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Extending the invitation

June 20, 2023

Dear friends,

I’m interested in hearing from you on this one. Shoot me a reply to this e-mail, or ponder it and tell me what you think next time you’re here at church.

Is there anything that makes it hard to invite people to church, and what would be needed to make it easier?

I have some thoughts on this, but you tell me whether they match your experience.

For one thing, I think it’s easy for us to imagine that church is very ordinary, and so it’s not worth talking about.

It’s like breathing. It’s absolutely necessary – you need air in and air out in order to live – but you also seldom think about it.

You do think about it sometimes – when you’re holding your breath, or when you’re short of breath, or when there’s smoke in the air. But the rest of the time, it’s just something you do involuntarily.

That analogy limps, though, because you don’t have to tell anyone about the importance of breathing. Everyone does it.

Not so with hearing God’s Word. Most people don’t. Although it may be very ordinary for you, it really is an extraordinary thing in our world.

It’s like living around all these lakes. A friend was visiting once from Chicago, and he pointed out how lucky we are to have so much natural, fresh water around – fishing and swimming and all the rest all summer long. What seems very ordinary to us, is really quite extraordinary.

You come to church, and there God is speaking to you, forgiving your sins, strengthening you to trust in him in the face of temptations, trials, grief, and even death, and teaching you to love more and more and better and better all the time. That’s no small thing, though it can seem trivial, and often we don’t even notice that it’s happening, but that’s exactly what God does for us in preaching and in the Sacrament. That’s what Church is about. Nothing could be more extraordinary than that.

And nothing could be more necessary. Again, it’s like breathing. Although you can hold your breath for a time and it won’t kill you, you would never say that breathing is unnecessary. If someone held his breath for a minute and then said, “See, I don’t have to breathe!”, you’d call him a fool. You can’t necessarily see the impact of skipping this breath or that one, but everyone knows you have to breathe.

That’s how it is with church. It’s easy to think church is unnecessary because all the Sundays blend one into another and you might miss one and not really feel any different. You cannot go without it anymore than you can go without breathing, but it’s different in this way: if you decided to quit breathing, eventually you’d pass out and your involuntary muscles would kick in and you’d start breathing again. But if you quit going to church, there’s no guarantee that you’ll start back up again. In fact, my experience is that it’s very unlikely.

I think it would be easier for us to invite people to church if we understood better how extraordinary and necessary it is.

That’s one thing, and I have more, but this is already too long. So I’ll save the rest for future weeks. But what do you think?

God bless and keep you,

Pr. Buchs


COMING EVENTS:
Old Settler’s Day – Saturday, June 24