The most insignificant person before any wedding is the groom. As long as he shows up, that’s all that counts. The most insignificant person after a wedding is the minister, especially if the ceremony is for a couple only distantly related to the church.
“Thank you, Pastor, for a lovely service,” you’ll hear. Or, “That was such a beautiful prayer, Reverend.” Then these people hurry to the punch bowl as if eager to talk to anyone but the parson.
Early in my ministry, once the niceties were out of the way, I found myself parked off in a corner. After a few awkward minutes, I would wish the bride and groom well and retreat out the door to some activity-any activity where I wasn’t the parson on display.
Then I started thinking: I’m always looking for ways to reach unchurched people. A wedding reception bulges with people who otherwise wouldn’t come to church on a bet, yet here I am, bolting out the door at the first opportunity because I feel socially uncomfortable. The challenge of the evangelistic opportunity shamed my desire for retreat. I decided to capitalize on the possibilities.
I don’t sneak out anymore. Now I use wedding receptions to sharpen my listening skills, build bridges to the unchurched, and even gather fodder for my sermons. Rather than seeing receptions as something to endure, now I often leave them refreshed by talking with people at a happy time in their lives.
Weddings allow me to observe the extended families of church members. I benefit from meeting the “Uncle Jim” or “Aunt Martha” I’ve only heard about in counseling situations, people I’d likely never have contact with in other pastoral duties.
Those who show up at church only for a wedding or a funeral are people I need to hear. And they benefit from interacting with this “preacher” away from the pulpit and down from the platform, someone nibbling mints and nuts and talking to them about normal things.
Once I sat down beside a man who was obviously uncomfortable with me. I asked where he was from, and was he a friend of the bride or groom? Short, direct, barely polite answers followed each of my questions. I found out he had grown up with the bride’s father in a nearby town, and I mentioned fishing in the lake there. The man, an avid fisherman who knew every hole in the lake, brightened visibly.
We swapped fishing stories for nearly twenty minutes, and then the man said abruptly, “I don’t go to church and haven’t been since the war.”
He continued, saying that a pastor once had disappointed his family at a painful time. As a young boy, he had determined that every pastor was no good, and the church was a place of no visible means of support. That man later called to invite me to fish his favorite places on the lake. The hostility of forty years was broken in a conversation about fish.
Another time I sat with a woman who, again after the opening chitchat, told me a story of touching fortitude. She said she dreaded nursing homes, yet her mother was confined to one, slowly deteriorating from a degenerative disease. The rest of the family would dash in only when it was convenient, but this daughter resolutely visited her uncomprehending mother in the one place she hated most. Only once in scores of visits did her mother’s glazed expression remotely register recognition, but she said that one exchange sustained her.
A book could never have provided the richness of what that woman shared that afternoon.
So I stay at receptions, even when the room is filled with strangers. I make a point to break the social barriers by asking the one or two leading questions that seem natural to the conversation. Questions as simple as “Do you live near here?” “Where did you grow up?” or “How long have you known the bride or the groom?” have opened the floodgates.
When I get brave, I even venture a question like “What are weddings like in your church?” Sure, it’s a leading question, but it broaches the subject of faith and gives me a reading of the spiritual condition of the wedding guest.
I listen attentively. Not many take the effort to hear the stories bottled up inside us. I find many people delighted that someone is willing to listen.
It does take time. On one occasion I sat through a complete dinner next to the grandmother of the groom, and not until dessert did I hear the fascinating story of the beginnings of the church I was serving. This dear woman had never told her story before; she didn’t think anyone would be interested. It was folk history all too soon lost forever, but now it will be shared for generations.
Surviving the reception presents no problem now. I even look forward to those twice-removed weddings as a ministry opportunity, a time to grow-and minister-by listening to the people who have so much to say.
-Don Maddox
First Presbyterian Church
Long Beach, California
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