Interestingly I just had this conversation with a customer of mine who recently left. Knowing I was a Bible Student, he approached me one rainy day and asked me for meeting times and place, to whoch he has been attending and enjoying himself for the past few months. He was fed up with the lack of love.
He is a single father with a young son of 7. He invited the friends over all the time for dinner, weekend BBQ's, as he tells it, he loved to have the friends over, not once did he ever get invited. Despite there being plenty of kids in the congregation, his son was never invited for play dates.
He later found out the reason. One day while in a carpool of JW's for service, mostly women, he expressed his thoughts, and they told him it was quite simple, "the brothers are afraid you'll steal their wives." He was young and good looking, actually he looks exactly like actor Stanley Tucci. Another problem is that while he is white, his son is only half white. his mother is black. But looks mostly black in a predominate white congregation.
So we have jealously, envy and prejudice as the ingredients.
You would think with new interest and new transplants the friends would embrace you and make you feel welcomed and at home. Such is often not the case.
RR
