Steve Says...
One emphasis that almost every youth group I’ve known of has had is encouraging the teens to invite their friends. In fact, it became so common for me to tell teens to invite their friends that I had to force myself to stop saying it because they stopped listening when I said those words. However, I never started saying it again. Now I never say those words because I forget to encourage our teens to invite friends.
This got me thinking, why is it that I have never heard adults encouraged to bring their friends? We all have friends, whether it is co-workers or neighbors, that we see on a regular basis. Why don’t we invite them to church? I think there are 2 main reasons.
1) We don’t want to make the relationship awkward.
While I understand this argument, it’s really just a bad excuse to not do what God calls us to do.
2) We forget that ministry is our responsibility.
That’s right! I think we all forget that we are ministers of the Gospel. Having paid ministers is a blessing for a congregation. However, I think it makes is easy for us to forget that evangelism is the responsibility of every Christian because “we pay someone to do that”.
Fun fact, having a paid minister in our congregation does not relieve any of us from spreading the gospel. Jesus didn’t say, “go and pay someone to make disciples for you” he told us to go and make disciples. That means it’s our job!
So, when was the last time you invited someone to church?
