A few months ago I joined the facebook crowd. I was hesitant to join the crowd because I was afraid that I would be disappointed when I joined. My wife was a facebook member and had hundreds and hundreds of facebook friends. I was afraid that if I joined that I would have maybe six friends. Five of those would be family and the other one would be a telemarketer. What a disappointment that would be if I had no one that wanted to be my friend.
Then I found out that I could invite people to be my friend. Oh great just what I need to start looking desperate and ask someone to be my friend. I had visions of the pretty girl or the popular guy in school looking at the scrawny guy and laughing. What if they rejected my request? How would I respond? What would I do? Rejection can be so hard when you think about it.
My wife helped me out of my situation as she told others that I was on facebook and they requested to be my friend. Of course I thought they were only doing it because my wife asked them to, but hey at least I had someone that would be my friend. I mean what is the point of being on facebook if you are the only one that is going to look at your wall? It is kind of like writing a blog that no one reads. What is the point? Yet, slowly but surely people began being my friend and I was able to connect with some old and new friends.
I have still been hesitant to request to be someone's friend, but recently I have changed my attitude. I told myself it was stupid not to invite someone to be my friend. I thought I was showing humility, but instead it was probably pride. After all if you never take a risk you will never get hurt or disappointed. Now I have decided that I will try to invite more people to be my facebook friends.
You know the parallels with inviting people to church are obvious. As a matter of fact I will probably submit that the majority of us find it easier to invite someone to be a facebook friend than inviting them to attend church, much less be a friend to Jesus. How often do you invite people to come to church? Is it hard? Are you afraid that they might turn you down? Are you afraid that you might be disappointed? Or perhaps you are afraid they might embarrass you.
You know sometimes we get friends on facebook that might not post things that we want others to see. They might not have the same values or the same ideas that we have and may actually cause us to be embarrassed by what they write. And the truth is that when we invite people to come to church, they might not be exactly like us. They might dress differently. They might act differently. They may not be look like us. I say that is a good thing because it would be pretty boring if we were all the same.
So what is the point of all of this endless babble? We need to get over our fears of inviting people to attend church. Everyone we see we need to invite them to worship with us. It does not matter who they are, or what they do, we should extend an invitation for them to be our pew buddy. You know invite them to come to church and then sit with them in church. Wouldn't it be great if when you went to Walmart or Target, or some other store and invited the cashier to church, that two other people before you had already beaten you to the punch. What a wonderful testimony about your church. Surely that cashier will be saying in her head "what is it about that church? This is the third person today to invite me to attend?" She might not attend, but at least her mind is wondering.
Don't be afraid to invite people to be your friend and attend church with you. As a matter of fact, why not invite all of your facebook friends to church? Wouldn't that be cool if they alll showed up at the same time? Hey by the way you want to be my facebook friend? I will be looking for you in cyberspace.
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