The meet and greet...

This morning I thought I'd muse on meeting new people. It's something we've been doing a lot of lately. Our new church is the largest we've ever been in. I think there are about 500 adult members and about that many children. Seeing all those children is inspiring because its a sign that the church is growing and healthy. And I just love to watch little children running around with each other and teens raising their hands to praise during worship time. =) But since it's so large, that makes it strategically more difficult to meet others. David and I have become a tag team in this. We've developed a plan for Sunday mornings. We'll sit down, and we'll look around us and get our bearings. Then, during the 15 minute break time when the children go down for children's church, David will make initial contact with our seatmates. He'll introduce himself and get a conversation started, and then I'll jump in and provide backup to help him with whatever conversation he has going. =) We have different strengths and weaknesses that work well here. David is good at opening conversations and introducing himself, and this is my least favorite part of the meeting people thing. If it had just been up to me, the first few weeks that we were at church, I think I would've just gone, observed, and left without meeting anyone who didn't come up to me. Since we're in such a large church where it isn't so obvious who's new, that means that I wouldn't have talked to many people. Not because they're not friendly, but because they don't want to assume I'm new and then make a mistake. David, however, is great at opening conversations, and then he begins to feel more uneasy about coming up with conversation topics. So I swoop in with my small talk skills. =) I'm making this sound like a military maneuver because that's what it feels like sometimes when you're in a new place, and you have to make the effort and plan ahead to make contact with other humans. It requires initiative when you'd sometimes rather just hide out because you're tired of intiating. We all like our comfort zones, and it isn't comfortable to meet new people. We have to be friendly, and we have to smile when we're starving and cranky because we didn't plan for Baby's growth spurt during the service (that's me), and we have to desperately try to remember names and faces and pertinent information. But all the hard work eventually pays off. At least I keep reminding myself of this. After a couple of months of our strategic plan, David and I now know a lot of people to talk to after church. We can spend a good 1/2 hour to an hour talking to others now without necessarily meeting anyone new! We did it last week and were almost late to a picnic as a result, and I was amazed and thankful for that. Our initiative paid off, and hopefully God will provide deeper relationships from these initial contacts. We are also working on integrating ourselves into a small group, and we went to our second small group meeting last night. About half of the people there were people we hadn't met before, so there was a lot of meeting happening again. But we were also able to see a little progress in getting to know the others that we'd had contact with from last time and from church. Both were nice, but I'm mostly looking forward to getting beneath the surface and finding out more about the hearts and lives of the people that we're still in the process of meeting. They're fellow brothers and sisters with struggles and joys that I can learn from, and I'm ready to get down to doing more of that. But let's face it. You can't get to that until you go through the hard work of meet and greet. I get tired of that work, especially when I have few solid friendships to fall back on for comfort around here. You feel like a trapeze artist just swinging out there, leaping, and hoping that somebody will be kind enough to catch you. It's a little frightening because it's uncertain. You don't know who will subtly accept or reject your offer of friendship. You don't know who has room in their lives for one more relationship. After all, as cousin Keith says, "Making friends is like finding work with a company. You may be the best person for the job with the most wonderful credentials around, but if there isn't a job opening, they can't take you on." So here's to finding a job opening! I know there are a lot of us out there who are shy and are afraid of putting themselves out there to meet and possibly be rejected as friend candidates by others. But what is our alternative? Our alternative is loneliness. We all need each other, and we especially need others in the body of Christ for accountability and growth. We are not meant to be islands, and in our culture, it is far too easy for us to become islands. We don't have to have each other to meet basic, daily needs. We don't have to share farm labor in order to have something to eat; we can just go down to the corner store and buy something. In the process of using money to get our basic needs met, I think we lose a sense of community support. I don't know about you, but I look at the descriptions of early church life in the New Testament and long for something closer to that. I long for shared meals and willing giving of time and resources and joyful times of praise and thanksgiving. I can long for it all day, though, and it'll just be a dream unless I'm obedient to do something to put it into place. So if you've been hanging back, even though you sense that that woman you keep seeing on Sundays with the little boy who looks about your son's age could be a possible friend, stop doing it! Jump in there and introduce yourself. (I'm trying to take my own advice here.) We're all so good at putting up walls and acting self sufficient. Maybe she needs a friend as much as you do. You'll never know unless you swoop in for the meet and greet. =)