Invisible Friends

Have you ever noticed that everybody brings their invisible friends to church? Think about it. When was the last time your were in church and someone (not from your group) voluntarily sat in the seat immediately next to you or your group? If this has ever even happened to you, how comfortable did you feel? Look at how your church fills up before service. No one sits right next to each other. They always leave a seat open for their invisible friends.

I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but it does. It screams superficiality. It prohibits real community.



I get it. it’s hard to to break out of our comfort zone or American preconceptions of personal space.

I have a friend who’s the pastor of a larger church. He doesn’t have rows of chairs in his church. He has people sit around tables. He doesn’t mind that they have their backs to him while he preaches. He doesn’t want them to face him. He wants them to have to face each other. It fosters community.
This brings me to a startling truth about the Church: Christian community always has been, and always will be, created around a table.

See, whether that table is the communion table or your kitchen table, there’s no room for your invisible friends. That’s community. We should try it.

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Ben Michaels 



hails from Council Bluffs, Iowa. He is a senior at Ozark Christian College studying preaching and church planting.  He blogs at A Rainy Day in Switzerland frequently and considers himself a coffee addict who loves to tell stories. He, like most of the writers at Inside Overneath, loves coffee. When he was little, he had a dream to become a garbage man, because he thought they only worked one day a week.