Should you try making your church more like a tavern? Bruce Larson describes how the neighborhood bar becomes the substitute for the church in meeting the needs of unchurched individuals who are longing for friends: “It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is a permissive, accepting, and inclusive fellowship. It is unshockable. It is democratic. You can tell people secrets and they usually don’t tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes, not because most people are alcoholics, but because God has put into the human heart the desire to know and be known, to love and be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at the price of a few beers.”1
If this need for friendship is essential in getting decisions, it is equally vital in keeping new converts attached to the body, both in emotional as well as physical proximity. Jerry Cook says there are three guarantees from the church that people must have before they will risk becoming open enough to receive the healing that brings spiritual maturity and wholeness. First, the guarantee that they will always be loved—under every circumstance— with no exception. Second, that they will be totally accepted, without reservation. Third, that no matter how miserably they fail or how blatantly they sin, unreserved forgiveness is theirs for the asking.2
The first and second of these guarantees are crucial in the impact of friendship for new members. A friend will love a friend and accept that person for who they are—warts and all! A friend will seldom do this for a stranger. Strangers will find little acceptance, little love, and virtually no forgiveness from a group of people who do not know them.
Furthermore, no matter how theologically persuaded new members are of the doctrinal positions of their new church, without friendship it is nearly impossible to remain in fellowship. When new members are recruited on the basis of doctrine alone, without fellowship as a strong and accompanying reality, we set both ourselves and the new members up for failure.
Rather than assuring that new believers either already have friends or gain new friends within the congregation, members often adopt a “holier than thou” attitude that excludes people at the very moment they most need inclusion. As Christians we are rightfully concerned for our unsaved loved ones. Perhaps we should show equal concern for our unloved saved ones.3
Applying Cook’s first step to this issue of “having friends within the church,” notice what he says: “Love means accepting people the way they are for Jesus’ sake. Jesus hung around with sinners and if we’re too holy to allow people to blow smoke in our faces, then we’re holier than Jesus was. He didn’t isolate Himself in the synagogue. In fact, He mixed with sinners so much that the self-righteous got upset about it. ‘He’s friendly with some very questionable people,’ they said. And Jesus replied, ‘Yes, because I didn’t come to minister to you religious leaders. I came to call sinners to repentance.’ Isn’t that fantastic? Jesus spent His time with dirty, filthy, stinking sinners. And when those kind of people find someone who will love and accept them, you won’t be able to keep them away!”4
This is the very essence of discipling! This is the very process of nurturing new members to the point of fruit-bearing maturity, and the best “first fruit” they can bear will be extending love, acceptance, forgiveness, and friendship with another new believer. “Pastors are not obligated to get people to heaven. That’s the work of Jesus. A pastor’s obligation to people is first to love and accept and forgive them, and second, to bring them to ministry readiness by teaching them to do the same.”5
And even this emphasis on extending forgiveness and acceptance relates directly back to articulating the doctrines—the most essential one being salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. The Adventist Church needs continually to relearn that Jesus accepts us—although our lives have much that offends His holiness. Righteousness by faith in His merits says that His acceptance of us does not imply approval of our misbehavior, but rather it shows love that will transcend our shortcomings and transform our behavior into His likeness if we will only allow sufficient time to interact with Him as “a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24, NIV)! If we, then, are acceptable to Jesus despite our lack, how could we dare reject others?
1 Harvie M. Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1982), 29, 30.
2 Jerry Cook and Stanley C. Baldwin, Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1979), 11.
3 Conn, 29.
4 Robert Tuttle Jr., Someone Out There Needs Me (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983), 103.
5 Cook and Baldwin, 15.
