Re-Learning How to Make Friends...

I have two small children, and I find it fascinating how easily kids can make friends. When I head to busy church meetings, to neighborhood socials, or even to the park, my elder son (3 years old) will often be tossed into a situation with other children he has never met.  At first, he is often cautious and shy, sizing up the situation (unless of course there is a bounce house). But inevitably it seems that his parallel play turns into giggles and races with children that are sometimes much older or younger and certainly who are different from him.

It seems as though often adults lose this capacity. It is as if we remain in the cautious, shy stage for longer... we worry more that we will offend someone by our mere friendliness. We have to have excuses to strike up conversations or reasons to justify the establishment of new friendships. There is this bizarre awkwardness that surrounds a lot of our interactions. For kids, it is accepted that they are desperate to know and play together... for adults, we no longer accept that there is that same truth about us: that we are also desperate to know one another, to revel in relationship, to build new friendships. But, I think that we are...

We have now been handing out free coffee and muffins to TCC students on the corner of Peach and Mills Street every Tuesday and Wednesday for three weeks. We had close to 20 folks stop and enjoy a snack with us this week, and still the most common question among those who stop is, "So, why is this coffee free?" Our agreed upon answer is: we want to be good neighbors, and you, TCC students are our neighbors.  Basically, we want to make friends.

It is shocking how many people are even more uncomfortable when we explain we just want to be friends or get to know you better. One woman, asking for directions to parking, was told she could park in our lot and we could also give her free coffee and muffins. She immediately put up her window and screeched away.

I think as adults we generally assume that someone who wants to get to know me must be up to something, and something not good. They our out to manipulate me or take advantage of me. And perhaps, unfortunately, that is what we have been trained to do as adults. After decades of living with our primary form of communication with the world being advertisements, we are wary of contact with new groups. We need to know what they are up to first.

And perhaps that is the joy of this coffee ministry. We have absolutely no agenda. None at all. This has been a horribly planned out ministry. It came out of a side conversation with a couple of members with little to no goal at all... we just wanted to be friendly and get to know the students that are in our neighborhood. I have been asked by church folk what our plan is. What are we going to do with the students we meet? How long are we doing this for? How will we know if we have succeeded? Are we trying to draw in new members/plan a college fellowship/set up tutoring?

We have no idea. We're just doing it... and we are having fun... and we are loving it. Like children who meet awkwardly on a playground or in the daycare center of a presbytery meeting, we have no plan... we just know that we are there and they are there and then we have fun together.

And God has blessed that. Sure we do certain "ministry program" type things. We try to keep track of names, and we write down one or two prayer requests. We have started praying for everyone we have met by name each Tuesday and Wednesday hoping we will see them again. And at the end of the cleanup I send out an email to a bunch of church folk asking them to be praying for the folk we've met.

But mostly, we are re-gaining the ability to make friends, to bless people whom we don't know for no reason at all, other than the greatest reason: we are made to love others, so we are making friends.