(This is a hard post for me to write, since I am also guilty. I hope you hear my heart in it.)
I’ve been convicted in the last several years: We, (I), need to quit with the cliques in church.
We need Saturday detention — together — on Sunday — the whole lot of us.
There’s plenty of speculation right now about why so many people are fed up with Church and the institution of it. I don’t know all the answers or all the reasons. But I’ve known many people who have felt out of place, unwelcome, under-valued, or stuck back in high school when it comes to the Church, popularity, and social politics. They’ve tried church–tried to come back–tried to re-engage, and they’ve not found the Church a very hospitable community. They’re over it.
This is tragic.
I don’t quite know how to solve this, except that I must take some ownership. All of us probably should.
There’s that line in “You’ve Got Mail” where Tom Hanks tells Meg Ryan, when he’s trying to befriend her after he put her out of business, “It wasn’t personal. It was business.” She responds, “What does that mean? All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. It was personal to me. What’s so wrong with being personal, anyway?”
Just like Joe Fox, we have, maybe unintentionally, maybe out of selfishness or ignorance, or maybe out of habit or our own insecurities, or maybe in our flesh and envy and fear, we have excluded. Maybe it wasn’t personal. Maybe it was. But if you have come to church and felt on the outskirts, have felt unwelcomed or unincluded, I’m so sorry.
I was the kid in youth group growing up that had many friends. I walked into that building and felt like I owned it (or it owned me). And yet, even with all my confidence, I still sometimes felt anxiety walking into the youth center.
Even with all my confidence today, as a grown up, as a worship leader and someone ‘up front,’ I still feel, (often), vulnerable and anxious going to church. This is partly my introvertedness. But also because I worry I might forget someone’s name, or I might say something strange, or I fear the awkwardness.
But what a difference it makes when someone approaches me and hugs me! When someone walks up to me and welcomes me. It makes me feel noticed, and seen — like he’s glad I’m here and she’s happy to see me.
Too often we leave the job of hospitality, of friendliness and inclusiveness, to someone else(many times the already overextended pastor). Just like high school, we walk into church and sit with our same friends in our same section. On the patio we approach the people we know, the people we are closest with, because we want to hear about their week, about what’s been happening with their family, about their job or what-have-you. Mid-week we meet up with a small group at a park or coffee shop or lunch date, “let’s just keep it us so we can really talk.” We assign people to groups, we divide by difference and common interests. At MOPS or bible study, we would rather pull up another chair at our friend’s table than sit down with all the singletons at the newbie table. Many times we have “community groups” and we don’t want new people to join because a new person will “mess up the dynamics.”
The excuse many of us Christians make (when we are aware of our actions) is that “even Jesus himself had a close, inner circle.” We argue that we can’t be close friends with everyone. We only have so much time to go around, and we hardly spend time with our best friends, let alone have the time to meet so many new friends, new people.
Those things are true.
But we are to befriend the outcast too. And if we are honest with ourselves, sometimes we simply don’t want to. It takes energy and effort to befriend new people. It takes risk. And we are about our wants. We want to sit with our clique, the friends that make us feel loved. We want to go out to lunch with people we like, people we prefer. We want to spend our time our way.
Some people are desperate for community. They are searching for friendship, and they have come to the church, the place where we should be the most friendly, where they should be most welcome. They’ve come half-way. They’ve done their part in trying something new, being vulnerable, walking into an unknown. Now it is time for us to do our part and say, “You are welcome in this place.”
Our cliques, be it intentional or unintentional, are a contradictory representation of the inclusiveness, warmth, sacrificial love of Jesus. He said we should put the needs of others above our own, and we should do to others what we would wish for ourselves. We wouldn’t want to be excluded. It’s a cruddy feeling. So why do we do it to others?
There are a lot of hurt feelings in the church. People who sit alone. People who wonder if they stopped coming if anyone would even notice. People in the ‘out’ crowd observing from afar people in the ‘in’ crowd. There’s an awareness of the ‘cool group’ and the ‘not as cool group.’ There are people who have no where to go on Easter and no one inviting them to lunch and no one commenting how cute they look. There are people who stand on the patio after service and nobody talks to them. There are people whose children are not welcomed, aren’t played with, aren’t invited to birthday parties and playgroups.
There are outsiders right in front of our noses. We don’t even see them.
This week, what if we sat in a different place during service, next to a person who is sitting alone? What if we scanned the patio after church to see if anyone needed a friend, or to search for someone we didn’t know, and we courageously approached them, reached out our hand, and introduced ourselves? What if we crossed cliques–walked over to someone in ‘the other group’ and started chatting about March Madness or spring break or the weather, even? What if we sent an email to a group of people for a playdate and we included the people we never include? What if we sat at a table with a bunch of people we don’t know? What if we each carried our weight in being hospitable? How different would our churches be?
Let’s be different. Let’s be known for our friendliness. Let’s be more inclusive than the little league moms and the PTA parents. Let’s open up our garages, share hot dogs, host BBQs, greet people with grace, ask for phone numbers, send emails, and be hospitable toeveryone.
I think we can do better. What do you think?
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