This Sunday, Nov. 14, the New Life Church is hosting one of its signature events: Friends Sunday. It is a day when the church seems to double in size, as members are encouraged to invite as many friends as possible to either the 9:29 or 11:11 a.m. services. While it may seem like a simple way to boost the church’s attendance, it is in fact designed specifically for the benefit of newcomers, and often features slightly more introductory sermons and messages because many people in the pews might never have been to New Life, or any church, before.

I started coming regularly after being invited to a Friends Sunday the winter of my freshman year. I remember deciding to attend solely to poke fun at the church-folk from my former ivory tower of atheism, and to impress the attractive, Christian blonde(s) who invited me. I had no intention of ever coming back to the church or listening to the message that the preacher delivered that morning. I had a list of grievances and hang-ups about church and God a mile long, and, because of that, I figured I’d take as little away from the event as possible.

But I couldn’t deny that I’d been intrigued. Not so much by the worshipping, the songs or the sermon, but by the people. People my friends introduced me to once the service let out greeted me as though they’d known me forever. Even strangers I observed catching up with their friends in the lobby — there was something about how in love with one another they were that, honestly, surprised me. Being a New Yorker I assume everyone who is nice to me wants to sell me something I don't really need. But they didn’t. Nor were they interested in judging me.

They threw me off, these Christians. They undid my tidy definition of what I meant when calling someone “Christian.” The first Sunday I spent at New Life I realized something about Christians (and religious people in general) that flew in the face of all the wisdom I thought I’d accumulated during my short time on earth. I realized that these people I’d once considered so foreign and odd were pretty much…normal.

They were hipsters. They were kids in pajamas. They were jocks. They were people who looked like me. They were girls who I gathered were pretty conservative but didn’t dress like the Amish, (a group I’m not too worried about poking fun at…on the Internet, that is). Given a quick glance, they could’ve been the people I was partying with the night before. But there was something so much more real about my interactions here.

Maybe the people I met at parties were the ones trying to sell me something I didn't really need.

My point is this: Friends Sunday is almost more of a social experiment than an introduction to Christianity. I recall little of the first sermon I experienced at New Life, but I will never forget the impression the place and the people left on me. For doing little more than existing, I was greeted with huge smiles and hugs by people who had no real reason to be nice to me, people I’d certainly never planned to see again.

And the slice of life that began that service will stay with me forever. I’d never heard someone, a guy no less — a guy in college — in front of a room full of Christians (who I’d long judged, and had decided were the most judgmental people in the world), be so open and honest about the failures of his high school career, both socially and academically. He’d even hurt his family, an accusation few can duck but even fewer can admit.

I could feel all the people I’d hurt in my life tapping me on the shoulder as he read. I could taste his honestly and humility but had trouble digesting them, for I hadn’t tasted either in a while. Ironically, my psyche underwent this rather disorienting transformation in the same room in which he found himself liberated that day. All I wanted after that service was to experience the freedom he showed me up on the stage at New Life. Freedom from his failures, from weaknesses, from his inability to control every single part of his life. Freedom from a life like mine that pressured him to be a thousand different things. Freedom to just be. He’d looked back on the long, spiritual ride he’d undertaken and allowed to culminate in God’s hands, and in his slice. I didn’t know it at the time, but his was a ride I was about to embark on myself.

So, I suppose what I’ve meant by all this is that I hope you, no matter your age or spiritual background, will consider coming to New Life Church this Sunday. Attending Friends Sunday was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made because it was a decision I couldn’t possibly have made on my own. I hope this brief post inspires just one person to try God out, because I know how far He can take someone once they’ve taken even the smallest step of faith.

Lastly, I hope that, when I’m up on the stage reading my slice of life this Sunday, I see a ton of new faces in the crowd.

Ben Verdi is a man with a Bible, a laptop and a nasty curveball. He can be reached at jetboiz@aol.com.