YOU CANNOT FAKE HOSPITALITY

Last weekend, instead of going to church, we went running - or walking as the case would be - joining a friend for a beautiful summer morning with his running club - followed by brunch.   Here is what happened. 

They put a ribbon on us as First Time Runners, prompting those who wanted to come over and say hi. About two dozen did just that. We were gifted with great spontaneous conversations with total strangers all morning, on all sorts of subjects. It was a diverse crowd of all ages, incomes and life situations. Granted, walking lends itself to the art of conversation more than worshipping - but this whole morning was a feast of new acquaintances.   At the beginning, a very well-trained volunteer came over and did a quick interview so that he could introduce us to the larger group before people commenced on runs and walks.

Our friend commented over brunch that this was, in fact, his church.  He started to apologize for making such an analogy, but I told him that I totally get it. When he moved to this city years ago, he had tried a couple churches, one of which even gave him a ribbon to wear like the running club. But during the after-worship-social time, he noticed that people crossed the room to avoid having to talk to him.

It was not my first experience with this running club. About a decade ago, I went on a camping trip with folks from another chapter in another city - along with their spouses and kids.   On that particular trip, people would slowly figure out that I was a pastor, and then, begin to sidle up to me during the campfire times to talk about religion, spirituality and personal issues.

I would surmise that ninety percent of the folks in the running club are 'unchurched' by church people's definitions. Yet, they clearly surpass almost every church I have attended in the last decade in terms of genuine interest in the stranger in their midst.   The whole morning, last Saturday, I kept thinking, "I would come back here often if I lived here, or if I had moved here and wanted to cultivate a sense of community." These were/are the people we all want to move in next door!

Most churches are hit-and-miss on this front.

How often I have said, after attending a church, "I loved the worship space, the liturgy, the thoughtfulness of the sermon and (sometimes) the music," but I did not find the people that I deeply long to have for my neighbors.

My pastoral mentor in the 1980s, Glynn Vickers of McKinney, Texas, used to tell me, "Paul if just ten percent of your church can be genuinely friendly and the others can just manage to avoid being offensive, you will make a great impact on new worship visitors." But rare is the church where ten percent have the skills and genuine interest in meeting the stranger and welcoming her or him into their lives.

All this hospitality training that the denominations have been offering in the past decade has accomplished a couple things: most churches have better coffee these days and some kind of social hour. But folks, there is nothing worse than standing in a lonely corner with great coffee at social hour.

That would likely never happen at the running club.

Why does it so often happen at a place that is based upon the values of Jesus who broke all sorts of social conventions in order to pursue priceless conversations with the strangers who crossed his path?

At the heart of it all, I am not sure that we have adequately embraced the sacrament of receiving another person's story. Whatever else that we are up to at this thing we call church, that is simply not a major goal or value in most cases. 

What might you do to change that in the place(s) that you call church?