When I was a young minister, I remember encouraging the members of the congregation I was serving then to invite their friends and neighbors to come to church with them. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then one of the folks said what apparently all of them were thinking: “Everyone we know already goes to church!”

That was the impediment my people had at that time. They couldn’t come up with a list of folks to invite to church because everyone they knew was already in church. Not that they were all in our church; but they were in some church. 

That was 35 years ago. How things have changed! 

My guess is that the folks in the church I am serving today don’t have that same problem or impediment. You and I today probably don’t have any difficulty creating a long list of people we know who don’t…