12 This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one another. – John 15
If you’re like me, you may not naturally make friends but have to work on it. Good news! Today we are talking about how to make friends at church. We will address the friendship crisis in church. This will provide a foundation to make new friends in church and for life.
Jesus on the eve of the crucifixion, the night of the Last Supper and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, told his disciples, ” 15 No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” The Lord gave them and us the gift if friendship with God and one another. It is a gift you can receive today.
The Friendship Handicap : “Solo Party of one; Table for One”
Notice how easy it was to make friends as a child. Messy friendships … you threw up in your home-room class. You all endured dread teacher, “Ms. Meany,” who turned out to be quite nice in spite of her name. A food fight in the cafeteria bonded you with another student as you hid under your new friend’s food tray.
Why is it so difficult today to make and keep friends as an adult?
The Survey Center on American Life shows how we have become more friendless over the years. Between 1990 and 2021 those with two or fewer close friends had increased from 16% in 1990 to 32% in 2021.
Find Stillness and Begin True Friendship
True friendship and connection with God and others begin in stillness. In the Quaker church,akaSociety of Friends. The meeting begins as you come in and someone shakes your hand. Then you “Listen from the stillness.” This is a sense of connection with God, yourself, and those around you. You can’t be friend with others if you are not at stillness and peace within yourself. If you are running around looking for someone to shake your hand and be an instant friend, you will be disappointed.
Quaker meetings are simple gatherings that usually last around an hour and are based on silence. There are no ministers, creeds, or set hymns, prayers, or sermons. Instead, Quakers gather in silence to quiet their minds, open their hearts, and listen to new insights and guidance.
During the meeting, people may share what they discover with those present, which is called “ministry.” Anyone can give ministry, including visitors. For example, you might be invited to talk about what brought you to the meeting, and your experience.
Ministry is what is on one’s soul, and it can be in direct contradiction to what is on one’s mind. It’s what the Inner Light gently pushes you toward or suddenly dumps in your lap. It is rooted in the eternity, divinity, and selflessness of the Inner Light; not in the worldly, egoistic functions of the conscious mind. – Marrianne McMullen, 1987, Quaker faith & practice 2.66
From the stillness of worship, people sometimes feel moved by the spirit to stand and speak, or sometimes sing. Quakers refer to this as vocal ministry, and its hallmark is that it comes from deep within, or from God. Stillness gives us understanding.
Friendship Takes Time
How many times have we heard, “I tried that church, but they weren’t friendly to me. Nobody said ‘Hello,’ not even the pastor.” “They don’t like me because I am not this at not that.” It’s like you arrived with stiff new jeans while everyone else enjoys the broken in jeans of longtime friendship.
I read of a Mystery Worshipper for Ship of Fools church review website who visited a church where I previously served as Executive Pastor.
Did anyone welcome you personally?One of the associate pastors, wearing a black Geneva gown and green stole, was standing at the door. She shook my hand and said, ‘Good morning. Good to have you here.’ Inside, everyone was too busy visiting with friends to take note of a stranger.
The above Mystery Worshipper did not understand that making friends takes time.
Persevere to Make a Friend
A man turned to his wife while leaving church one Sunday in a huff. The man told his wife in the parking lot, “Honey, we are never coming back to this church. The people don’t like me. They didn’t like what I wore. Nobody was friendly. Why I even tried to shake hands with a deacon, who turned on his heels and walked the other way.” His wife smiled and said, “I’ll give you three reasons why we are coming back – 1. Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ 2. That deacon is a neighbor, and 3. You’ve got to come back; … you’re the pastor!”
Tom Whittaker’s right foot needed to be amputated following a car accident in 1979. He thought this derailed his future as a young athlete. Yet following this serious accident, he regained his strength and continued mountain climbing. His first attempt on Everest was in 1995. On May 27, 1998, on his third attempt, Whittaker reached the summit of Mt. Everest, a lifelong dream, making him the first person with a disability to accomplish this feat. Tom Whitaker of Arizona was the first disabled person to climb Mt. Everest.
My young sons and I heard him speak about what he learned on his journey to conquer Everest, where he said, “Don’t let the averted gaze of others deter you from your appointed destination.”
In my third pastorate of a United Methodist church, I tried a lunch meeting with a group of fellow pastors … two Methodists, a Presbyterian, and an Episcopalian. I showed up with my new jeans as a former Southern Baptist … and felt not as high church, sophisticated as the others. The conversations seemed to walk around me and felt at times as the invisible man. But I determined not to let the averted eyes deter me, kept showing up, and discovered my new jeans broke in and was accepted by the group. I learned as a pastor not to let disappointed looks and averted eyes deter me from building friendships.
One of my best friends in my first church, Deacon Ralph Spotts, initially voted against me coming as new pastor because I was too young. The church voted me in as pastor, and Deacon Ralph volunteered anyway to show me around the community. He introduced me to the Lion’s Club. Every Sunday in the Sanctuary, his senior Berean Bible class doors opened and I would see him seated as teacher at the table. Eventually, I buried his beloved wife who died of cancer. Sometime later he called me one morning at the church to come help him. I barely understood him as he had suffered a devastating stroke and lay slumped over the kitchen counter. Time passed and he was the only person I knew who left a skilled nursing home to return home and marry a widow in the church. I presided over the wedding standing with his grown children. Had I been deterred by his averted eyes on that first “Nay” vote, our friendship would have never occurred.
Tom Whittaker explained further what mountaineers do when they get into trouble: “When mountaineers get into trouble, they look for the next handhold. Then the next handhold.”
“When mountaineers get into trouble, they take it one handhold at a time. Then the next handhold.” – Tom Whittaker
Determine that you will climb that friendship mountain and make a friend at church. This next Sunday look for your the next friendship handhold.
Handholds to Friendships at Church
Study the weekly worship bulletin and look for meetings where food is served or where you will served together as a group. The bulletin as the website may not be updated:
Examples –
Pancake Breakfast
Dinner for Eight
Men’s Breakfast
Camp cookout
Be “new” with others. Join a newly formed group.
Arthur Flake the Southern Baptist genius and father of modern Sunday School taught that new groups grow faster than existing groups. If they could find 8 – 10 new people, the Southern Baptists would form another Sunday School class … because it provided a way to make new friends around studying the Bible. The genius he discovered – “New groups grow faster than old groups.” Southern Baptists grew to this day to be the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.
Arthur Flake – Father of the Modern Sunday School
For pastors and church leaders – what new groups have you formed? If you have a long-standing existing class, consider short term study seminars open to all.
Ekron Baptist Church Sunday School
The above Sunday School group at Ekron Baptist shows a typical Sunday Bible study. If we can take some liberty and peel back layers to show hypothetically why it is so difficult for a visitor to make friends in any longstanding Sunday School group.
The three ladies in the front have attended the same closed bridge circle for the last five years. The men seated at the back went to high school together and serve in the same Lion’s Club for over 10 years. The younger adults are children of the Lion’s Club members who plan on attending a Lion’s Club BBQ with their parents after church. Each of these groups in a group are siloed off in their existing circle of interest and apart from new people. This is not wrong; it simply is.
You as a visitor arrive. The people smile and greet you, but you don’t understand why you feel like an outsider. You feel like new stiff blue jeans in a group of broken-in jeans.
Existing Groups Revolve around Prior Formed Backchannels of Communication
If you attend an established group, give yourself permission to feel like an outsider for a year. Arrive early and stay late. Make your own name tag.
As a long-term stakeholder in the group, go out of your way to include the newcomers as lines of communication often proceed along lines of relationship rather than official group communications. There’s no need for a newsletter or an accurate website because word-of-mouth spreads naturally among friends, unless you are new. Though the church’s website contains a calendar six months out-of-date, those part of the in-network get all the information they need. The newcomers remain outside the homegrown chain of communication.
New Groups Create Direct Lines of Communication with Others
Your Friendship Exercises This Week
“When mountaineers get into trouble, they look for the next handhold … Then the next handhold.”
Wear a name tag with your first name. You can print out the one below.
Review the weekly worship bulletin for opportunities to eat or serve together.
Learn the names of three people.
Arrive early and stay late.
Click on this link to download your copy of the Friendship Guide.
The above example shows a Men’s Pancake Breakfast and special new services for Holy Week.
Power Tip for Pastors and Teachers
If you want to become a master of learning names and staying in touch with people. At the beginning and end of the service, turn on a voice activated recorder in your pocket. You can transcribe later the names, needs and milestones of those in your care, as well as reminders for follow-up. People will think you had a photographic memory, while you had a little help from St. Sony.
Sony Digital Voice Editor
Jesus gave us the example of how to be a friend of God and others. Remember, friendship with God begins with willingness to trust, obey, and desire to know God intimately. May the above start you on a friendship journey with God and others that will last this life and into the next.
Your Friend,
Pastor Jim
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.
John Huddleston was known by his Arkansas neighbors as a “son of a sharecropper” and a “dreamy backwoodsman.” John and Sarah purchased their 49 acre home farm in 1889 for $100, later expanded to 243 acres. One day while walking a road through his property he found two crystals which were shortly identified as “diamonds.” Today the property is owned by State of Arkansas as the only place in the world the public can search for real diamonds at “Crater of Diamonds State Park.”
More than 35,000 diamonds have been found by park visitors since the Crater of Diamonds became an Arkansas state park in 1972. Notable diamonds found at the Crater include the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, the largest diamond ever unearthed in the U.S. Five hours from our house in MO, my wife Carol and her friend, Chris, spent hours digging for diamonds with no luck. Perhaps on our next trip!
The park’s one rule for diamonds – “Finders, Keepers!”
And so it is with public reading of Scripture at church.
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.
Matthew 13:44-46
Matthew 13:44-46 New International Version (NIV)“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls.”
The most understated and neglected part of Sunday worship is public reading of Scripture. Pianists practice and prepare for the offertory music. Pastors slave hours to prepare and deliver a vibrant sermon. Yet, the Scripture reading is approached like reading the menu at a burger drive-thru –hurried, with someplace else to go.
The most understated and neglected part of Sunday worship is public reading of Scripture. Pianists practice and prepare for the offertory music. Pastors slave hours to prepare and deliver a moving sermon. Yet, the Scripture reading is approached like reading the menu at a burger drive-thru. Hurried, with someplace else to go.
Pastor Jim
The Apostle Paul wrote Timothy, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching (1 Timothy 4:13).
So, you receive a call from the church office asking you to read Scripture next Sunday, a passage on the descendants of Noah. You think no problem. You’ve heard the Noah story many times … two-by-two into the ark. You’ve even seen the movie!
So you go about your week, grandchildren’s soccer games, golf, shopping … Sunday arrives and you open the bulletin to review the passage a few minutes before you stand up to read
26 Joktan was the father of
Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.
…These names appear before you … unrecognizable names … never heard before in Sunday School. What in the name of Klingon archeology are these names? Your throat tightens as you don’t have time to Google how to pronounce these names. Now you know why public speaking is #1 on the list of social fears as your knees shake walking to the lectern.
What you can’t pronounce you mumble and smudge over to go undetected and escape the lectern as quickly as possible.
There is a better way …
Today I will share with you a few tips to improve your public reading of Scripture. I learned these while serving as Executive Pastor in my last position and reading the Scripture on many Sundays. I realized that Scripture reading was the diamond field of Sunday worship. The diamonds are held in the fabric and contents of the Bible itself.
Step 1. Navigate to biblegateway.com and type in the passage you will read – chapter and verse
Step 2. Copy the passage into a word processor and save 16 point font in two columns
Play the audible passage reading as you mark up your reading sheet – / short pause // long pause line up, line down pitch, and pronunciation helps
Practice reading your passage 3 times. If possible, say “mic check” into the lectern microphone to check the volume before the service, speaking no more than 12 inches from the microphone.
Glance at the passage and look at the people while you read.
End your reading with something like, “The word of God … for the people of God!”
Try these tips the next time you read in church. You will find with your church some diamonds in your field.
As Karl Barth wrote, “ I have read many books, … but the Bible reads me!”
Evangelical Christians, in believing about a coming Armageddon, must take care lest they actually cause an Armageddon as self-fulfilling prophecy. #separatechurchandhate
If I did a second doctorate, my thesis would be the role of well-intended souls who thought they did God’s will in forcing God’s hand to usher in the Kingdom. This was the devil’s temptation to Jesus. This was replayed in Judas’s betrayal to force Jesus’s hand. The Spanish and French Inquisitions, The Crusades, the Canadian Indian Residential Schools, and Conversion Therapy groups sought to enforce their brand of “pure religion.”
In contrast, Jesus taught – Jesus answered, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world” John 18:36.
Jesus answered, “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.”
John 18:36
The Third Reich sought its pure Millennial Reign. False zealot messiahs have historically proclaimed a salvation by brute force over grace. Give me the lowly, the despised and rejected, for of such is the Kingdom of God.
Jesus revealed his political party by saying, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Well-intentioned zealots have historically promoted forcing Jesus’s hand as the Messiah, including Judas Iscariot on the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. In a world of hate for those of a different political bent, different ethnicity, or orientation, consider how you can enlarge your border and replace resentment and hate with grace. Consider also Jesus’s choice of disciples. Peter, Andrew, James, and John were fisherman and involved in the fishing business. Matthew was a hated tax collector, whose money was considered unclean. Judas Iscariot likely worked in bookkeeping. Simon the Canaanite was a stubborn zealot who wished for an insurrection over the Romans. Some of the disciples we don’t know what they did. Later Paul was a Pharisee and persecutor of the church.
Begin this week following Jesus’s example by making space in your life for those different from you. Remember, “Resentment and hatred have imprisoned more people than all the jails in the world combined.”
In the early 1980’s church life around Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, offered a selection of great churches. Dr. Joel Gregory preached at Gambrell Street Baptist, where professors fawned over his oratorical powers that mouthed “cherubim and seraphim” like he was sampling delicacies at Trader Joe’s. The flagship Travis Avenue Baptist Church, surrounded with aging housing the church was inclined to bulldoze for more parking, heralded its footprint with a steeple seen for miles and an unmatched musical program. We gravitated toward a smaller, more “Spirit filled” Southern Baptist church that prided itself on uplifting worship.
Sunday School for young adults was held in a room that could easily accommodate 30 people, with smaller classrooms surrounding the meeting area. The sliding curtains of these rooms were always shut. Sunday after Sunday we met in the darkened main room, which had no windows. The bright Ft. Worth sunshine could not penetrate our class, which had the same lighting as a funeral visitation. I began to ask myself, “Why is it so dark in here? Where are the windows?” One Sunday I peeked behind the closed curtains and saw classroom furniture jumbled between which windows filtered that Ft. Worth morning sun. I resolved to clean up the mess.
What Goes on Behind Closed Doors
One weekday I volunteered to cleanup the seminarian classroom and wondered, “How did we bright minded seminarians fail to see the condition of our own classroom?” As I rolled back the doors of the classes, I saw every room had large windows, with furniture tossed in like a preschool party after which spoiled toddlers scattered plastic LEGOs across the floor.
A little exploration revealed basement stairs that descended into what would be an insurance adjuster’s purgatory. Two inches of water flooded the entire basement floor. Across from the doorway stood a high voltage breaker panel for the building. As a safety feature, rather than address the flooded basement, someone laid wooden pallets from the door to the breaker panel as a way to reach the panel without standing in ankle deep water.
“What would a firefighter do trying to reach an energized panel in the dark, on across a flooded floor, walking on pallet boards spaced wide enough to capture a foot?” Meanwhile, week after week, the heavenly minded seminarians studied biblical principles that lifted them above the cares of this world.
Cleansing the Temple
Realizing the flooded basement was well beyond my scope as a volunteer, I shut the door somewhat in shock to this day how the leadership could be detached from the condition. So I began work on what I could and pushed back the sliding curtains, cleaned and organized the surrounding unused classrooms. Once the curtains were retracted with furniture arranged less like a tsunami victim and more like a place of education, I marveled at the beauty of the light that beamed into our dank meeting hall. It was transformed as though angels were ascending and descending on these shafts of light.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Come Sunday I entered excited to see the reaction of the class to the newly cleaned classroom building. Bright and cheery replaced the mausoleum we once called our class. To my shock people reacted the opposite of what I expected.
“What happened to our classroom?” “Who opened these curtains?” “Why is it so bright in here?” ” We liked it the way it was!” “Who gave permission to change our room?” And so the lament continued as seminarians mourned the passing of their dark space into the light.
My initial shame morphed into an understanding of human nature as it came to church work. Below a few insights will hopefully help those who find a bucket placed over their newly lit candle.
Carving the Underside of Pews
The monks in the medieval church carved the underside of pews in the belief that God was aware of not only that which was presented and prominent but also the underside, hidden area of our lives. Considering the monks’ example, I put in to practice a strategy that I’ve used pastoring churches and volunteering in the same.
Misericord carved underside of church seat from the church of Saint-Prix in Noizay (Indre-et-Loire, France), depicting an angel. See Wikipedia
Open Closed Doors
When I served as a Chaplain Extern at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, I became familiar with the “Ministry of Wandering Around,” which is different from “Wandering Aimlessly.” Clergy become creatures of habit, entering their office the same way, week after week, asking no questions, head down in “holy autopilot” and off to the next meeting.
The first step in “Holy Wandering” is to choose a different path than your normal route. Open a door you’ve never entered. Ask yourself, “How would a visitor feel about our church if she entered this room for the first time?” “What does the hidden space reveal about who we are where no one is looking?”
In my first church, I found a church library that was used as dead storage locker for Sunday School quarterlies decades old. At another church a church janitor’s mop sink sat filthy and filled with unused dirty mop buckets and soiled mops. Another hidden closet revealed the chair carefully placed under the hole torn in the duct board where the custodian would take his air conditioned afternoon siesta hidden from the Arizona sun and from the church staff for that matter. No one knew where he went for those hours.
I asked the facilities manager from my wife’s school to survey our church campus and opine on upgrades and whether the work was too much for one person to do in a week. He laughed about the “too much work” and went on to suggest mop sink soap dispensing stations. His insights created a new day for our church.
No closet was safe from our scrutiny. We found electric panels in which copper pipes had been inserted for fuses and non GFCI receptacles that were used with extension cords on wet grass.
As a result of the above, an unused library junk room was transformed (after a pickup bed was loaded with faded quarterlies) into a youth meeting room, with walls opened between. Handicapped bathrooms and bridal dressing area were built. Sound systems were upgraded and installed.
We formed a DIY team at the church empowered the lay members to “Open Doors” and carve the underside of pews. This really happened in that once project involved removing all the old pews and reinforcing the underside then reinstalling them.
A Road Less Traveled
Along with opening doors, take a road less traveled to church. At one church I parked on the street where church members walked. The path was so dark, I could not see to put my foot on the curb. I worked with our brilliant new Facilities Manager, Alberto Hernandez (who is now retired and serving as a pastor of his own church) to recandle parking lot lighting and to add additional path lighting.
With Facebook streaming the rage since the pandemic, walk the virtual paths. Yesterday, I watched the Facebook service for our church only to find that the sound level for the pastor’s sermon was so low I could not hear him without switching from my phone to my computer with speakers turned up 100 percent.
Pickleball and Other Grouse Hunts
Virtual paths can be just as jumbled as the classrooms in Ft. Worth. Our present church publishes every week “Monday – Pickleball 5:00 p.m.” So, I showed up with my paddle, only to find the hall empty. “Maybe an off week. I’ll try it again.” The next week, the same empty hall. The bulletin continued to announce the event.
One week as I accompanied my wife to her handbell choir she directs, a ringer said, “I hear you are wanting to play pickleball. They have been meeting off campus but should be here next week. They don’t like to have too many players. So they don’t advertise too much.”
She introduced me to the handful of players present that night. The next week I showed up interested; no one was present in the hall. Perhaps the risk of having a new player threatened their closed group pickleball party as the church bulletin continued on “autopilot.”
Your homework this Sunday – open a new door and follow a new path.
“See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut …” – Revelation 3:8.
Pastor Jim
Postscript
Taking my own medicine for looking behind doors, I checked the “Contact Us” link for this blog and discovered the email notifications were no longer received. I called Go Daddy who said that for a simple programming fee of $450 they would fix the issue. Short version – I was able to create a free Brevo account and installed a free SMTP form to resolve the issue after some gnashing of teeth.
“Amen!” … or “Oh, Me! I could write a book about church fights I mediated (or instigated) Chapter 1 – Change of worship time … Chapter 2- Install a PowerPoint projector in the sanctuary … 3- Launch any building project … 4-Clean out and toss all the junk in an unused classroom and destroy the sacred table decorations stored for the annual Ladies Mission Society … 5. Give the choir “constructive criticism” on the length of their Christmas Cantata …
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