An Invitation
With Holy Week approaching, you may be considering inviting someone you care about to attend an Easter service with you. And it’s a good time to do it because research from the Barna Group shows that up to 80% of non-churchgoers would attend a church service on Easter if invited.
At Summit, on Easter, you can expect a service very similar to what you’d normally expect. The music and message will be thoughtfully woven together. The teaching will offer spiritual formation for those already following Jesus, along with relevant truth about how life works best for those who are listening in and newly exploring faith. There will be hot coffee and warm greetings from friendly faces.
You can feel confident that if someone you know takes you up on your invitation, we will have done everything we can as staff and volunteers to prepare a space where everyone can have a meaningful encounter with Jesus this Easter.
But in the midst of thinking about the invitations you might make to others, I want you to consider a question I posed to our staff a few weeks back as we entered this season of preparation for Easter, which the church calls Lent.
Here it is:
Is there something about your life with Jesus that is worth inviting someone else into?
If you’ve been following along this year you may have heard me or another person talk about this idea of spiritual vitality. It’s a theme we’re going to continue to consider all year and if it’s the first time you’re hearing it, I’m just talking about what Jesus calls abundant life, or life to the full. It’s what Paul writes about when he articulates the nine characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit: “Love, Joy, Peace, Patience,” and the rest.
So this question is a spiritual vitality question. Is there something about your spiritual life that is worth replicating?
If you have an answer, that’s probably a great place to start when you are thinking about the people in your life who need to know that there’s a life offered in him that’s better than anything that can be found without him. And don’t feel like it’s prideful to have an answer! Paul, in the first verse of Corinthians 11, says: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”
If you don’t have an answer, please don’t feel any guilt about that. I spent over a decade of my life without a good answer to that question, and I was a pastor during that decade.
I could give you a local restaurant recommendation, or implore you to watch Ted Lasso, but truth be told, I tried to avoid that question and others like it. “How’s your relationship with Jesus? What’s God been teaching you lately?” I knew my answers would be more theoretical than rooted in actual, lived experience.
If that’s you, I’ll leave you with this: Life’s too short to go through the motions of religion without the abundant life Jesus offers us. Find some margin in your life to slow down and get quiet enough to listen. Give scripture the time and space to sink in. Find time to connect in conversation with someone who loves God and cares about you. Take a walk and look carefully to see what you might learn about God through the world he created. Breathe. Pray.
And just one more invitation. This one’s from Jesus, and it’s for all of us:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to
live freely and lightly.”
Matthew 11:28-30 MSG
-Andy Simonds, Lead Pastor