A Friendly Church Family

We went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving this year to see Nate's Grandparents. We had a Blast! It was a lot of fun to see all of his family and his Grandparents were more and more relaxed with the kids this year. That makes it so much easier. We ended up staying for church on Sunday morning and I always love visiting thier church.....the reason? They are SOO SOO friendly! You walk in the door and those that recognize you from past visits are upon you right away telling you how wonderful it is to see you. You get farther in and those that don't know you each stop to ask you who you are and make sure you know to come back that evening. HOW WONDERFUL! In my lifetime I've visited many many church congregations either through travel or through living so many different places and it seems to me that one sign of a healthy congregation always is whether they are friendly. In my short time on this earth and having been raised in the church, it's become apparent to me that you can't have a church grow in numbers unless that church is a healthy church. I've been to so many small congregations that pray daily about increasing thier numbers. This concerns me on so many different levels. Here's why:

I think if you walk into a congregation and they aren't friendly...you are seeing the true nature of that church. Friendliness leads to many other things as it shows that the members are comfortable enough with themselves and with their fellow brothers and sisters to invite someone back to worship with them. If a church isn't friendly this automatically suggests to me that there are problems within the congregation and if I'm visiting to find somewhere to worship this means that I move on and look again.

Here's an example. Dying congregations usually have some of these characteristics: members that don't show up more than half the time to services, when you can go an entire week (or even month) and only see your church family three times a week during services, or go an entire week without corresponding with each other in any way, when you have members that consider themselves either too tired, too old or too "above" tasks of teaching, leading prayers, leading singing......the list can go on and on. But, you want to know the main characteristic of a congregation that's dying? NO LOVE. They have lost their love for one another and in many cases have even lost their love/zeal for God.

Losing your love for your fellow brothers and sisters can cause any number of problems. They usually crop up by being annoyed about small things at first and they can grow until they fester into such a dislike that you can't come to church services without them dominating your mind. This ends up being disruptive to the spiritual family of the congregation. In my opinion you can't have a healthy congregation until the church family starts BEING a church family. Divides, arguments, past grudges, hurt feelings....have NO place in a spiritual family. Actually they really have no place in a blood/physical family, either, but that is not what we are talking about. There is no way a congregation can grow until it can start being a family with each other.

One of the main problems I have seen is that congregations who don't love each other don't share with each other. One of the things I heard Richard Foster talk about while he was here in Norwich for our congregation's Gospel Meeting was that you can't come to services and get together as a congregation and ask someone how they are, get a generic reply in return and be happy with that. If you want to be a sharing, caring family......then you have to learn to SHARE those things and you have to learn how to RECIEVE those things and then know what to do about it in return. When a church family doesn't share it can be hurtful in so many ways. Many church families share pysical hurts. I do believe that is important We should be praying for physical wellness so that we can go out and do God's work. BUT, what about spiritual wellness? Do brothers and sisters in an unhealty congregation ask or talk about that? Nope. There is something wrong with that.

When you don't share spiritual hurts with each other there is a loss of cohesivness and then there is a feeling of disconnectedness with your brothers and sisters. This is reflected in many ways but none so obvious, in my opinion, as when you have small intimate classe settings where no one is willing to speak up and share. When you have no sharing with eachother and hardly any participation in the fact that no one studies their lesson in advance to be ready for class those should be large red warning signs that something is wrong. When there is NO interest in a class where you have to dig deep into the word and get "real" with eachother and share problems and hurts that's a problem, as again in my opinion, isn't this supposed to be one of the church's main functions? To provide a spiritual family that you can share with and then one that can hold you accountable to change when you need to? Not getting involved in class stems mostly from the fact that the congregation doesn't want to be sharing those private, sometimes hurtful, things with other brothers and sisters that they have "issues" with. This is hurtful in many many ways. And, becuase the they are afraid of sharing with each other they appear distant, cold and uncaring even if they really aren't. Congregations lose members because of this. They can even DRIVE members away because of this. When you have this kind of problem in a congregation you honestly can't expect the members to start caring for other people coming in when they aren't even caring for their own members that are there already.

There are members who I've seen in those situations that still believe in putting your all into a congregation and giving it your best. But sometimes there comes a time when giving your best is not enough if there isn't anyone else giving their best too. Then you get discouraged, tired, apathetic. I think apathetic is a good word for a congregation that doesn't share. They have no FIRE for their church family or for God.

If a church family is to grow in numbers......they will first need to get their FIRE back for God and for caring for their own spiritual family.

Now, saying all of that, Nate and I know that we are not perfect and that we've caused problems and had our share of disagreements with others in the past. Sadly our life right now has not been too condusive to being the best spiritual examples to others that we can be (at least to our church family in Norwich) but we are trying to be the best spiritual examples to the others that we spend time with outside of church services. We all go through times of "drought" in our lives (as Richard talked about too...with empty buckets of fruit) but those droughts should not be for very long. You should be able to recognize the drought and immediately start working on those things that will feed and water the drought to make it disappear. This not only goes with your own spiritual life but also applies to the spiritual life of a church congregation.

Some of these problems can arise when you don't have a strong spiritual leadership example in a congregation. Small congregations, especially, struggle with this problem. When there just aren't enough men (or maybe even enough "qualified" men) to have deacons and elders then the lines of who is leading spiritually become fuzzy. Or, even when you have enough "qualified" men to have a deacon and elder leadership you can still have problems if they men aren't putting the needs of the spiritual family first in their decisions. In my short time here on this earth I've seen congregations fall apart, divide and have knock-down drag-out fights over such things as what color carpet to put in the fellowship hall, whether to even HAVE a fellowship hall attached to the auditorium, when communion should be served during the services and which missionary the church should be giving their money to. I find this disturbing. Where did that congregation go wrong? Don't they know better than to fight about such things? These are the kinds of things that the devil uses as tools to destroy congregations. JUST LIKE he uses hurt feelings, arguments, hurtful words, misunderstandings and such like to destroy a loving, caring congregation.

Are you walking around with hurt feelings or a grudge against someone in your church family? Ask yourself why. WHY was that past hurt, disagreement or misunderstanding so MUCH more important than the work God has planned for you and your church family? Because that's what inevitably happens. We end up putting new signs, carpet, order of services and other things before the love of our brothers and sisters and our love for God. Isn't that what Satan wants? Think about it.

Is your church a friendly church? Friendly towards visitors, but more importantly friendly with each other? Do they truely LOVE to spend time with each other and find excuses to be together rather than act like it's a hardship on themselvs to fellowship together? IF they don't, WHY? I truely believe that you can detect a healthy church by just walking in and seeing if they welcome you into their church home. If they don't, think long and hard about aligning yourself with an empty basket of fruit as they will take from your basket without giving anything in return and you will soon be left empty too.