Are you going to give one of those to everyone?

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes, we don't plan meals all that well, and we end up going out for fast food for dinner. Last night, I took the boys to McDonald's after the Upward Basketball Evaluations at our church. When we got to the first window to pay for our food, I handed one of our Christmas Eve service invitations to the cashier. I told her that I wanted to invite her to the Christmas Eve services at our church. She thanked me as I began to pull forward. When we got to the second window and waited on our food, my sons had two different reactions. One son wanted to be the one to hand the next invitation to the person giving us our food. My other son said, "Dad, are you going to give one of those to everyone?" How do you respond to such a question? I am not literally going to invite everyone that I meet to KCC for Christmas Eve. I mean that would be some of that old school "speak before listening" evangelism. I am all about listening to people's stories and building a relationship with them and not assuming that the next step is to invite to Church for a service. However, in those drive thru situations where I may not ever see the person again, yes, I want to be prepared to invite them to a service. So, I said, "Son, I don't plan to invite everyone, but I do plan to invite a lot of people." How about you? I heard a speaker say recently that evangelism is the act of inviting someone to the greatest party ever held. Maybe we can give a few folks a preview during our worship services.

In Christ,
Kyle

Gone for too long...

Okay, okay, I know (because several of you have told me) that I have not updated my blog lately. I'm sorry. I have enjoyed inviting many people to KCC for a variety of functions. I have enjoyed using the series invite cards provided in the seatback pockets of the Celebration Center. I have particularly been inviting people to the newly designed Saturday night service that we are calling Saturdays at Six. The invitation cards look cool, and I just keep them in my coat pocket wherever I go. I have given them to servers at restaurants, cashiers, etc. The interesting thing for me is that I have not had anyone refuse to take an invitation to church. I had one server at Bob Evans tell me that she works every Saturday and Sunday and Wednesday morning (I even tried an invitation to Oasis), but she still took an invitation. I invited the mailman that delivers mail to KCC. It turned out that he is already a Christian and attends another church in town, but he still took an invitation card because he knew he might encounter someone that lived nearby KCC that might be interested in attending.

At the same time that I have been taking this journey, I led a group of men through an evangelism study called Share Jesus Without Fear by Bill Fay. During this study, these men learned some specific approaches to engaging people in spiritual conversations. This has been a good journey because these men are stepping out of their comfort zones and being intentional about talking to folks about Christ. I am hoping that the growing enthusiasm about intentional evangelistic conversations continues to spread throughout KCC. Good night.