I was talking with a local pastor recently and he reminded me of this great statement, “People aren’t looking for a friendly church, they are looking for friends at church.” He went on to describe how people will generally give a new church a 3-6 month window to see if they will actually find new friends at church. If they are unsuccessful during that time frame, they generally move on, as well they should! It is very easy to be a friendly church. You just need to get the right greeters in the right locations and you can meet most everyone with a friendly smile and a nice greeting, but that is not that impressive. After all, hotel bell hops and restaurant hostesses do that well. What people really want and need are new friends, true friends that will really connect with them and help them move closer to Jesus.

Often when people show up to a new church, this is the very thing they are seeking. They are tired of hanging out with their same ole crowd and chasing the same old dead end dreams and they are ready to take a chance on connecting with some new people that are going to walk with them towards God and towards goodness. Just showing up at a new church is often a cry for help, hoping to connect with some new folks and chart a new direction in life. But sadly, visitors often leave after just a few months of warm smiles and surface conversations squeezed in just before the service. The invitation to a small group, or to lunch or a football game never comes, and neither does their new course in life. It is a tragedy.

So let’s never confuse being a friendly church with being a friend producing church, as the difference is drastic. For new people to find new friends, more established people have to continually shuffle the deck of their current friends to make room for new relationships. This is a real effort and it takes intentionality, but it is the way to broaden our ministry scope.

I remember walking into a church of 10,000 people in Jacksonville, FL, as a new college grad all alone in a new city. As I walked in and told them I was from Alabama, the Sunday School teacher introduced me to Sam Pearson. He took me in that day, sat next to me, and then got me out to lunch with him and his buddies. We hit it off immediately and became really great friends.  I was even in his wedding a few years later! But even more, our relationship was used of God to challenge each of us to be better men of God as we both prepared for marriage.  So I will never forget that day, walking in and feeling a little weird, and finding one of my lifelong friends in an instant, simply because he went the extra mile for 'the new guy'. I pray we will see more and more of that in our church, because a so-called ‘friendly church’ where you can’t actually make new friends is just a big clique with shallow, extroverted greeters.