No Invitation Necessary (Yet)
Stop inviting non-Christians to Church. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? If this statement causes you to get defensive, why? Church means a lot of things but for the sake of what I am sharing I am talking about Sunday morning worship. If we stop and think about our weekly worship service critically, we will realize that it is a time to worship God and to learn more about what it means to be a Christian; these are two very good things. It’s how we do Christian education. Now I know that not every church fits into this. There are some that are great introductions to a relationship with Christ, but in general I struggle to see why someone who doesn’t know Christ should be encouraged to attend a Sunday service.
In my short life I have been exposed to what feels like almost every western worship service style. I know high church liturgy and charismatic tradition. I have worshiped without musical instruments and with grand pipe organs. I know jazz music in the church, and I have sung over CDs playing. I have not been able to participate in communion because I don’t check the right boxes and I have partaken with those who do not yet have a relationship with Christ. I have sat in magnificent stained-glass sanctuaries, mega churches and in living rooms. I have seen it all, or at least most. Regardless of the style, almost all of these churches conform to some version of this formula: prayer + worship though music + sermon = Church. To me, this doesn’t seem like it’s for non-Christians and in most cases, probably does a lot to make them feel alienated when they do show up. Take a moment to step into the shoes of someone checking out your church for the first time. What do you notice? How do you feel? What questions do you have?
We invite people to church for a few reasons. First, we want them to start a relationship with Christ; after all, we do have the Great Commission (Mathew 28:19-20). We have also decided that church attendance indicates effectiveness of our ministry; it is often a key assessment strategy. There are other reasons why we want to invite people, but I will let you fill those in for yourself. We have good goals for our invites, but I just don’t think we are going about achieving them in the right way. Instead, I would like to suggest that first and foremost we need to be rooted in who we are as a son or daughter of the King. Then we need to spend our entire life in total surrender to Him. This looks like studying scripture to learn the nature of God, spending personal time in his presence just as Jesus did, practicing disciplines to become more like Christ, and generally simply falling in love with Him. From that place we need only to go and be with our non-believing friends. If we are truly living a life with Christ, then the aroma of Christ will be on us. They will see that we are different because we will be slow to anger, we will love freely and deeply, we will at times allow ourselves to look like fools because if we are living for Him our lives will not line up with what the world says makes sense. If you claim to be in Christ, yet people don’t experience him when they are with you, why not? Are you truly walking with him or have you gotten distracted? Our lives should be doing the preaching and the Holy Spirit will do the rest. Sooner or later conversation will turn to what makes us different and we will have a chance to explain. As relationships deepen and curiosity is fostered, then it is time to invite others to come and see what Church is all about.
I know that this model of evangelism likely isn’t attractive because it means that we always have to “be on” but it’s also great because it requires us to always “be on”. It requires us to make Jesus our number one priority. The good news is that all we have to do is love Jesus and love people as He does. He will take care of the rest. As long as we are doing this the evangelism will happen.
