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.

As my kids grow and are more able to express themselves with words, I'm finding it more and more impressive they way they are able to communicate with others. Of course, many things about the kids I find impressive and would love to be able to imitate....their never-ending energy, for one. But I think the one thing that I've noticed about them that really really gets to me is their abitlity to communicate. They don't get shy (except for karissa around some new people), they aren't afraid to say what they are thinking at that very moment, they aren't afraid of expressing their feelings about something....good or bad, and they are honest to the core....sometimes painfully honest....but so honest that you don't have to wonder about them.

When does that change?

I've been thinking about that a lot. Wondering when that changed for me.....and I think I can actually remember when I started changing from innocent child to the hard, sometimes bitter, sometimes uncaring, and most of the time painfully shy adult that I am today.

The answer? I believe that happens when we start to realize that we can no longer trust everyone in our lives. Trust. That's a big issue. You tell someone a "secret" for example. Either something that is bothering you, a problem, a hope, a dream, and if you tell that someone to keep it to themselves you trust them to do that. People, however, are people. We are by no means perfect and we tend to screw up from time to time. So, when we learn that first painful lesson of not being able to trust someone with something precious to us.....we lose a piece of that innocent open communication, that ability to be able to tell someone how you feel without having it thrown back at you in some way.

I wonder how different things would be in the world if we could express ourselves the exact way we were feeling? To be able to tell your spouse that you are needing something more, to be able to tell your best friend that she's hurt your feelings, or to tell your boss at work that you are feeling over-burdened or un-appreciated?

Now, some people, I've noticed, still are able to express themselves just they way they want. They say what they feel and they mean what they say and they have no problems with what others think about them. The problem I've seen is that because not all of us in this world have kept this trait....we find them abrasive, overbearing and just down right difficult people to be around. Still, I think there's something to be admired about them though. I would love to still be able to express myself the way I'm feeling. To be able to walk up to someone I see having a bad day, give them a hug and tell them it's going to be ok. I can't do that anymore. I'm too afraid of invading their personal space, finding out a problem about someone that I might not have wanted to know, looking like a freak if they reject my attempt at sympathy and, mainly, just too afraid of being an open book.

The kids, I believe, will be able to be open books as long as they feel they can trust the people in their lives. The first time someone betrays that trust they will lose some open-bookness. (is that a word?) And the more they are betrayed, the more they will retreat back into themselves and the person they would really truly like to be is hidden somewhere behind a protective wall. Because we want to keep that part of ourselves...that "real" part safe and sound. That's the real person inside and we want to keep them safe. We don't want them to get hurt, rejected, or laughed at. SO, we conform, become synical and bitter people who see the worst in others and that's what we expect so that's what we get.

The point of all this rambling? I truely truely wish that I hadn't lost my "innocent person" in grade school. I wish that even through all the hateful laughter, lies, betrayals and hurtful words that I could have still stayed the same innocent, trusting, caring, interesting person that I am somewhere inside. I want so badly to be able to express myself the way I would like, but have hidden that person away for so long that it might be impossible to do now.

I love watching the kids be who they truely are. It's fun to see their personalities and their quirks that will some day be hidden away. I will miss that about them when it happens to be that they hide themselves away. But, for now, I'm going to enjoy watching them be little people who love, hate, get scared, get angry, care, and be honest without the fear of what others think.