Plant Seeds with Persistent Invitations
For “The kingdom of God is as if
someone would scatter seed on the ground,
and would sleep and rise night and day,
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he does not know how”
-Jesus, (Mark 4:26-27)
“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
-T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets
Christmas will be upon us sooner than I care to imagine. With it, as with Easter, comes one of our two best opportunities to invite friends, family and co-workers to join you for worship. Survey after survey shows that most southerners who do not have a church home will react favorably to an invitation to church at these times of year. Even in this post-Christendom age many are culturally conditioned toward Christmas and Easter worship.
This is a great time of year to make sure that you have flyers about your Christmas liturgies and any other special events, such as Lessons and Carols. Encourage everyone in your congregation to give them to friends, family and co-workers with an invitation
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It may well take a Christmas invitation, followed by an Easter invitation, followed by yet another Christmas invitation before your friends actually show up for church. Never underestimate the inertia that must be overcome to make the move from not attending church to worshipping faithfully. Keep the invitations persistent and low key, always making sure folks know they are welcome, without ever making someone feel bad for not showing up. That is how such seeds are consistently scattered.
Now do not hear me as saying that a church invitation equals evangelism. But the Word and Sacrament encountered once the newcomers show up contains powerful Gospel content, expecially at Christmas with its incarnational emphasis and Easter with the hope of the resurrection. And clergy know that these occasions bring newcomers and will be working hard on their homilies to give real meat on which a non-churchgoer can chew (Right? We are doing that aren’t we?). Evangelism is not just a matter of getting folks through the doors for the liturgy, but certainly that is a key part and one in which any Episcopalian can help with a no pressure invitation, “Why don’t you join us for Christmas Eve? They candlight service is always breathtaking.” How hard could that be? It’s easier than you might think.
What will come of these invitations? As Eliot writes in The Four Quartets, “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” A gentle invitation from time to time is the trying. Keeping that friendly, low pressure, no guilt is easy for us Episcopalians. How folks respond is not our business. That is God’s concern.
The Rev. Canon Frank Logue
Canon to the Ordinary
PS: It is not a bad time to use the Diocese of Georgia’s Hospitality Checklist found in our online Reference Library http://gaepiscopal.org/docs/hospitalitychecklist.pdf
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