A FEW YEARS AGO, a visitor to our branch church commented that when he had attended a service, no one had spoken to him. We had heard this from visitors before. I remember thinking, "But we're such a warm and loving group, how could that happen?"
It occurred to me that the moments after the Sunday morning service were a busy time and perhaps a visitor could be left out. I thought we should think more about all visitors being family since God is our Father-Mother.
I knew about churches of other denominations holding "fellowship hours" to get to know each other. And I’d heard about the fellowship of visits and meals shared by the early Christians. So, I looked up the word fellowship in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and found this wonderful statement: "Christian Science can and does produce universal fellowship. As the sequence of divine Love it explains love, it lives love, it demonstrates love. The human, material, so-called senses do not perceive this fact until they are controlled by divine Love; hence the Scripture, ‘Be still, and know that I am God’ " (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 275).
