I’m going to invite you to church

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In my completely informal and non scientific study of people I know and work with and have come in contact with who have no church affiliation, poll data reveals the following troubling “fact”:

Most people have never been invited to church.

In retrospect this isn’t that surprising, because I haven’t invited most of these people to church, so why would I assume that someone else had? And I’m a pastor, for pete’s sake.

I can understand why this happens. You don’t want to come across as that pushy church guy, so you don’t ever bring it up. Your church is kind of weird, and the pastor makes really terrible puns, and he sometimes still likes to make everyone hold hands in the service. Also, we emerging folk like to point out that the worship service is not the whole of church, and we should best de-emphasize the worship gathering at every opportunity. Mr. Gallant is going to be there, and he’s still ticked off that you don’t use the King James anymore, and if he finds out that there is someone new there he’s going to want to know where they stand on seven day creation. And if your friend is single then Mrs. Klassen is already going to have them mated to one of the other singles. Altogether, a negative experience that is best avoided.

At least those are the excuses I’ve used. Maybe yours are different.

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not going to make peoples’ decisions for them anymore. Church is still weird. I often make bad jokes. There are odd people there and people who don’t always have the best social skills, and we do strange stuff. Some of our language is different, but that’s us and that’s church. I figure people like to be invited to stuff. Even if they have no interest in ever actually going, people like to be included. It’s a way that we tell people we care about them. We ask them to participate in stuff we like and are passionate about. We share good news.

So, throwing caution to the wind, here goes…

I love Jesus, and I think that he is good news for the world, and because I love Jesus, I try to love the things Jesus loved, and one of those things is the Church. It’s weird and messed up and often wrong, but that’s who we are. Anyway, you wanna come to a church service with me? It’s going to be different and possibly uncomfortable, but it’s better than anything that’s on T.V. on Sunday mornings.

And we can go to Wendy’s after. Promise.

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