Stop Inviting Your Friends to Church

           
Okay, I don’t mean that… exactly. Of course, bring your friends to church, but what I mean is, stop using the Sunday morning church service as your way of sharing the gospel. It’s not the church building’s job to evangelize the lost. It’s the church’s job. (When I say church in this sense I mean the people who make up the body of Christ. The universal church made up of those who believe a core set of doctrines about the God-Man Jesus the Christ and what he did on the cross.)

            
MAN UP (or WOMAN UP) and tell your friends what you believe about Jesus! Don’t expect the preacher to do it for you on Sunday morning. The church isn’t a place for lost people to get found, it’s a place for found people to congregate, learn from and encourage one another. (When I say “church” in this second sense, I mean the building.)

           
I am very much speaking to myself with this short post. I have a lot of trouble telling people the actual gospel when I can just invite them to a meeting and somebody else will do it for me.

I make excuses. I tell myself that evangelism’s not my spiritual gift, that the mood isn’t right, that the person would probably ignore me. All of those might be true, but that doesn’t take the responsibility off my shoulders, and every church-member’s shoulders, to preach the gospel. That’s not just your pastor’s job, it’s not just your out-going friends’ job, it’s not just your parent’s job, it’s not just your children’s job. If you believe that Jesus Christ died to pay the penalty for your sins, IT’S YOUR JOB. 

So I say to myself, self, get over yourself. It’s not about you. It’s about the person you’re avoiding talking to, and it’s about Jesus. Stop inviting your friends to the church (the building) and start inviting them into the church (the body).