I have spoken before about how I decide who I will meet with. You can read that here. In short, I tend to want something to either be helpful to me or helpful to them. I take a fairly broad view of ‘helpful to me’ which ranges from I just enjoy the person’s company and am refreshed by them through to them being able to do all sorts of helpful things for us and everything in between. I try to be as helpful as I can be to others and am glad to meet if, though it’s not much help to me, I can be helpful to them. Ideally, of course, it helps us both at the same time.

But what if you don’t know the person? What if you neither know them, their church nor the organisation you represent? What if you don’t know anyone who knows them either and have no ability to even guess whether they will help you or you will help them? Do you meet or not?

Ultimately, I generally think nobody is hurt by meeting once. If you don’t know whether anybody will be helped meaningfully, the only way to find out is to meet up isn’t it? For the sake of a coffee, or a lunch, you won’t really lose anything by meeting anyone once. You might have a clearer picture of how helpful things might be for either of you after that, but what do you lose by meeting up one time? The chances are you are more likely to be helped, or help, than not – particularly if contact has been made by one of you for some reason.

If you err on the side of charity and positive assumption, simply having a coffee might be the beginning of a new and genuine friendship. It might lead to solid church partnership. It might bring you into contact with someone who is similar in character, or had similar experiences, and with whom you can establish mutual support. There are lots of good things that might happen from it.

If you don’t go, yes, you might have gained an hour back. But that is all. The particular hour might be critical, but I’m going to guess it probably isn’t. And what is the worst that happens? You spend an hour or so with somebody you don’t click with and all of you realise there probably isn’t going to be any beneficial links formed. So what? Don’t meet again then and save yourselves an hour next time. But at least you know and you were put out an hour of time and the cost of a couple cups of coffee. It’s hardly a great investment, the risk is minimal and the potential benefits, if they transpire, significant.

So, what do you lose by agreeing to meet one time? I appreciate pastor’s time is limited. There are many calls on our time, many things we could do, many ways we could use our time. We can’t do everything. We need to make choices. But meeting someone, one time, when you’ve not met before – what have you got to lose really? Go and grab that coffee, buy them that lunch, potentially entertain an angel in the process, and decide how helpful it is for either of you after you’ve met once. You’ve not really got anything to lose.