Come and See: The Power of Personal Invitation

I hope you left your Bible open to the Gospel of John, Chapter 1.

I want us to look at this together because there’s some important information here for the church.

Part of what we did at the board retreat was to figure out ways to continue the growth cycle here at Fulp.

How do we continue to grow? How does that happen among us? What can we do?

How many of you would like to see the church in a growth spurt?
Okay, that’s good.

So what do we do to make it grow? I remember serving on a church board back in the 1990s. Every time we talked about church growth, the conversation was always, “There’s got to be a hook, there’s got to be a catch, there’s got to be a program, there’s got to be something that draws folks to the church.”

People still say that today:
“We’ve got to have a big carnival.”
“We’ve got to have inflatables in the yard.”
“No, we need a big sale.”
“No, we need to build something bigger—build it and they will come.”

We have all these ways we try to grow a church: invest in mailing campaigns and so on. Sometimes those things will catch a person here, a person there.

But the most successful way to grow a church—and there is a mound of fresh research on this from groups like Barna and denominational surveys—is very simple: ask people why they came to church. “How did you get to this church?”​

Maybe we ought to try that.

Lexi, how did you get to this church? What brought you here?
“Uncle Lucas invited me.”
Very good.

Bill, how did you get to this church?
“I just came in the door.”
So you’re a bit of an exception to the rule.

A lot of you are here because of family. You came because your mama had a hold of your ear, right?

How did you all come to church?
“Well, we asked if we could get married here, and then we just started attending every Sunday.”
Were you invited?
“Yes—Allen and Laura were here.”
You were invited.

Charles, how did you get here?
“Well, I had something called Proposition 45, and the church I was going to was all for it and I was against it. I’m talking way back. This is like your third or fourth time here. The first time you came was to vote, right?”

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. I was on the board at another radio church. Somebody denied the Holy Spirit, and that scared me to death. It was one of the board members. I told Caroline I couldn’t stand that congregation anymore. We went to a Baptist church one Sunday morning that was in crisis and decided we didn’t want to go there either. So we came down here, liked it, got to know John Price, and we stayed for 20 years.

Donald, how did you get to church here?
“Well, I fell in love. She was going to this church, so I started coming here to her church. That was around 1962. We got married in ’62.”

How did you all get here?
“We have a lot of friends in this church.”
So some of them said, “You have to come check us out.” That’s it.

People come to church in a variety of ways, but we’re finding that a lot of the older patterns are rare now. It’s rare that people just stumble upon you. The number one way people find and engage a church is because someone has asked them—someone has invited them, someone they know.​

So, to pinpoint it: someone asked them.

You might say, “Preacher, that’s too easy. You’ve got to do more than that.”
No—that’s the biblical model.

The biblical model is that people come to church and come to Christ through invitation.

You might say, “I don’t know about that, preacher.”
Well, I do. Go back to John chapter 1 and follow the pattern with me.

John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples. They see Jesus walking by again, after the baptism. John says in verse 36: “Look, the Lamb of God.”

He is inviting his disciples to see Jesus: “Look, the Lamb of God.”

John has turned their attention to Jesus, the Lamb of God. What happens then?

Let’s read from verse 35:
“The next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?’
They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’”

Here comes the next invitation:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Come and you will see.’”

So now Jesus has invited those whose attention John had turned: “Look, the Lamb of God.” They looked, they followed. Jesus noticed them following, turned, and said, “What are you after?” They replied, “Where are you staying?” He said, “Come on, follow me. You’ll see.” They got to spend time in his presence.​

Verse 39: “So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.”

“One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ And he brought him to Jesus.”

That required what?
Invitation.

John said, “Look, the Lamb of God.” Andrew and another disciple followed Jesus. They spent time with him. Andrew became convinced: “This is the Messiah.” So what does he do? He runs off to find his brother: “We’ve found the Messiah. You’ve got to come see this.”​

Another person is now on his way to see Jesus—through invitation.

Verse 42: “He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).”

Verse 43 continues this pattern:
“The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’”

Jesus personally encounters Philip and tells him, “Follow me.” He gives Philip an invitation. Philip accepts.

Then what happens?
“Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’
Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’
Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”​

So that invitation is given to Nathanael by Philip. Nathanael is skeptical:
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nothing good comes out of Nazareth.”

Sometimes when you invite somebody, you will run into a skeptic, or someone who has been burned by the church, or someone who questions whether God even exists.

How do you handle that?
You say, “Come and see for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Come and see. Make the judgment yourself.”

You receive the invitation, and then you give invitation to others.

Philip goes and finds Nathanael. Nathanael comes, sees, and understands that this is the Lord.​

That’s the process of invitation: you come to know, and then you extend invitation.

It’s not a hard process. If you try a new restaurant and you really like it, you go back. Then you tell people close to you, “You need to come with me and check out this restaurant.”

If a new store opens in town and you love shopping there, you say to your friends, “You need to go with me and check out this shop.”

When you find something you love, you try to get folks to experience it with you. That’s natural.

So why don’t we always do that with Jesus and with the church? If we’ve found a resting place in Jesus, if we’ve found one who restores us, if we’ve found a church home that feels comfortable and inviting, then we should treat it like the new restaurant or the new store or the latest band: “Come try this. Come and see.”​

That’s the key. That will be the key to any growth that will happen here: that the people who call this place home, who have found the truth of Jesus and the comfort of this place, will go to people they know—the unchurched, folks burned by church who are not in church now—not people who are happy at First Baptist or happy at Pine Hall or happy somewhere else, but people who are not engaged with any church at all.

We all know some of those people. We know them well.

We need to keep extending the invitation:
“Hey, you have to go with me to church today.”
“Hey, can I take you to Bible study? It’s a really good one.”

Ask, ask, ask.

If you’ve ever been in sales, you know that repetition makes the sale. “Hey, you have to buy this.” Reputation and repetition matter.

Have you ever been to a car dealership, and they got your phone number? That’s usually not wise, but we sometimes give it. We walk away saying, “I’m not interested,” but before you get home your phone is ringing:
“Hey, you sure you don’t want to come back and get this car?”
Three days later: “Hey, we’ve come down on the price. You sure you don’t want this car?”

Repetition. They wear you down, and sooner or later you buy because you think, “This guy isn’t going to shut up.”

Sometimes it just takes repetition—asking folks, “Will you come?” Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes it takes building a relationship, so you earn their trust.

This is a biblical model. That’s why it works. It’s the model Jesus used.​

Still don’t believe that? Look over at John chapter 4.

This is a story we all know: Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus was sitting at a well—a place where people used to draw water every day. You dropped a bucket down, pulled it up, and that was your water for drinking, cooking, bathing. It didn’t come through a pipe and a faucet. You had to work for it.

A woman from Samaria came to that well, and Jesus and this woman had an encounter. He explained that he was the gift of God, the water of life, and that people would worship in spirit and truth and understand who he was.​

I’ll pick up the conversation at verse 21:
“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’

The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.’
Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’”

Before that, Jesus had already done something remarkable: he told her about her past—how many husbands she had had. She was shocked. How could he know? That piqued her curiosity and opened the door for this deeper conversation.​

What happens next?

Jesus’ disciples arrive. Verse 27:
“Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people,
‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’
They went out of the town and were coming to him.”

Meanwhile the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” They wondered if someone had brought him food. Jesus said his food is to do the will of the Father.

Down in verse 39 we see the result:
“Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’”​

Her testimony included an invitation: “Come and see.” This is my experience with him.

Friends, if we will be intentional about inviting people who need Jesus and who need to be in church—if we will be intentional about including our testimony in that invitation—many will respond.

A lot of times people will say, “Why should I? It’s nice that you invited me, but why should I come with you to church?” That’s where your testimony comes in:

What Jesus has done in your life.

How you feel the Spirit in this place.

The love of Jesus that is apparent in this congregation.

You share your testimony about Jesus Christ as part of the invitation, and then say, “I want you to see for yourself. It may sound too good to be true but come and see.”

Many in her town were saved because she shared her testimony and invited them: “Come and see.”

Part of the reason churches don’t grow much is that we don’t invite much. We want something else to do the inviting for us. We want an invitation to an event we can just hand someone: a card, a flyer, a link, something that lets us say little or nothing.

We will have invitation cards for you. We are about to have a website that is very informational, current, and relevant that you can use as a tool. But nothing replaces the human element of inviting someone to church—having an honest, loving conversation and saying:

“I want you to come be with me in church. I want to share something with you. It’s better than the restaurant I found the other day. It’s better than the store I went to. It’s better than my ball team. I want to share the good news of what Jesus has done in my life, and what he stands ready to do in yours.”

If we will embrace Jesus’ concept of relationship and invitation, you will see Jesus do a wonderful work in this place. You will see souls saved. You will see good works done. We will all be amazed each time we are together in the presence of the Lord.

We are called to be light. A great part of that light is being people who invite.

Barna’s research says, “An invitation from a friend is the top-rated way churches establish connections with the unchurched,” and about half of those invited will accept. There is about a 50–50 chance that when you invite someone, they will say yes.​

We all know more than one person. But I encourage you to find that one person in your life who is not engaged in church anywhere—whether they used to be and got hurt, or they’re lost and have never known Jesus. Start praying for them. Start engaging them, rebuilding the relationship, and then start inviting.

Let’s see what the Lord will do. Amen.

Pray with me.

Father, today we are thankful. We are thankful that all of us, in one way or another, have met you through an invitation.

We pray that as the days roll on in this place, we will be people of invitation—people who invite others to come, to see, to hear, to learn, and to experience you, Jesus.

And Father, as we invite, help us make this place so accepting of those who come that, as they enter, it is pleasing to the eye, that our people are welcoming and engaging, that your Word is taught and heard in truth.

Let your love, your Word, and your witness not be confined to these buildings, but make us people who hunger and thirst to go outside, to invite people to come—to come to you, to your house, to come and see, to come and experience.

We know you will fill this place with your Holy Spirit, so that all who come may see, feel, and experience Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you.
Now give us the gifts, give us the strength, give us the vision to go forth in your name and to give invitation.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.