Nov 10 2009

The Invitation


It is a tradition in traditional churches of Christ, and perhaps others, to announce the number of the “invitation song” before the preacher begins his sermon. It is a practice as ingrained as the Lords’s Supper. What is almost as certain is that no one will accept the “invitation“.

How is it in your church. Do you have an invitation each service? What is it like? Is it necessary? These are odd questions huh?

Why have an invitation just for the sake of having an invitation just because that is the way we do it?  The preacher can preach on any subject, and with no personal application, and then tack on a statement like “If you are not a Christian or if you have just gotten off course this is your time to respond”. I want to ask “Respond to what?”

Sunday morning worship is not a good time for evangelism. Unless the good seed has been sown at some other time of the week there is not likely going to be a great harvest of new converts on Sunday. It seems to me the invitation is an opportunity to respond to the Bible lesson just completed. At a minimum it is primarily that. My experience is that many sermons have no challenge to life change. A twenty-minute devotional is not bad but does not require an invitation in my view.

Unless the preacher actually preaches the gospel (good news about Jesus and what he has accomplished for sinners) it is very odd indeed to ask people to respond to an offer that has not been presented. Lost people do not learn the good news by osmosis, they have to hear it or read it to know it. Don’t claim to be a “gospel preacher” unless you frequently preach the gospel!

Invitation as family time. Many of us at White’s Ferry Road church refer to our congregation as our “forever family“. And, indeed they are. When the invitation is given at WFR it is unlike most other churches I have ever experienced. People come forward to openly confess sin and ask forgiveness, they come to ask for prayer about some health issue (and often to be anointed and prayed for be the elders), they come to solicit prayer for marriage troubles, job loss, wayward children, etc. And, of course, some to come to make their decision to follow Jesus public and we baptize them and welcome them into our forever family with a loud applause and cheers.

What is interesting about the invitation time at WFR is that no one ever comes alone. Usually they are accompanied by close friends who got to know that person in a small group or a shared ministry experience. Or if it is someone new to our church those sitting on the pew beside them will go forward with them when they respond. This family time is a cherished event, often taking 20 or 30 minutes and no one seems to mind. It is safe place where people know in advance they will be loved and not judged, forgiven and not expelled. It is a wonderful illustration of a church with no pretenses of sinless perfection, but rather is real, authentic followers of Jesus, loving each other and together moving toward Christ likeness.

What is it like at your church? Is it something you look forward to? Or is it something you dread? One thing is sure. If the leadership of your church is not transparent about their own lives the invitation will likely be just a formal part of the service each week with few ever responding. Good leaders lead by example and not one leader in any church is perfectly righteous. It is good for everyone to just admit it and stop pretending it isn’t true.

Now for the invitation….your comments are welcome and encouraged.

Royce

Nov 5 2009

Tulsa Workshop 2010


2009 was my first Workshop but I decided then it would not be my last. I met so many wonderful people, including fellow bloggers, and made friendships that are priceless.

Come experience the fellowship, worship, and preaching/teaching, and meet other church of Christ folks from across the fruited plain. Lord willing I’ll be there.

(Should I have a Grace Digest booth where I can sell autographed copies of my latest book? I could feature “Doughnuts with Dobbs” and have a John Dobbs meet and greet. (I think it would only be fitting to call the doughnuts “Dobbers”)  And, I could offer to laminate “Change Agent” cards for free!)

I hope you can come. I’d love to meet you.

Royce

 

Nov 2 2009

The Lord’s Supper, Brokeness for Brokeness


People around the world today participated in The Lord’s Supper. A bit of bread of some sort was eaten and a small portion of wine or grape juice was drunk as together followers of Jesus Christ remembered Him.

This morning I shared the bread and cup with perhaps 750 or more saints. I was reminded as the others were served that one commonality we share locally and around the world is brokenness. Then at the invitation the announcement of a girl who had been baptized, a man joining our fellowship who works with our prison ministry, a couple placing membership who are transparent about their marriage difficulties and solicit our prayers, a well-loved lady with concerns about a health issue was prayed for, and finally a ministry leader tearfully confessed his failure to be what he knows God wants him to be.

Each of us comes to the Lord’s table bringing our brokenness. Unique we are yet each of us brings broken lives. We share a history of sinful passions, hard to restrain egos, and psyches embedded with the popular culture that is against God. We everyone either are or have been broken, badly off kilter compared to God’s ideal.

Thus we come and hear the Lord’s voice saying “This is my body” and “This is the New Covenant in my blood” and we know his broken body and shed blood was for us. Because He was broken we are invited to come as we are with our brokenness surely to be helped and healed. Because of “His stripes” our broken lives are made new.

In view of what God has accomplished for us in the perfect living and dying and living again of Jesus we bow to His majesty and choose to be broken again. Now we gladly choose brokenness so that Christ might be all in all in us and for us and through us for others.

God’s mighty power is best displayed in the life of the meek, the poor in spirit, the broken. It seems that God does His best work when He has nothing to work with. Read your Bible. Don’t you know that men who accomplished great things for God were all alike marked with brokenness?

Brokenness for brokenness? Yes, I bring mine and His makes mine OK.

Oct 27 2009

Where have the statesmen gone?


barack-obama-oath-of-office-012009-by-reuters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since 1864 men and women elected to the United States congress have taken the “oath of office” with their left hand on the Bible and their right hand raised saying,

    “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
The oath for President and Vice President, in regard to the Constitution adds the word “protect”. How different would our country be if each person who gave such a solemn oath actually meant it? It has become a formal, public lie.
Constitutional abuse is as common in Washington, D C as cocktail parties and tall tales. Once in office the overwhelming majority of our elected officials only give allegiance to themselves and their quest for keeping the power, fame, and fortune their offices affords. I seriously wonder how many Senators and Congressmen have even read the document? If they have read it they forgot what they read.
We must never forget that our great country is not a democracy but rather a constitutional republic. The United States Constitution is the bedrock foundation of what was once the greatest country in world history. We have been the freest people afforded with the most opportunity of any people on earth. Although now only a shadow of our greatness, still people from every country on earth desire to come to the United States. It is still head and shoulders above any other country in almost any way a country is measured.
I wonder how much thought President Obama is giving to defending, protecting, and defending the United States Constitution? It is apparent that he and others from both sides of the aisle only focus on various ways to subvert the Constitution. They have the same attitude toward the Constitution that most business men do toward the IRS code. They pay attorneys big bucks to find loop holes and ways to get around it.
I am astonished that no prominent Senator or Congressman is screaming foul at the Constitutional abuse of this administration. In my view they would be but for the fact that they are not “statesmen” but political whores. They want to be reelected and keep the power and prestige that accompanies the office.
One glaring example of Constitutional abuse is the Obama administration telling companies how much they can pay their employees. I am not arguing that there is no excess in the  pay of many top executives of large corporations. What I am saying is the federal government has no jurisdiction, according to the U.S. Constitution, over private business practices in regard to pay.
When our country falls, and in my view it will, it will be precisely because those men and women we entrusted with defending and supporting the United States Constitution lied when they took the oath of office.
Where have the statesmen gone? There was a time when people went to Washington whose sole goal was to protect the republic and defend the Constitution and by so doing protect the states and their people. Many decades of legislators with the morals of dogs has eroded states rights so that most young people are not even aware the several states should have any rights.
Republicans are just a guilty as Democrats. It is sad that in a country founded by the blood of patriots and built upon perhaps the greatest document in human history other than the sacred Scriptures, that the wacky congressman from Texas, Ron Paul, is often the lone voice appealing to the U.S. Constitution.
I am sick of men and women whose greed and desire for approval far outweighs their personal ethics and innate morality. Unless the common tax paying, law-abiding citizens revolt and demand that our nation return to its roots we will continue to swirl around the drain of demise. Our days as a free people are numbered. Will we sit on our hands and do nothing? It appears that is our course of inaction.
May God have mercy on us all.
Royce Ogle