There are lots of things you can invite friends to…birthdays, weddings, afternoon teas, tupperware parties, BBQs, and the list goes on. Inviting people to church is something that, perhaps, seems rude and daunting to a lot of people. Why is that? What’s so scary about inviting someone to church? They could come and meet new people, hear the bible taught clearly (and have their children looked after in the meantime), enjoy a cuppa afterwards, and potentially come to know Christ and begin a relationship with Him. How great would that be!
On Sunday, Peter Yock was interviewed about his experience with inviting people to church. Peter shared with us that he’d had a number of opportunities to invite people to church, especially one particular friend from work. He invited his friend to the Carols and Christmas services but they didn’t go along to either of those events. Around Easter they were more interested to find out what church was like and asked if it would be alright to come and check it out. And they did!
Peter said that although he’d had more ‘no’ responses than ‘yes’ ones, our role is to make the invitation then leave it up to our friends to come. It may not happen straight away, but sometimes it might, and could result in someone putting their trust in Jesus.
So think about all those conversations we have with people at work, school, uni that start with “so how was your weekend?”. Why not make sure you say that you went to church instead of talking about Saturday sport or which movie you watched? You never know what God might do as a result of your conversation!
