PEA RIDGE — Not long ago I mentioned a place I like to go that everyone recognized me and knew what I wanted before I asked. I revealed I wasn’t talking home or church but, of all things, my favorite fast food drive in.
I mentioned how it seemed we really know so little about those outside our “circle” in church, not really knowing what they liked, such as foods, cars, sports and the like, or even if they had accepted Jesus as their personal savior.
I would like to think we know at least some of, if not most of, these things about those we attend church with. I would also like to think when someone new comes to visit, for whatever reason, we take the time to welcome them, and “shoot the breeze” with them for a few minutes, and perhaps a door could be opened where they maywish to return again or begin to build a relationship that might produce fruit for the kingdom.
All too often I’m afraid what happens is what occurred at a church where my wife and I recently attended a function for a high school graduate that attended their church. It was a nice affair. The church loaned the facilities to be used. The pastor, his wife and others who attended the church were there in support and, all-in-all on the surface, it seemed a very nice occasion.
We were greeted first by the pastor’s wife, then the youth pastor of church. My wife and I did, as we usually do (well, mainly my wife- she’s much better in the social graces than I) and circulated a bit, saying “hi” here and there and admiring different things we saw.
After a bit of circulation, we met another couple from out of town who turned out to be the parents of the youth leader, and we struck up a bit of conversation with them.
After a bit, I met the pastor and we started exchanging pleasantries, with measking how he had been called into ministry and so on but, almost as soon as I introduced myself as a pastor of a church (not of his denomination), he excused himself and, if I didn’t know better, avoided my attempts to have a talk with him again.
To make a long story short, we soon found ourselves gravitating to, and visiting with, the only other “odd person out” couple because we noticed they seemed to feel left out and alone as well.
My question, I guess, is I wonder how often people move in and out of our lives and church families and never return because they feel like “the odd person out” when no one takes the time to spend some time with them, to get to know them, invite them to come back, out for lunch or many other things wedo as a family? Especially when the Bible tells us we should be lovers of, and given to, hospitality - that almost lost art of what Webster’s defines as “The act or practice of receiving and entertaining strangers or guests without reward, or with kind and generous liberality.”
It doesn’t speak well of Christians when Jesus speaks that “the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light,” (Luke 16:8) and those of the world know more about how to bring people back for a return visit, or make people feel welcome, than we, the children of light, do.
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Editor’s note: Charlie Newman is pastor of Avoca Christian Church. To contact him, e-mail pastor@ pastorcharlie.net, or write in care of The Times at [email protected] or P.O. Box 25, Pea Ridge, AR 72751.
Church, Pages 2 on 08/01/2012