The second biggest reason people often give for leaving a church is a lack of meaningul relationships as expressed in terms like "the church is not friendly."
In yesterday's post we dug under the surface of what it means when people say "I'm not being fed," so today let's try to see what is underneath this second reason:
"The people aren't friendly"
I think there is a biblical principle that can help us with this:
“A man who has friends must himself be friendly...” (Proverbs 18:24a)
I believe there is a responsibility on the part of a church collectively and a responsibility on the part of the individual. So when people say "the people aren't friendly" they are really reporting a breakdown of relational responsibility on one or both sides.
Let's consider where some of that breakdown may be occurring:
The church may not be intentionally friendly. Most churches have nice people in them, but there are churches which intentionally welcome people and others that do not. In my experience churches must work hard to very intentionally create a culture that is very friendly to guests. Otherwise, the experiences of guests will vary wildly depending upon whether they happened to bump into friendly people or got shut out by cliques.
The church may not offer opportunities for relationships to be built. We have several key areas where we try to facilitate this. Every Sunday after service we provide free refreshments so people will have an excuse and an incentive to stick around and build relationships. We offer and strongly promote Home Fellowships (small groups) so people can gather in smaller settings and learn, talk with, pray for and encourage one another. We also challenge everyone to get involved in serving where they are placed in teams working alonside others and getting to know them.
The individual isn't being friendly. Relationships work both ways. So if a person comes to church, always looks mad, keeps people at a distance, and isolates themselves they will have trouble connecting at church or in any social setting. Futher, if someone comes to service and leaves right afterwards they are unlikely to make connections that could eventually lead to meaningful relationships.
The individual isn't taking advantage of opportunities offered. We have found that if a person doesn't serve or isn't involved in a small group then they normally won't stick at the church longer than 6 months on average, even if they really like the Sunday services. After all, church is supposed to be a family. And if you don't have any sense of connection with anyone around you, it is pretty hard to feel like you belong and you are loved.
So we must challenge our culture and systems to make sure we are being friendly and providing opportunities for relationships to begin and to be cultivated.
We must also challenge and encourage people to take advantage of the relationship building opportunities we offer because relationships always require mutual investment.
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