Newbies

After church yesterday Steve and I were talking about how different churches approach the area of new people just wandering in. Churches are so different, and have such wildly differing levels of preparedness!

When we wandered in off the street so to say into the pentecostal church in Iisalmi, we were blessed because Charles and Paula had only just come back to that church the previous week and they were pretty fluent in English. Everybody knew everybody so when two strangers walked in it was pretty obvious. Even though, they didn't know what to do with us newcomers! Charles and Paula welcomed us wonderfully but there was no programme in place in which to bring newcomers into the "fold".

In Littlehampton yesterday although the Holy Spirit was obviously with the Church there, and the Church was so evidently alive, we were pretty much left to ourselves afterwards. Rachel's family came and said hello, but either nobody else noticed that we were strangers (or we looked so at home) or nobody really knew what to say to newcomers, or everybody was so busy catching up with everybody else that they just didn't notice anybody standing by themselves. Maybe we should have made more of an effort.

It just made me think of Kings, and how they've hit on something there. They expect new people at the meetings and welcome them publicly, and people don't seem scared to talk to other people who aren't in their immediate circle of friends.

Having not been a church-newbie for a long time, it's quite scary walking into a room full of strangers. In times past this would have been my ideal situation - new place, new start, new identity, nobody talking to me or asking awkward questions - but I really want some place to belong to. I'm craving belongingness. We're going to go to Jubilee Church in Worthing next week. I so don't want to become a church-hopper but I so want to find the place that God wants us to be in. I want to be welcomed in, drawn into the fold, to feel wanted and loved and accepted, and find my place with God's people. Or, just KNOW that we are where God wants us to be.