beware i am going to invite you to church

in my completely informal and non scientific study of people i know and work with have no church affiliation. a poll data reveals the following troubling “fact”: most people have never been invited to church.

in retrospect this isn’t that surprising, because, before now, i hadn't invited most of the people at work around me to church, so why would i assume that someone else had? and i’m a worship leader, 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 (not my pastors) makes really terrible puns, and he sometimes still likes to make everyone hold hands in the service. also, we "relevant" church folks like to point out that the church is not the whole of church, and we should best de-emphasize the worship service at every opportunity so we can look normal and not weird. and for the most part i am realizing that this is not necessarily wrong but certainly isn't right either...

so what is right? i have found out it’s pretty simple, OPEN MY MOUTH…finally i start to get it. i probably have invited half my co workers to church and on a personal level with them talked to them about jesus, but it wasn’t that long ago I kept quiet until someone asked about what i do...

before, in my life, i may have catered to much to being normal so i'm liked rather than categorized as the christian guy. don't get me wrong i am extremely passionate about seeing people come to jesus so here my heart, my desire to be normal is stemmed from a heart for people so i could reach them in the work place...and i am by no means ashamed of the gospel so please don't comment about me being ashamed...and if you think i am you are missing my whole point...

i’ve decided i’m not going to make peoples’ decisions for them anymore. church still can be weird. i often make bad jokes. there are sometimes odd people there and people who don’t always have the best social skills... 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 and it opens the door to say something about jesus, the gospel.

i have thrown caution to the wind, so here goes…

i love Jesus, and i know 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...more importantly the church is the HOPE of the world "if we will be"...i choose to be!!!

anyway, you wanna come to a church service with me?
and we can go to chipotle after. Promise!!!