Pride

It's been a while since I bragged on my church.  It's not that I don't love the people here, I'm just bad at stopping to praise them on my blog.

Before I brag, let me give you some background...

For the last eight weeks, we've been in a conversation about the "E-Word."  What's the E-Word you ask?  I'm glad you did. 

That's what we've been calling evangelism for the last eight weeks.  What are the first images that come to mind when you hear the world evangelism or evangelist?  For me, it's probably some blowhard, fire and brimstone preacher wearing a worn out suit  with white socks and pants that haven't been introduced to the tops of his shoes who doesn't make much sense, but makes a lot of noise anyway.  Or maybe a plastic woman with LARGE pink hair and makeup done by Sherwin Williams who asks you to send in $50 and she promises she will pray for you.

Evangelism is a word that has been taken over by some ridiculous people for some less-than-reasonable endeavors.  It's been abused and misused.  For many, it has taken on a wholly different meaning that it was originally intended to have.  For that reason, it has become something that we dare not to speak of in polite company, as well as the truly lost art form of sharing faith with others.

Evangelism is quite simple when you strip away all the false connotations.  It's about sharing our faith with others.  It's about being a source of God's good news to the rest of the world - painting a picture of hope in hopeless situations and becoming the answers to the prayers that we pray.

At the conclusion of this sermon series, the challenge was issued to each member in attendance: bring someone to church with you.  Sometimes that's the best start to sharing faith with someone else.

We set the date for July 18th.  We talked about it, we prepared for it.  I began to get discouraged when a handful of members told me that they just didn't have any unchurched or dechurched friends or that they just couldn't talk their friends into coming.  I honestly wasn't expecting much at that point.

Sunday at 10:55, I broke away from a conversation with a member to get settled into the sanctuary.  As I turned the corner I was overwhelmed.  The sanctuary was packed! 

We've grown slowly over the last three years as a church.  In terms of membership, we've just barely outpaced deaths in the church with new members.  Worship attendance has grown from 65 to close to 90 on average and each time we convert regular attending visitors to new members, new visitors take their place as regular attenders. People are finding faith for the first time and are growing, not only as disciples, but as disciple-makers.

Imagine seeing anywhere from 80 to 95 people on a normal Sunday.  Imagine that it's July and people are on vacation, so 80 is a solid attendance number.  Imagine walking into the sanctuary and seeing 120 people!  We had at least 33 guests on hand Sunday.  At least 17 of those had never seen the inside of the sanctuary before.  People brought their family members, their neighbors, their coworkers, and their friends.

I was blown away.  I immediately got anxious with excitement but couldn't wipe the smile off my face.  You see, I'd been praying for this day especially for months now.  Some of my leaders had been praying with me weekly about it for over a month. 

The most exciting part for me?  Probably the looks on the faces of our own members.  I've seen that look before.  It's the one that says, "Look what I did.  Aren't you proud of me?"  And I am proud of them.  I'm especially pumped because they've figured out how to do this and for many of them, this is only the beginning.

I always tell people that the math is simple.  Imagine if we all did our best to bring others to church.  Who have you invited lately?  Who will you invite next Sunday?

If you're reading this and you are the person who hasn't been invited, come hang out with us.  The preaching is ok, but you won't find better people anywhere.