Ever feel like church is one big pyramid scheme? We need you to leverage your personal relationships so that we can fill whatever empty seats we have, and then we’ll build a bigger building with more seats that your friends will then have to fill. It’s a never-ending cycle that has the feeling of success, but is just another marketing strategy… and sometimes all we’re doing is selling our church, instead of making a huge deal about the extravagant love of Jesus.
Extravagant love. That’s what church is really about. It’s not an organization bent on the business ideal of “success.” Its purpose isn’t to add more and more people into more and more seats to collect more and more money to build bigger and bigger buildings.
The heart of everything we do as a church has got to be aimed at offering up the ridiculous, amazing love of God to people who feel unloved. And when you come to church and you hear us ask you to spend time praying for your friends, looking for opportunities to tell them about your Jesus, and inviting them to church, it’s not a marketing scheme. It’s not just another way to make sure we get our bills paid.
Our hope is that you come to church every week and experience the profound love of Jesus, that you open up your heart to let him mold you into the person he wants you to be, and that your natural reaction is to want to help the people you love find that profound love themselves. We’re not selling our church. We’re not even selling Jesus. We’re inviting people into the same kind of love and forgiveness that we’ve found, hoping that they’ll experience God the same way we have.
That’s why we don’t hesitate to ask you to pray about inviting your friends to church this month. Let’s face it: Christmas is a season that people are willing to try church for the first time. Who do you have in your life that could use a little “peace on Earth” this week? Let’s try not come to church alone this weekend… not so that we can feel “successful” as a Christian, but so that someone you love has a chance to hear about the extravagant love of God.
