I’ve
recently been in ‘church shopping’ mode.
It was a strange experience for me as in all my previous 27 years
walking this earth, I’d never ever done it before. But after finishing up at my church as the
Youth Pastor in order to study fulltime, we decided it was the best idea.
Leading
up to the experience I thought it would be fun. I thought I’d enjoy the
process. Going to different churches, checking them out, critiquing, thinking
about what I liked and didn’t like. But
pretty soon I found the process frustrating, saddening, not all it was cracked
up to be.
This
has taught me two things.
Humans
need humans.
Christians
need Christians.
We
are built for relationships. We cannot
survive in this world on our own. After
about two months of being without a church to call home I began to feel
lonely. Sure, I had friends from my old
church, and family around still. But I
didn’t have a home.
The
bible tells us in Hebrews that we should, 'consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another...' I'd always known that it was important to go to church, but it wasn't until I was without a home, that I realised just how important it is. In fact I know now that I'd rather be in a church that frustrated me than be in no church at all.
So
because relationships matter, churches must be friendly. We ended up choosing the friendliest
church. Not the one with best music, or
best preaching, or slickest services. No,
we chose the church where multiple people said hello, who invited us out for
lunch afterwards; and backed up its friendliness on our second and third
visit. Many of the churches we visited
struggled. Sometimes we sat in the foyer
alone for 15 minutes drinking a cup of tea by ourselves. On another occasion the only people who
talked to us were the ones who were supposed to (minister/person with a name
tag that said welcomer on it).
Christians
need Christians. We need the different
parts of the body to bless and encourage us, and we need to use our gifts to
bless and encourage the body (1 Corinthians 12). So I need church and church needs me. You need church and church needs you. I believe that if we worked hard on making
our churches places of love and openness, which were quick to welcome and show
hospitality to strangers (aka newcomers), then we would see many more people
darken the doors of church and begin a journey following in the footsteps of
Jesus.
Chris
Bowditch
Theology
Student
www.youthministryandme.com
