My friend drove me to church on Sunday - I was so grateful after missing my bus last week and having a bit of a meltdown - and we discussed a lot of things. I confided in her that as much as I love our church and feel that it's where I'm supposed to be at the moment, I do struggle with a few things. One of the things I mentioned was the welcoming, social, and general unfriendliness of some of our congregation.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not having a church-bashing post. That's not my intention at all, but I thought it was relevant to discuss where this topic started from.
She thought I was sitting alone as she didn't see my other friend, and invited me to join her and her other friends who are all a similar age to me. I thanked her and told her that I had sat amongst those other friends before and nobody spoke to me. Apparently this is a common occurrence in our church and my other friend had been so upset at one point, thinking we were all ignorant, that she didn't want to come back but felt drawn to the place.
As I said, we were discussing the situation and we decided to try to create a bit of a befriending group. Obviously we need to pray over it and make sure that it's the right thing to do - we're not just going to jump right into something like that!
If we still feel compelled to push forward with this, our ideas include simple things like just meeting for a coffee, going bowling and general socialising.
Due to my not being able to drive at the moment, I feel that I can't participate in a lot of the social events as I live a fair distance away. I'm also at that strange age where I don't fit in with the youths or the older generation. The people my own age are either still amongst the youths, as they've always been there or just have close friendships or relationships there, otherwise they're just not very approachable.
I've joked in the past that pretty much everyone is related in our church. That, or they've known each other forever. It seems a little cliquey at times and that if your face (or surname) doesn't fit, neither do you! I'd be interested to know if most churches are like this?
I absolutely love my church and when I'm there I look around and genuinely love the people as if they were my family. It's difficult because at the Baptist Church where I grew up, it was small and everyone was my "Auntie". As I've said before, I walked in the door and felt truly loved and cared for. I think that's special and I was so blessed to have had that. The sad fact is, not everywhere is the same. Or maybe it is but I was just on the opposite side there? Hmm, that's food for thought.
Anyway, I pray that we can bring that that welcoming spirit back into our churches and that pastoral care becomes just as important as was intended. In John 21:15-17, Jesus explicitly asked Peter to look after His sheep. He cared so much about this that He asked three times. How can we declare the love of Christ, and expect to see revival and thousands of souls saved, if we don't show it amongst ourselves first?
Just a little food for thought
- Lisa
No comments:
Post a Comment