Friday Friends Festival Celebrates the Power of the Odd Couple

Crossroads Charlotte
Posted: June 4th, 2010
Greg Lacour

We can always use more friends. Real friends, anyway.

But it’s easy to restrict yourself to your own race, your own religion, the people who share your circumstances, your beliefs. It’s comfortable.

But it’s not always best to be comfortable. Sometimes, if you associate only with people like you, you stagnate. Your world and worldview gets narrower, or stays narrow.

But when you have friends from different culture, religions, classes, ages, the world opens up. You encounter perspectives and lives you never imagined.

For three years, Mecklenburg Ministries has hosted Friday Friends, a project that encourages people to meet monthly for coffee or a meal. The caveat is that the other person has to be from another race, religion or culture.

More than 700 people have signed up for the program.

On Thursday, they packed the Levine Museum of the New South for the annual Friday Friends Festival. It’s a reception for the folks in the program and a chance for new members to meet new people – and for longtime members to make new Friday Friends if they want.

It’s all part of Mecklenburg Ministries’ and Crossroads’ efforts to bridge divisions among people of different races, religions and cultures in Charlotte.
The program has joined hundreds of people who probably would never have gotten to know each other, said Dr. Maria Hanlin, Mecklenburg Ministries’ executive director, “and that’s the foundation for building trust.”

It can lead to the unlikeliest of life changes, too.

Take Beth Wells. She’s 63, a lifelong Charlottean, a lady who looks like your loving grandma. A lifelong Presbyterian, she’d never really questioned her faith.

Then, through Friday Friends, she began talking with Dawoud Assad, a fellow volunteer at Homeless Helping Homeless and a Muslim who’d converted from Christianity as a young man.

They talked deeply about their beliefs, their questions, their issues with faith.

“Beth reminded me of me in a lot of ways when I was searching for the truth,” Assad said. “I think she feels safe with me and the perspective I can bring …

“We’re both looking for truth. That’s the common denominator. That’s a big hurdle to get over for a lot of people.”

But Beth Wells cleared it. A little more than a year ago, she coverted to the Bahá’í Faith.

The conversations with Assad “made me think about religion, what I believe,” she said. “One of the main tenets of the Bahá’í Faith is that everyone has to find their own truth.”