NVT

I’ve been a part of NVT (New Visitors Team) ever since my last few weeks as a freshman. I joined only because I wanted to serve in a ministry after being a member for a couple of months and Grace Mao asked if I were interested. I don’t think that I was interested in the actual ministry as much as wanting to actually serve in the church. I was excited about greeting at the door and getting to meet all the people that I didn’t know. I joined without knowing too much the weight and responsibility that comes with being on NVT.

One of the most difficult parts of NVT was being friendly but not candy-coated, nice but not fake, caring but not nosy. It was difficult to care about people that I met for the first time and for people who were visiting the church, possibily looking for a place to call their home church. Over time, I eventually learned how to talk to people for the first time and how to make someone feel welcome. I became acutely aware of new visitors and made it a habit to hunt them down after service to talk to them. And if a new visitor were sitting all by him/herself? Unacceptable. I would go up to them and talk to them, then introduce them to a friend of mine and let them strike up a conversation while I went about cleaning up name tags and the NVT box (hahaha remember this?).

But in my time while serving on NVT, I came to notice the people who were regular attenders or even members, sitting by themselves after the service. These were the people who were shy, the people who didn’t know how to make small talk and were awkward. They were people who were really hard to talk to and made other people feel uncomfortable or awkward. And since these people weren’t new, they were being ignored. They faded well into the plain off-white wall and in a sense, became invisible.

It made me wonder why everyone was so busy talking to their friends but not reaching out to those who were a part of the body. It made me wonder how we could say that we were a church that loved God and people if there were people even within the church who were being ignored. It made me wonder why I didn’t reach out to these people even though I saw them as I walked hurriedly past them in wobbly heels and with the black NVT box, feeling too busy to talk to them.

I realized that perhaps everyone felt that way too. Too busy doing this, too busy talking to someone about something important– granted, these are all legitimate reasons but in the end, it was a huge rebuke to me. I was always so busy bustling around after service ended to clean things up quickly (so that E wouldn’t lock the door before I could get stuff into his “office”!) at the expense of extending love and concern to someone who could be lonely, who could be hurting.

One Sunday, after being completely aware of my deliberate ignoring of these kinds of people and feeling convicted to extend love to them, I put the NVT box down and began talking to them.

NVT has taught me a lot of things but if anything, it’s taught me to love the body. NVT is this strange meeting point between outreach and inreach and though it really does deal with new visitors to the church, it’s taught me about the members of the church. God has taught me to have a keener eye for the lonely.

This is something that I’ve been thinking about lately, especially with this year’s theme at Lighthouse, “For the Love of Christ.” In the end, I realized how much I love only when its convenient and only when my investing love results in being loved back. It’s really interesting how God’s been teaching me these things ever since I was a freshman and the lesson, which began with hints here and there, has finally gotten to a high, yelling volume, a lesson that I am learning weekly, to love as Christ loved us, to love with a reckless love, expecting nothing in return.

It’s definitely difficult, especially with people who are awkward or whom I don’t “click” with. But I can conclude that, bearing in mind the love of Christ, it’s a happy kind of difficult.