From your Pastors Heart

This past Sunday (October 18), as he so often does, Jeff asked a question in worship:  "How long have you been coming to church?"  As he pointed out, for some it might be a year or two.  For others it has been ten, twenty, even thirty years.  For a very few it may even be more than fifty years. 

That's a long time.  Do you remember how you first heard about Christ and what first led you to start attending church? 

Chances are that either someone like your parents or a neighbor brought you or someone like a friend or coworker invited you.  In either case someone knew it was important enough to take the initiative. 

When was the last time you did that for someone else?  When was the last time that knowing and serving Christ was important enough to take the time and make effort to invite and bring someone to church with you? 

For several weeks Brent has been teaching about the beliefs of Mormonism and now Jehovah Witnesses in his Sunday School class.  Each year statistics continually show these groups are growing while the church continues its decline in America.  The primary reason for this is that they do make a point to tell and invite. 

It's so easy for us all to get comfortable, lazy, and even apathetic about the importance of people knowing Christ and our role in telling them about Him.  When was the last time you actually took the time and made the effort to bring someone to church with you?  Hasn't our tendency become to just put up a sign and a building and expect people to come on their own.  Or maybe we plan an activity and send out a flier or mailing and wait for them to come on their own and when that doesn't happen we wonder why.

Pastor Steve