Sometimes we notice a church sign standing stately in the front of the building and we see the announcement that next Sunday is "Friend Day," at which time the members are to invite and bring a friend to church next Sunday so that he can see the church in action.
In preparation for the big day, 20% of the members assemble on Saturday and give the building a good cleansing, all the better to make a good impression. The members also plan an after church lunch for one and all immediately following the Friend Day service. They plan special music for that service and make certain the choir is all spruced up and practiced up, robes and voices at the ready.
Friend Day comes and all goes well. The members congratulate themselves on how smoothly the service went and the friends go home after seeing the church in action.
Or have they?
No, not really because the friends are not at the real meeting of the church, the one meeting during which a friend would really get to see the church in action. What the friends have seen is the church give a performance for their benefit, a charade, if you please, but not the real church.
A RADICAL PROPOSAL
I propose that to be really honest, a church should have its Friend Day, but so the visitor can see the real church, Friend Day should be, "Invite a friend to the business meeting." That's where they'll see the real church in action. And what would they see?
AN EYE AND EAR FULL
The first thing they'd hear would be the calling of roll, and on occasion laughter which they'd recognize as nervous laughter because the members know what's coming. Then, as the meeting progressed, they'd see the assembled brotherhood and the sisterhood begin to tear each other apart with the intensity of a cougar pursuing an antelope.
They'd hear members insulting one another and slandering one another as they threw accusations all over the auditorium. They would see member-against-member voting on the most petty of issues as if they were voting to dissolve the Union. They would see emotionalism run riot in the same auditorium in which, not an hour earlier, they had sung together and prayed together. In the process, they'd see brothers and sisters manipulating each other, threatening each other, and bullying each other to get their way. At times, they'd see a furious member who didn't get her way storm out the building, slamming doors along the way for emphasis, an example of wooden swearing.
They would hear a member or two quote "Robert's Rules of Order," the church by-laws, and the church constitution, but they wouldn't hear any one quote the Bible. The friends would notice that the members only quote the constitution and the by-laws when those hallowed documents favor their position, but fall silent when they don't. They are masters at using and abusing both the ancient documents.
AFTER BURN
Then when the smoke has cleared and they're leaving the unholy sanctuary, they would see people who've been needlessly hurt beyond belief; they would hear a few members swearing an oath before God and the angels that they will never attend another business meeting as long as they live.
Yet, should the friend go back to attend the church service the next Sunday, he would see the people bloodied from the previous Sunday's battle sitting in church, acting as if nothing had happened, but on the inside grudges and anger are festering in the swamps of their sin natures and their defeated power lusts.
What's happened at the meeting is that the Bible has had no power over the meeting because the members have been raised to think that the Bible is for "church," but not for any other meeting. Yet business meetings are covered by the Bible in such texts as, "Let all things be done for edification," "build up one another," "avoid idle chatter," and "love one another," along with a host of other verses.
What's happened at the meeting is that sin natures have run amok, as each person or group craves the power to run the church. Church power is a heady wine, so powerful, each enters the business meeting with the motto, "I'll run it or ruin it."
Friends don't let friends go to business meetings.
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