MISSING THE FRIDAY GROUP

The other day, in the midst of a very hot and very humid day, I found myself missing The Friday Group.

Shortly after moving into Framingham in early 1987, Pastor Chuck Pierce from what was then known as Village Bible Chapel (now "Crossroads Community Church") phoned me to invite me to a fellowship group of full-time clergy that had been meeting since 1977.  I'd certainly heard of many such groups, but I was very surprised to learn that it met EVERY WEEK and YEAR ROUND.  I remember telling my volunteer secretary,  "That's crazy.  EVERY week.  I'm not going to go to that EVERY week.  I think I'll go maybe once a month."

The group met Fridays from 12 Noon to 2 p.m.  The location changed from month to month.  Almost always it met at a pastor's home, although occasionally a pastor would host at a private room at his church.  The first hour was for eating lunch and just telling funny stories, talking sports or the weather.  The second hour was for serious sharing and prayer.  After a few months, Pastor David Dean of First Baptist Church in Sudbury ran into me at a post office.  Almost twenty years my senior, he gave me a very short fatherly talk and told me that as a pastor I really needed that group each week.  He was right.  I began to attend every Friday unless I was out of town, ill, or had a church emergency.  There were weeks that I went and laughed and joked, and there were weeks of tears and the other guys ministering to me- AND weeks of me ministering to them.  Over the years the group became very, very special to me.

In 1991, David Dean (one of the original 1977 founders of the group) left to take a high level position in his denomination in New York City.  He bought a house in the New Jersey suburbs.  One of the most "fun" things that The Friday Group ever did was to arrange with David's wife to surprise him one Friday in 1992.  She arranged for him to be home on that Friday.  We drove down to New Jersey...arrived at his home at Noon... had a "very special Friday group" there and departed for Massachusetts at 3.  The last of the original 1977 Friday Group was Chuck Pierce.  He took a position in southern Rhode Island in 1994.  One of the group remarked, "Now all of the originals are gone- the dynamic of this group will change- it will be interesting to see if it will survive."

A year later that guy announced to the group that he was Gay, and subsequently left the group.  The first BIG change we made was we stopped meeting during the summer months.  Over time the average weekly attendance dwindled from seven to five to three to two or three.  The very last time we met was in June of 2002.  I hosted the group at my church's Conference Room and showed a favorite videotape of mine- an episode of Northern Exposure focusing on the themes of "What does it mean to be a man?" and "How does a grown man relate to his father?".  The three or four of us present that day had a good time.

I tried to get the group started up again in the early Fall of 2002, but only one guy was highly interested in doing that.  It was ironic that I had balked at attending this group in 1987, and now I was quite grief-stricken to see it die.

In the late fall of 2002, I joined the "John 17:23 Fellowship", a network of small groups for pastors started by the Rev. Dick Germaine in the early 1990s.  Our small group meets every other week on Wednesday mornings and we have "big group" meetings four times a year, plus a retreat.  I really enjoy the John 17:23 Fellowship, but for some reason I really found myself missing The Friday Group this week, and I just had to write about it.

Do you have a regular fellowship group and/or accountability group to which you belong?  If not, that's something you should really pray about and seek out.  If you'd like some input from me, I'd be happy to try to help.

E-mail to RevRBaril@aol.com

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity."  (Psalm 133:1)