Do not invite someone to church!
How many times have you invited someone to church? Its kinda what Christians do. You meet someone who is not a Christian and maybe you say " you should come to my church on Sunday," or " you have to hear my pastor," but perhaps you don't say anything. Given most reliable stats, you don't say anything.
I suppose asking someone to come to church is better than not saying anything at all, maybe. If the whole thing is a cop-out then perhaps we need to search our own hearts? Sharing your faith is something that should come naturally. Can I ask you, when was the last time you meaningfully shared your faith with anyone? Now, I don't ask this question to put a snare on anyone. If the stats are correct, then 92% of us never share our faith. I want to suggest that this is a tragedy.
In the day and age that we live in it has become increasingly difficult for people to share their faiths. I want to suggest that this is not simply because of the shallowness of what currently passes for Christianity, although that certainly plays a part. Neither is it simply that the generation we now live in has been preceded by more than one generation of cheap grace conversions but of course that also plays into it. No, we are now living in a society where one of the high crimes is to offend someone. This is a generation that is hyper sensitive to being offended. They would rather surround themselves by like-minded shallow people and create an echo-chamber where no difficult different idea has to be dealt with.
Society has new rules and new ways of dealing with anyone who steps outside of social norms. Let's say you had some legitimate concerns about illegal immigration. To voice them is to be punished with the new whip. It used to be the cat of nine tails now it is the label. Voice a concern about a politically incorrect subject and you are branded a racist or a bigot. Voice a concern about gay marriage and you are branded a hater. So, in any number of subjects you can be shut down simply by being branded, pigeon-holed and at the very least, ignored. Now why would the enemy of our souls seek to create a society that is hyper sensitive to being offended?
Gal 5:11 And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased.
You see, the cross, the central tenet of our faith, is an offense to those who are perishing. When shared and preached by the power of the Holy Spirit the fundamental aspect of who we are in Jesus and what is required of men by God becomes utterly unacceptable to men. Now we live in a day and age where offending someone is rising to the level of criminality. We are only a few steps away from the central truth of Christianity being criminalized. That central truth that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but through Him.
If you cannot share your faith now, in any meaningful way, if the best that you can do is say to someone that they should come to your church next Sunday, then can you see the trouble that you are in? If you cannot do it now, when the only ramification is an offense to someone, how will you be able to share your faith when it will be against the law? By overly relying on the one man system in our churches, where only a few get to exercise their gifts, we have effectively starved the Body of Christ of edification. We are a mal-nourished group of people barely able to share even the most basic aspects of our faith, but rather all we can do is feebly point towards someone else and hope they tell them the truth.
When we encounter someone and the Holy Spirit creates an opening for us to share the Gospel, it should be our our life-blood, our passion, to take that opportunity and share whatever the Lord lays on our heart to share. Not passively hand them off to someone else with a feeble invite that they may not even take you up on. The world has a phrase" Carpe diem," seize the day. We, as Spirit filled Christians, must seize our moments. I believe we shall give an account to the Lord for the moments He created. Now every tear will be wiped away from our eyes no doubt, but how much better to hear these words " well done good and faithful servant..............bro Frank