Sunday. I had no idea he was there and would not have known to this day had he not told me.

He said, “Let me tell you what I learned that day.”

Believe me, I was all ears. The last thing I would ever expected is that this well-known man of God–author, convention speaker, celebrity in a hundred ways–would have picked up anything from a church I pastored other than a church bulletin.

“You said to the church, ‘Let’s open our Bibles this morning.’ That’s when I noticed that everyone around me had his Bible and was using it. It was like the sound of angels’ wings as they opened them.”

“I came home and told our people we were going to start using our Bibles in the service more. I have you to thank for that.”

It goes to show. The greatest can learn from the simplest. The best can pick up insights from the average. No one of us has reached the point where he cannot learn something from his brother or sister.

One of the best young preachers I know led a church not far from mine. One Sunday I saw him and his pretty wife in the congregation and found out later they had returned early from a vacation and decided to worship with us. That week he said something to me I will not ever forget.

“My wife had one thing to say when we got in the car. ‘Honey, you need to study for your sermons more.'”

That’s all she said to him and all he said to me. It could mean a hundred things, not all of them good.

But (to no one’s surprise!) I didn’t take it that way. It seems to have been the kind of compliment we preachers would give a hundred dollars for: the wife of a pastor was ministered to by our sermon and was able to encourage her husband as a result.

8) Be open to the Holy Spirit’s work.

Don Davidson (pastor FBC Alexandria, VA) is one of the best pastors and dearest friends I know. We became friends in the summer of 1996 when he and his wife Audrey showed up in our services at the FBC of Kenner, LA, that morning. He was a new trustee of our seminary and they came to town early and decided to worship with us. We went to lunch that day and have been close brothers ever since.

9) Call ahead.

This should go without saying, but a quick phone call to find out the times of the services will keep you from wasting valuable time waiting or missing out on much of the service. You may discover that the pastor you wanted to hear is out of town, freeing you up for the second church on your list.

10) Speak encouragement to any church leaders you meet.

“I love the flowers in the front yard.” “That is one beautiful stained glass window.” “What a friendly church you have.” “The music today was incredible.”

And particularly, “Wow. What a powerful sermon your pastor gave today.”

Lay leaders sometimes hear only from complainers, and when they do, they frequently pass along their unhappiness to the minister. They will be relieved and encouraged to hear something positive.

I said to the deacon in a church we were visiting on vacation, “You people have been fed spiritually today as well as any congregation in the state.”

He smiled, “He’s that way every Sunday. We live in fear some big church is going to come after him.”

His fears, if that’s what they were, were well-founded. Not long after, Dr. Rick Lance moved from the FBC of Cullman, Alabama, to the pastorate of the FBC of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he stayed for the next 15 years or so. When he left there, over a dozen years ago, it was to assume the leadership of the entire Baptist convention of Alabama.

My compliment had nothing to do with any of this. But it didn’t hurt the deacon to know this.

I said to a deacon at the First Baptist Church of New Orleans one day, “Everyone I know adores your pastor.” He smiled. “Thank you. We all feel the same way.”

Boy, David Crosby owes me big time.