-every year we like to sort of hit on some important topics. In December we will talk about Christmas, usually at least once in the year we will talk about our core values and how you can be living a life that allows you to be closer to God. One we like to do every year right around this time is talk about inviting people to church or to faith in Christ.
-because let’s just be honest, we do a bad job of inviting people to know Jesus. We rarely invite people to church, we’ve turned knowing Christ into a repeat-after-me thirty second prayer and that’s it.
-so today we’re going to talk a little about what it really takes to invite someone to be a part of our ministry here. Next week is the Back to School Bash, it’s a great event to invite someone to because it’s not as “churchy” and hopefully people will want to come back and visit us and learn more about who we are and who Jesus is.
-but for us to be inviting people well, we need to be doing a few things. So tonight, we’re going to be talking about how to give someone a personal invitation to church. And it all starts with:
1. INFORMATION
-before anyone will ever want to come to church, we need to actually tell them about church. People aren’t going to drive by the building and magically know when we meet. They might guess Sunday morning we have a worship gathering of some sort, but that’s about it. And they probably aren’t going to visit the website, especially if they don’t know the web address.
-so we have to give people some sort of information. If you invite someone to church, letting them know where the church is, probably good information.
-in giving information there are two things you need to remember:
BE EXCITED
-there’s an age old saying for people who lead, no one is going to be as excited about what you are leading as you. You set the level of what to expect.
-think of it this way. If I were to invite you to a Colts game, and I said it like this [BE VERY BLAH]. “I’m going to the football game, you can come if you want. I mean, it’s alright. The food isn't that good and our seats are horrible, I think you can make out the players. Every time we go some drunk guy behind us spills beer on us. But my dad told me to ask if you want to come with us.” Oo, Oo, please, take me!
-you can make anything sound boring. You really can. Or you can make anything sound exciting. I’m not saying lie to the person, “Our seats are so good they’re actually on the bench. You can smell Peyton’s sweat.” But you can be excited about it. Obviously there’s a reason why you would go to the game, tell that.
-and as much as you need to be excited. You need to:
BE CORRECT
-there is nothing worse than incorrect information.
-do you ever watch The Apprentice? I don’t watch it that often but I saw one year it was near the end and the three finalists needed to make a press package. Three left, next challenge is to win. And this one team made an incredible package. It looked incredibly professional, it had a folder with matching paperwork, a video that really stood out. Donald Trump said it was the best one of the night. This person had a sure shot to the finals. Until the guy sitting next to Trump asked a question. He was looking through the packet and asked, “Why are the phone numbers different on these two sheets?”
-That started a look at the numbers and he was right, there were two 800 numbers. So Trump started asking which one is right. The contestant didn’t know, so Trump asked for a phone and called them both. One was a wrong number, one was disconnected. Both numbers was wrong. So what happened? Trump fired them on the spot. They were for sure in the final until they saw that number. And why? Because even a crappy looking brochure is better than one with the wrong phone number on it.
-let’s use tonight as an example. If you were to invite someone to Drink Deep, would you give the right information? Do you know where the church is? If someone wanted to know more, do you know the Fire & Water Website address?
-what time do we start? You might say we start at 5:30. That’s kind of true. Really, we start at 6:00, the doors open at 5:30 and you don’t show up until ten to 6. That’s more true. Which would help a new person more, to show up at 5:30, maybe a little earlier and then hang out with people they don’t know, or to give them the real information about where and when to meet you?
-we need to do our best to give the right information and the right level of excitement. One without the other doesn’t do much. [LOUD, EXCITED] “Next week is our Back To School Bash, it’s fun.” Okay, what does “fun” mean? Where is it? When? [BLAH TONE] Next week at 6:00 our church is having a Back To School Bash, there will be all sorts of games and we’re raffling off prizes, you can win a new iPod and someone will get pied in the face. Soo much fun. Yay.”
-balance. Both. But after you’ve figured out the information, you have to actually give an invitation.
2. INVITATION
-I’m not sure if you noticed, but the examples I gave a second ago, at no point did I actually invite you to the Bash. I was excited about it, I gave the information about it, but at no point did I actually say, “Would you like to come with me?” There was no invitation.
-just because you say information near someone does not mean you have actually invited me. Last week after Sunday some people went to Steak & Shake. And they all stood here in this room right in front of me talking about going over to get food, and that was it. It wasn’t until they were about to leave Kristin looked at me and said, “Hey, you can come if you want.” then suddenly the others there were inviting me. See, at no point was I actually invited until they actually invited me.
-and churches, we suck at this. We like to give out information. Here’s a flyer with our service times on it. Or we might go the extra mile and actually print on the flyer, “You’re invited.” Tell me, honestly, if you were to get a flyer in the mail from a church you didn’t know, would you feel special and like they wanted you to be there because you read “You’re invited” on the flyer?
-nothing beats a real, genuine, personal invitation. You can send out all the flyers you want, nothing is as good as someone personally inviting you somewhere.
-there’s a group that did a study on this, some of you have heard me quote it, simply because they interviewed six million people (that’s 2% of the US) who do not go to church and asked them what it would take to get them to church. 2% said they would visit a church based on a flyer. 90%, 5.4 million people said they would go to church if someone personally invited them and would go with them.
-to put it another way, this study found 5.4 million people who are waiting for someone to invite them to church. So why aren’t we?
-or, how many times are we saying what we think is the right thing, telling them all the right information, but not actually inviting them?
-but notice there was a little bit more to the invitation for all these millions of people. They didn’t want to simply be invited to church, they wanted someone to go with them.
3. BE WITH THEM
-have you ever been somewhere you’ve never been before and the friend who invited you ditched you? Isn’t that the worst feeling in the world, you just feel stupid?
-so if that’s how you feel, imagine how someone who comes to church for the first time feels? Because like we’ve said before, if you’ve never been to church, church is weird. Let’s all hit strangers with a big stick for duck duck goose then sing songs I’ve never heard before (because usually when I get together with friends we sing with a band).
-but if there is someone you know with you, you can make it through a lot of weirdness.
-there was a story I thought of for this, it’s right when Jesus is starting His ministry.
**John 1:43-49 -> 43The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and told him, “Come with Me.” 44(Philip was from Bethsaida, Andrew and Peter’s hometown.) 45Philip now went off to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the Messiah!—the very person Moses and the prophets told about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth!” 46“Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from there?” “Just come and see for yourself,” Philip declared. 47As they approached, Jesus said, “Here comes an honest man—a true son of Israel.” 48“How do you know what I am like?” Nathanael demanded. And Jesus replied, “I could see you under the fig tree before Philip found you.” 49Nathanael replied, “Sir, you are the Son of God—the King of Israel!” (LB)
-I know I’ve used that story before, but look at it for a second. First you have Jesus saying what? “Come with Me.” When Jesus invited the disciples to minster with Him, He was inviting them to come with Him.
-but even more so, one disciple was so amazed by Jesus he had to tell his friend. So he told this guy about Jesus and when the guy didn’t seem interested, what did Philip say? “Come and see for yourself.” As in, come with me, let’s go together. This guy Nathanael, he was convinced Jesus was the Son of God within seconds, but only because Philip brought him to Jesus, Philip went with Nathanael to meet Jesus.
-there are many people that Jesus is calling, but they don’t hear Him because they don’t know what to look for, what to listen for, they don’t recognize Jesus. That’s where we come in, we help guide people to Jesus. But to do that we need to bring them to Jesus. And it doesn’t end there, we need to:
4. FOLLOW UP
-I honestly believe this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem with the church today. We love to make Jesus exciting, come to our nice Sanctuary, sing these songs, hear about how God loves you, maybe even accept Him into your heart, then when the service is done, well, see you next week. Maybe.
-and we’ve created a culture of that here in the church. Once we’re done, we’re done. That’s it. No more time for prayer or talking, the doors are locking, get out.
-think about it, if you are new to church and you just heard all these things, wouldn't it be nice to talk to someone about them? Or maybe you haven’t even realized all there is and just having someone talk with you, ask you how things went, that would go a long way.
-if you give someone the wrong information, they never show up. If they are not invited, the might not show up. If you invite someone and don’t stay with them, they may get bored or feel out of place and awkward. But if you invite them and stay with them, help them have a good time, only to disappear and never ask them how their time was, find out if they have any questions, or never talk to them about church again, never invite them back, what are the chances of them pursuing that relationship with Christ? And even if they wanted to, would they know how?
-and like I said, this is an age old problem. The Methodist Church was founded with this problem. Methodist preachers would ride circuits, an area of towns where they’d preach then get on their horse and ride to the next town, they wouldn’t be able to stick around and make sure Bible Studies are started or things like that. So when you think of friends who go to church and God is nothing more than an hour on Sunday morning, it’s because we’re in a system that’s been like that for hundreds of years.
-there’s only one way to break that. You. You have to be willing to do a little more, go the extra mile. This is where the ministry of the Church stops being done by the people paid by the Church, instead it’s done by the people who make up the church.
-and that’s where the real key to this comes in.
5. OUR ROLE
-as long as we keep thinking it’s someone else’s job or responsibility to talk to people about Christ, it will never be done.
-I will tell you right now, I will talk to your friends about Jesus. No problem. But can you think of something more awkward. I sit at the lunch table, “This is my youth pastor, he’s going to tell you about Jesus and invite you to church.” Your friends will be so happy.
-a better way would be someone they know and trust telling them about Jesus. Say, like you.
-we’ve got to stop believing that church is our field of dreams, if you build it they will come. Like next week’s Back To School Bash. People aren’t going to magically know about it and just float to the church. They need to be invited.
-that’s the whole purpose of the Bash. Yes, it’s fun for you, but remember me saying a few months ago, there’s a difference between going to church for you and going to church to help others. You can go and have fun, think only about you, or you could invite someone and be with them, help them have fun at church, opening up the chance for conversation about who Jesus is and what He did for you.
-people aren’t going to turn to God until they actually know they can turn to God. That’s what we’re here for.
**Ro. 10:14 -> 14But before people can ask the Lord for help, they must believe in Him; and before they can believe in Him, they must hear about Him; and for them to hear about the Lord, someone must tell them. (NCV)
-that’s our goal here. You’re going to hear Pastor Kevin say it a lot while he’s here (I’ve already heard it twice). The church is the only organization that exists for the people who are not yet members. We want people to believe and live their lives for God, growing as disciples. But how can they do that if they’ve never heard who God really is? And how can they hear about who God is if no one has told them?
-the Back To School Bash is meant to be something that it’s easy to invite people to, that first step into church. The question is, are you going to invite someone to make that first step?
