For congregations to be characterized by deep, meaningful relationships with one another, they must move their internal relationships from face familiarity to meaning fellowship to true friendships.
Face familiarity is when people recognize one another, particularly at church events, as being someone who is familiar and that I ought to know. Perhaps the people know each others’ names, but only pass in the hallway with a simple “hello”.
Meaningful fellowship is where people have occasional times to interact with one another at various church gatherings but have no ongoing friendship relationship.
True friendships are when people know one another, have periodic to regular relationship encounters with one another, have life concerns for one another about which they pray, and consider one another friends who can be called on for various life needs.
Particularly when congregations have more than one worship service the percentage of relationships based on face familiarity rather than meaning fellowship or true friendships may be higher than when a congregation has one worship service. The key word here is “may”.
When true friendships exist among a large percentage of congregational participants, then complicated and even potentially divisive issues can be handled with relative ease. When face familiarity is the depth of too many relationships then it is difficult to handle complicated and potentially divisive issues in a positive way.
