In my twenty-plus years with Friends, I’ve seen Big Out­reach Projects come and go. I’m afraid I can’t even remem­ber most of the Great Names they had. Is there a repos­i­to­ry for their Bold Mis­sion State­ments? Videos from their Impor­tant Con­fer­ences? You’d think with all this talk of Com­mu­ni­ty and Vibrance and Roots and New­ness that the Soci­ety of Friends would be bust­ing out at the seams. Well, I thought I’d get into the act, throw my hat in the ring if you will and give you the Biggest Newiest Out­reachi­est Pro­gram Ever:

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

I’ll leave the details up to you. Your place, a local restau­rant, sand­wich­es at the meet­ing­house, doesn’t mat­ter. Total new­com­er, some­one from anoth­er meet­ing, a old reg­u­lar who hasn’t shown up in awhile, doesn’t mat­ter. When some­one you didn’t expect shows up for wor­ship on First Day Morn­ing, say hi and invite them to a meal. What’s that? You missed it?

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

I warn you, you might be ven­tur­ing into Quak­er Uncom­fort Zones:

• You’ll have to talk with some­one you didn’t meet decades ago (GASP!)
• You’ll have to prac­tice clear­ly talk­ing about your faith, not just the how’s and the who’s but the why’s (AHHHH!)
• You’ll have learn what the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of seek­ers are actu­al­ly seek­ing (UH-OH!)

Now I real­ize this pro­pos­al is HERESY! It’s a com­plete vio­la­tion of QUAKER PRINCIPLES! Cost of the pro­gram: noth­ing. Num­ber of com­mit­tees need­ed to over­see it: zero. Mis­sion state­ment: twelve words, already writ­ten (Review with me: “When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch“). Plan­ning con­sul­ta­tions: none. Amount of air­fare trans­port­ing Impor­tant Friends hith­er and yon: zero. Pre­sen­ta­tions at year­ly meet­ings: none. Staff sup­port: none. Grant pro­pos­als: none. Oh but don’t get me wrong, THERE ARE HUGE COSTS! You might have to sched­ule that com­mit­tee meet­ing for anoth­er day!!! You might have to have that Impor­tant Con­ver­sa­tion with a fel­low com­mit­tee mem­ber by PHONE lat­er in the after­noon!!! You might have one hour less on First Day for all of the Crit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Things You Have to Do. Your Face­book friends won’t be par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed when you update to say you had lunch with some­one they’ve NEVER EVEN HEARD OF!

Ran­dom cap­i­tal­iza­tion aside for a moment, I real­ize that there are Friends with a gift of hos­pi­tal­i­ty. And some of us can come out of our shells if we make a bit of effort (it’s not the most nat­ur­al thing for me either). I’ve seen a few meet­ings and year­ly meet­ings that seem to have a tal­ent for hos­pi­tal­i­ty so I know it’s pos­si­ble. But I vis­it a lot of meet­ings these days and have to report that I rarely have the oppor­tu­ni­ty for more than ten min­utes of idle chit-chat after wor­ship before everyone’s jumped in their cars. I’ve seen Friends so involved with committee-work that they don’t notice new peo­ple or notice when reg­u­lars stop com­ing. New­com­ers typ­i­cal­ly look around with a mix of hope­ful­ness and anx­i­ety at the rise of wor­ship. Hand­shakes and intro­duc­tions are help­ful; wel­come tables, brochure racks and name tags are all very good. But depend­ing on per­son­al­i­ty, shy vis­i­tors will only stick around for a few min­utes if no one engages them any fur­ther. Like all of us, they’re look­ing for a per­son­al con­nec­tion and want more than just a few ques­tions answered Wikipedia-style. Not every­one will take us up on our offer of lunch but they’ll remem­ber we offered and will be that much more like­ly to return a sec­ond time.

So, one more time, in case missed it, the most out­reachi­est pro­gram ever:

When a new­com­er shows up at meet­ing, invite them out for lunch.

Now go off and out­reach. I hear the blue­ber­ry waf­fles down the street are real­ly yummy.