"During our worship service there will be a short break for socializing and 'body building'. We encourage you to seek out people you don't know and get acquainted."
I didn't feel bad because they were going to try something like this during the service, I felt because I knew how it would go. It would remain a surface thing, people saying "Hi!" to each other as if they mean it and then turning and commenting on how you looked, felt, smelled, whatever. This is what I go through every Sunday after 10 years of attending HP. I even went through at a local BBQ restaurant a couple of weeks ago, where a very large part of the "in" crowd at HP came in and filled the tables around me and my family, yet only one of them said anything to me. Most of them avoided any eye contact with me and made sure they paid attention to whoever they were trying to sit by rather than greet a fellow church member that had been part of HP for 10 years.
I feel so bad for them. No follow-through on initiatives, no updates on a capital campaign once it's all up and running, and no plan for the future ("we're going somewhere!") Oh, well...
