By Steve

During a recent coaching session (one time a month I have a one hour phone call with Phil, my church planting coach) I was asked what it was that I invite people to. So that got me thinking on two levels.

First, I am less interested in inviting people to the church. I want to invite people to Jesus. In my experience, we (pastors) have become quite skilled at inviting (getting) people to come to church. What we're not as good at is helping people really experience, know and walk with God after they get there. We can end up with excellence in attendance and struggles at discipleship and life transformation (sorry for the redundancy). So one thing I am working hard at now is inviting people to Jesus first. It is my hope that as people "meet Jesus again for the first time" (a great book I highly recommend) that before too long they (we) will also want to gather in one form or another with other like minded, on the same sort of pursuit type folk...and we'll call it church. In other words, we can invite people to church, then add to that discipleship or we can invite people to Jesus (discipleship) and add to that church. I chose the latter.

The second level (although not really levels at all) has to do with what does it mean to invite people to Jesus...or what are you inviting people to? Or still in other words, if your not inviting people just to church, but to Jesus, what does that mean.

This is of course a loaded and a simple question to respond to. The challenge for me is to speak of it in a simple way. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean to believe in Jesus? What does it mean? How do you do it? and on and on. I think through these things in deep and sometimes too complex ways.

For now, that means I will offer no answer to these questions. But I hope you will think about them more. I will say this. All this coaching and talking and thinking, it has inspired another article I am working on.

It seems that many, if not most people I talk with have questions. These questions so easily become conversations. These conversations sometimes do, but most often do not result in people coming to something (church or Jesus...which is precisely why my coach asked the original question). If they do come, then what about commitment?

So I am working on a writing now...From questions to conversations to coming to committing. I want to explore each of these things and the order of them. I'll post it when I'm done, or point you to whereever it may get published.