Hi Everyone,
I hope your holidays were full of joy.
I grew up going to a little church in N.C. where every single service, two on Sunday and one on Wednesday, ended with an invitation. We often sang a verse or two of Just As I Am, (it has six), and it seems like someone always went up to whisper something to the pastor or to kneel at the altar without much prodding. The title of the hymn says it all, and makes you feel accepted, scars and all. Ironically, when you go to an altar just as you are, it is always to seek some sort of transformation.
Back then, “Invitation” and “altar call” were synonymous to me. The most significant thing about it was that I felt it was God Himself inviting me. I was too young to overthink this ritual in religious terms, as Baptist or Pentecostal or Southern, or as a marketing tool of the modern church. I simply felt that God was inviting me to some place or to something.
And so He was. It was both. The somewhere was Heaven, of course, but it didn’t end there. I sensed that I was not being invited merely to get on the road to Heaven for the sake of my soul, but that I was being invited because God wanted to be with me right here right now, and, you know…do stuff. And be together in communion. I was being invited to a banquet table full of the finest soul-food and to a relationship full of love and adventure.
It’s nice to be invited to things. It means you are wanted, and that your presence matters. It means you will make a difference just with the gift of you, and that the energy in the room will shift in a positive way when you walk in. It also means you have a choice. An invitation is not a mandate or an obligation. To accept the invitation is not only so you get that good feeling of worth, but so that you can honor the host, or the honoree, or the occasion in their worth, too.
Sometimes it seems like many of us have forgotten that church is an invitation. It is an invitation in the best way. You are invited to come just as you are. You are being invited to a transformational experience, to friendship, fellowship, and hope. You are invited to come just because you’re awesome and some other awesome people like sharing a little time with you for such a worthy cause. You are invited because when two or more of us get together for some holy moments with the Holy, it is a miracle of the highest value. Just what the world needs.
Life is good. Soak it in.
Happy New Year!
Pastor Kim