Unlocking the Growth (eBook)

Chapter 1

Will You Come Along?

Stuart still lived at home with his parents. He spent his days working, going to the pub, eating his mum’s home-cooked food and watching TV. He’d never given a thought to God. But one day, a girl at work came up to him and invited him to church. He surprised himself by saying yes – perhaps he thought he was being asked on a date! Elsie picked him up on Sunday morning and took him with her to church. When she asked him afterwards what he thought of the service, he just described it as “OK”. He met some of Elsie’s friends and was invited to their homes for meals over the next few weeks.

He came back again, and then again, and then was given a Bible by Elsie, who was leaving to go home to South Africa. Stuart started to ask questions that he said later he never knew he had inside him.

Stuart went on to become an active member of that church. Years later he said that Elsie’s invitation and the hospitality of her friends made a dramatic difference in his life, and today Stuart can still be found at the very same church to which he was invited years ago.

A recent survey by the charity Tearfund found that in the UK alone there are 3 million people like Stuart (and many more in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) who would go to church if only they were asked to do so by a friend. Do you know any of them? You may think you don’t but it is very likely you do. It might be a work colleague, a fellow parent at your child’s school, or your next-door neighbour but one, who is just waiting for you to pluck up the courage to ask them.

In the years I have been going round churches speaking on the themes of invitation and welcome, I have heard hundreds of personal stories that have convinced me that God is preparing people every day for an invitation. I have heard from people who go past church buildings every day of their lives, who are curious about what happens inside, or for whom the building brings back childhood memories of church, but they don’t dare come in. It takes a very brave person to walk into a church on their own, yet we can be sure that God is speaking to them, and perhaps all they need is a gentle invitation from someone they know.

I have often wondered exactly when it became difficult for people outside church to cross the threshold of their local church building. Once the church was the centre of the community. Nowadays we hear people say that they would feel hypocritical if they came. This self-disqualification is reinforced by their non-churchgoing friends. This feeling of being hypocritical can be overcome through simple invitation. I have even recommended holding a service of prayer and blessing over the threshold of a church building, to pray into the fear on both sides of the threshold.

An “Invitation Sunday” is really a very odd mission! It’s a mission to those in the church already, not those who are outside it. We aim to reach the people who aren’t in church through those who already are.

But the beauty of it is that it is so simple. You don’t have to go on a training course, or agree to wear a special uniform. The thought of unleashing the potential God has placed in each one of us through this simplest of activities is incredible. In Luke 10:1–16, when Jesus sent seventy-two disciples out on a mission, He trusted each one of them to be all that God had intended them to be. When they returned, they shared their surprise and amazement at what they’d experienced. These ordinary men saw and felt the power of the kingdom of God. But the more wonderful thing about this story is the fact that Jesus sent them. He wanted them to share in this simple form of mission. He showed us that mission is not God doing things on His own. He has of course prepared the way, but we also have a part to play. So in the same way that Jesus asked the seventy-two to go ahead of Him, today God is asking us to play our part in His work in our generation. And our part, often, is just to invite.

The success of an Invitation Sunday lies in one person inviting one person. And remarkably, it does not rely on one person inviting one person and that person saying “yes”. The answer to the invitation is in God’s hands. One of my favourite authors, Jim Rohn, says: “God has the tough end of the deal. What if instead of planting the seed you had to make the tree? That would keep you up late at night, trying to figure that one out.”1

We should not take responsibility for the answer – and yet so often we do, or we try to. We worry about whether they will accept or not, and read into their answer all sorts of criticisms of ourselves. But the reality is, some people will say yes and some people will say no… and we have to get over any disappointment we might feel.

We prove success by measurable results. Now this sounds a bit too harsh and exact for a church, perhaps. But remember that somebody actually counted how many people were added to the church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41), and that somebody counted the number of fish caught after Jesus had asked the disciples to fish on the other side (see John 21 for the full story). Measuring what happens helps us to hear God’s voice. God is speaking to us when something doesn’t go so well, and so to count or measure our results can be helpful in hearing from Him the next steps we are to take. By not measuring, reflecting and re-envisioning, we can often move on too quickly and may miss the move God wants us to make.

I first became involved with the idea of an Invitation Sunday when I picked up a phone call from my friend Gillian Oliver, then the Communications Director for the Bishop of Manchester, who had been searching for ways to get the church moving forward. I was immediately taken with the idea, not just because of the simplicity of it but because of the excitement I heard in Gillian’s voice.

When the name “Back to Church Sunday” first came up, we thought that what God might be calling us to do was to provide a bridge to those who had drifted away from the church. The name “Back to Church” gives this impression. And over the years the main focus of the initiative has been on this group of people, who are returning to church, some after months, some after years, but many after decades. Yet in the second year of the initiative, in 2005, we started to hear from people who had never been to church before, but who had been invited to come on this Sunday anyway, and had stayed. Originally the focus of the initiative had been those who were lapsed churchgoers, but now God showed us how He wants to use our idea by inviting those He has been working with outside church. So why do we continue to call it Back to Church Sunday? Some people have asked for a name change and have suggested that if only it was changed to “Come to Church Sunday”, then thousands would turn up on the doorsteps of our churches!

But I still don’t think it was a mistake calling it Back to Church Sunday. The “Back” refers to the momentum coming from God the Father to our generation. You see, God wants us all “back” into a relationship with Him. This is all about Him. Now in every generation there is a momentum coming from Him. We can look back three or four generations and say the pressure to attend church came from society in the days when most people went to church (because it was what people did in those days). Move on a couple of generations and the momentum changed; many people sent their children to church, but they didn’t go themselves any longer. But there was still a momentum. Now we look at our generation and see that neither adults nor their children are coming to our acts of worship in great numbers any longer. But despite that, our God is still at work. In fact He is speaking to more people outside the four walls of our church buildings than He is inside. In our generation we need to connect with God’s momentum through personal invitation. So the “Back” in Back to Church Sunday is not all about us, or those we invite, but about Him.

The “Church” in Back to Church Sunday is not the building, and is not even the act of worship. Church is the gathered people of God in a community, helping to nurture a relationship with God the Father. Now I love participating in worship but it is part of church, not the whole of church. Yet in many places throughout the world we have made the act of worship the only expression of church.

The “Sunday” of Back to Church Sunday is there because I think we have a curse hanging over the church today. It is a word we should not use lightly, so let me explain. The curse that I believe is hanging over the Western church is the mindset which talks about those outside church and says: “If they wanted to come, they would come.” The focused Invitation Sunday helps us to overcome the curse, by focusing on being invitational on one day together. It may seem a bit forced at first, but after doing it once it will become more natural. We need the focus at first of one Sunday in the year to get us out of the habit of not inviting. At the moment, unfortunately, many of our congregations simply hope that the someone will come into their church and take over the running of it, saving them the bother. They are sitting back and waiting for people to come through the doors, quoting this curse that if they really wanted to, people would come. It continually reminds them that people...