Why invitation really matters (part 3)

So far in this invitation series, I’ve contended that invitation is a potent force: Jesus and his disciples invited, and marketers rate ‘word of mouth’ promotion far above any other kind of advertising. However, developing a culture invitation is tricky; it involves a delicate balance of missional theology, expectations, clear communication, trust, and accountability.

Today, I’ll be arguing that invitation really matters.

Developing an invitational church culture is key to effective local mission. Without this, we make it very difficult for our unchurched friends to take meaningful steps toward finding faith in Jesus.

It matters for discipleship reasons. Developing an invitational habit is an important part of being a ‘fruitful’ follower of Jesus.

And invitation matters for hospitality-related reasons. How we invite people and what exactly we invite them to often determines how effective our invitations will be.

Invitation as mission

Seeing invitation as central to your church’s mission strategy may seem a little tame or uninspiring. But there are good reasons why I think you should consider doing exactly that.

Research tells us that the vast majority of people today come to faith after developing a sense of belonging in Christian community. This is a big deal. If we take the notion of ‘belonging before believing’ seriously, it means we need to take invitation, friendship, and hospitality seriously. Only God’s sovereign work can do the ‘believing’ bit, but there is a lot we can do to help with the ‘belonging’ piece.

It seems a little too obvious a point, but if we want our neighbours, friends, and family to find a place of belonging, we need to invite them to stuff.

Ken Morgan writes about developing a habit of invitation: “It may only take six invitations for a person to walk the journey from complete unbeliever to Christian leader—or it may take hundreds. It's not a numbers game. But if you don't invite people to take steps towards becoming a fully committed disciple, my research suggests they almost suddenly won't take them.”

My friend Paul made a similar comment to me a few weeks ago. We were talking about having spiritual conversations with our friends. He said: “Somewhere along the line, we have to invite someone to something.” It's a more profound thought than it first appears. What he was getting at was this: when it comes to evangelism, nothing comes close to the power of Christian community. That’s what does the heavy lifting. The praying and the spiritual conversations are brilliant. But as soon as is feasibly possible, we should be inviting our unchurched friends into some form of Christian community.

The other super obvious point about invitation is that every member of your church can do it.

Howard Webb’s Auckland church@onetwosix has enthusiastically made invitation central to their mission strategy. He writes

“We do not set the bar to be a successful missioner very high, because it needs to be doable by everyone. We ask our people to be their authentic Christian selves, to offer friendship to those God brings across their path, and to try and introduce their new friends to their Christian circle, usually through an invitation to a social or church event. Consequently, the two base skills everyone needs are: knowing how to build a relationship with someone and knowing how to invite them to something.”

Howard is challenging the idea that corporate mission should necessarily happen mid-week. The problem we run into when we connect mission to church-run community ministries (mainly music, op shops, coffee groups, etc) is that because they are during the week, they can only involve a handful of church people. This means, of course, that most of the church doesn’t get to see or meaningfully participate in regular, corporate mission.

Invitation, on the other hand, is something that everyone can do.

Invitation as discipleship

When you picture a mature disciple, what qualities do you see?

I’m hoping that a regular scripture reading habit, prayer, church involvement, and fruits of the Spirit are things that come to mind.

What might not have come to mind is faith-sharing practices.

At what point in the discipleship journey should this be emphasised?

I have borrowed my view on the vital importance of faith-sharing to the discipleship process from Pathways creator Ken Morgan. He uses a potent metaphor to illustrate the link between faith-sharing and discipleship.

“Working in the fruit growing industry, I learned that fruit grows on young wood. Apples grow on two-year-old wood, meaning a shoot that emerged last year will set fruit this year.”

Ken goes on to make two points connecting faith-sharing and discipleship. Because of their often large network of unchurched friends and family, young believers have a great opportunity to share their newfound faith. “The real opportunity of a new disciple is that they will probably be at their most productive as witnesses and the first couple of years of their faith journey. A little like apple trees, new fruit grows on young wood.”

The second point is a little more sombre. What happens if, for some reason, faith-sharing isn’t seen as a valuable part of discipleship?

“Too often, we concentrate so much on building a strong disciple who will be well established in their faith that we neglect to cultivate fruitfulness in their lives- that is, we don't help them become disciple-makers themselves. We end up growing ornamental trees.”

Ornamental trees can still be beautiful. They can still be a faithful witness to the One who created them. But they will never produce much fruit, which is, of course, the purpose of an apple tree.

God calls us faithfulness as well as fruitfulness. Let’s make sure we aren’t unintentionally telling people that all their formational ducks need to be lined up before they are allowed to get involved in inviting, sharing their faith, or discipling others.

Invitation as hospitality

“Institutions can do a lot of stuff, but the church’s core identity is not discovered in its organisational charts and strategic plans. Every church is irreducibly a family, as strong or as weak as the web of relationships that bind it together. When church behaves like a true family, it can do what no other organisation can do- offer authentic belonging to hurting, distrustful people and allow them to be eyewitnesses to God's Kingdom in action.” Howard Webb, Redemptive Family

I’m going to assume that if you’ve made it this far, you agree with Howard (and me) about the importance of belonging in the work of evangelism.

In this last section, I want to explore further the importance of friendship and hospitality to Christian community and then suggest a few pragmatic invitational ideas.

I’ve recently encountered two voices that have massively challenged my ideas on this subject.

Aussie Sam Chan challenges Christians to make your friends their friends, or, in other words, thoughtfully bring together our churched and unchurched friendship groups. Why? Because the more trusted Christian friends a person has, the more likely they are to seriously consider Christianity itself.

Rosaria Butterfield has created the phrase radically ordinary hospitality to describe the way she and her family live their lives. Her hospitality is ordinary because it’s nonflashy. It’s radical because “those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God... In radically ordinary hospitality, host and guest are interchangeable. If you come to my house for dinner and notice that I am still teaching a math lesson to a child, and my laundry remains on the dining room table unfolded, you roll up your sleeves and fold my laundry.”

And what can this type of hospitality accomplish? “Engaging in radically ordinary hospitality means we provide the time necessary to build strong relationships with people who think differently than we do as well as build strong relationships from within the family of God… Radically ordinary hospitality shows this skeptical, post-Christian world what authentic Christianity looks like.”

When it comes to the act of offering invitations, Morgan has two helpful reflections.

1) Flyers and posters are helpful in providing relevant information. But just handing someone a flyer or putting it in their letterbox (or the social media equivalent) isn’t an invitation; it's just offering data. Data is cold and impersonal. Let’s make sure we offer our invitations with the emotional warmth that our friend/family member/neighbour deserves.

2) “Come with me to” is better than “You should go to.” “You should go” sounds like an obligation. “Come with me,” says: “I want to spend time with you,” “You will know at least one person there,” and “This event is worthy of my time as well as yours.”

So there you have it—three blog posts on invitation.

Jesus invited; for marketers, it’s the gold standard in advertising. Developing a culture of invitation involves a delicate balance of missional theology, expectations, clear communication, trust, and accountability. And invitation is vital to effective local mission, is important in discipleship formation, and is more powerful when it occurs in a spirit of friendship and respect.

Thanks for reading.

Sources: Pathways: Local Mission for all kinds of churches, Ken Morgan; Redemptive Family, Howard Webb; The Gospel Comes with a House Key, Rosaria Butterfield; Evangelism in a Skeptical World podcast, Sam Chan; Redeeming Authenticity, PdD thesis by Dr Lynne Taylor.