Come Check Out This Cool Thing
One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).
He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
John 1:40–45 ESV Read More
I used to scoff when I heard people talk about “Invitational Evangelism.” That is, inviting people to events at church and then calling it evangelism. “That’s not preaching the good news,” I would argue. “Inviting someone to an event to hear the Gospel doesn’t compare to telling someone about the love Christ directly!”
But then I read the Bible.
It turns out there are a lot of great people in the Gospels whose only great feat was to tell someone else “Come and listen to this!” If you’ve ever invited someone to a church event or told someone about a potluck or even – daredevils! – left a little Easter flyer on the counter in the kitchen at work, you know it isn’t always easy.
Notice how it went in this section though. Brothers and friends told their friends about something good. It wasn’t an intervention or judgment, it was “I found the thing that we’ve been looking for!” Just like you’d tell someone about the new burger joint or the awesome movie that everyone expected to be a bomb. Inviting people to something good is a good thing. Take away the weirdness of inviting people to church and tell them how much you like it yourself.
This weekend, we’re going to have a connection event in the lobby. That means a bunch of people will be standing out there inviting a bunch of other people to “come and see” how cool it is to hang out together and talk about Jesus. Let the invitations fly, folks. Come one, come all, check out this cool thing. We’ve found something that is worth the evening away from whatever else we used to do, and we want you to come and check it out too.
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