#613. Church Hugs

Last weekend, I was one of the breakout speakers at the North Point Community Church Single's Retreat. (When they first invited me, I thought they said “breakdance speakers” and got my breakin’ 2 electric bugaloo cardboard square out.) I did two different topics, one of which was called "Date Less Jerks." (Yes, "fewer" would have been technically correct but that has no flow.) In that message I encouraged folks to avoid dating and becoming a jerk. (Unfortunately a lot of that one is drawn from my personal experience of being a jerk.)

In preparation for the event I spoke to a couple of my friends, Misty and Tim, who work in the Singles Department at North Point. In addition to giving me some speech pointers, they challenged my knowledge of church hugs that are currently popular amongst singles.

“Hey,” I thought, “I know all about church hugs. I wrote the side hugs post forever ago. I made a t-shirt celebrating my love of the hug. I've got a PhD in hugging.” Wow was I wrong.

Maybe I've been out of the game for too long. Maybe I was never that good at hugging to begin with. It’s possible that people just felt bad and didn't want to break it too me that I was horrible at hugging, and although externally they smiled, internally they were dying slow deaths of awkwardness and Acqua Di Gio cologne every time I embraced them. Hard to say, but I don't want you to be as pitiful at the church hug as I am. So after much research, a few usability tests that I ran with my wife in our living room and more bar graphs than I care to count, here is a list of the varieties of church hugs you need to be prepared for.

1. The Three Strikes and You're Out
Apparently, if you're single and someone pats your back three times when you hug, that's to let you know that you're out of any possible dating contention and are firmly locked into the "friend-zone." When someone hits your back three times, "pat, pat, pat," in your head you should imagine that hand beating out the chorus to the song, "You're a friend, just a friend. It’s the end, you’re a friend."

2. The Circle of Something Something
If instead of a pat, the person hugs you and rubs their hand in a circle on your back, there might be something something a foot. “Hey, maybe we could go on a date. This hug at the end of a group get together just got circlicious. Is there something here?” There is my friend, there is. You don't casually do the circle on someone's back, that's only two steps removed from a massage. This could be love.

3. The Multitasker
Guys will hug, as long as one of their hands can be multitasking in some sort of complicated handshake at the exact same moment. It starts with the handshake, which gets flipped into some sort of knuckle grab which then pulls you into a one armed hug that culminates in a three strikes and you're out. Some people will tell you that it should be concluded with one or both guys saying, "dawg" but those people are gravely mistaken.

4. The Over Under
Although I've been very honest about my desire to never interlink fingers with you during an "everyone hold hands" moment at church, I'm surprisingly not opposed to an over under. What's that? It's a hug where someone goes over the shoulders with their arms and the other person goes under the shoulders. Executed in the right context, it's an incredibly kind way to comfort someone during a trying time or a sad moment on a church retreat. Executed in the wrong context, like someone has just scored a hole in one in God's favorite sport Frisbee golf, and it feels like you're trying to slow dance in the eighth grade. (To Millie Vanilli's "Blame it on the Rain" in case you were curious.)

5. The A Frame
Epic fail on my part. When I wrote the side hug post I thought the A frame was actually just another name for a side hug. Nope. An A frame is kind of a half committed full frontal hug. You hug, but you only touch clavicle to clavicle. Your torsos don't actually really touch and from the side, it looks like you and the other person are forming an A. It's a perfect hug to do during the "greet the people around you" moment at church. Instead of trying to escape out of the row or aisle, you can lean over, with the pew between you and hug someone's neck.

Hopefully we've cleared up a lot of hug misconceptions today. No one wants to lean in for a deeply moving over under hug and instead be greeted by a multitasker but unless we're all on the same page, hug train wrecks going to continue happening in churches around the world.

Are you a hugger?

What's your style?

Did I leave any off the list?