Good Friends

by David George

Everyone needs good friends and so does every church. Our church’s good friend is Neil Thielke, my mentor of 10 years now. We recently had him visit our church for a Friday night “fireside chat”. You see he is the interim pastor of our sister church in Fargo so we can’t have him up for a Sunday morning church service easily. Since we don’t have access to our Sunday morning venue on Friday nights, my living room had to stand in for a church building. And that works for now because our whole church can comfortably sit in my living room which was endowed with a fireplace 105 years ago when our house was erected.

That in and of itself is why our church needs such a good friend: We all fit in my living room! And that is where Neil shines. The highlight of the evening was not the message that he shared with us, it was the Scrabble games after his chat. His message was fine and encouraging (although I confess that I was nodding of at the end because I had deprived myself of 4 hours of sleep the night before reading the third book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy) but his strength is interacting with people through an activity.

With just the suggestion of Scrabble he drew in 3 other players and two very intense games ensued. I think that they wrapped up closer to 11pm than 10pm. I strategically avoided the game not out of disinterest but because I knew that a Scrabble game (or two as it turned out to be) would strengthen his relationship with the members of our church more than preaching. And that is exactly how it worked.

Oh I almost forgot to mention that Hanna beat Neil in the second game by one point.