Great Insight from Mark Batterson

We need to make sure our attenders feel comfortable and confident in inviting their unchurched friends to our church.

That's the gist of Mark's latest post and I agree totally. He uses the title, "Turning attenders into Inviters". That said, I personally feel that trying to do this with a lot of "happy-happy, joy-joy" seeker sensitive crap is a turn off for anyone with a morsel of intelligence. (in no way am I making assumptions into Marks ministry because I know nothing about it, from here on I've given the controls to my brain) It's a transparent attempt to increase numbers and sets free a lot of immature Christians into the wild. Being the patronizing "older brother" to the immature seekers does less to draw people to Him than if you sat there and read straight out of the bible without any insight at all. At least they'd be getting His undiluted word. We need our attenders to invite people that want to hear the word of God, not a weekly gossip session.

That's what I love about Journey, yes we veer into topical sermon series, but they all have their foundations in the word and all lead back to the crux of the situation, salvation through Christ crucified. If the people want to invite their friends to a Sunday Morning Social, perhaps they'd better look elsewhere. Being at a movie theater we unfortunately don't have tons of time to socialize on Sundays in the normal sense. If that's what you want, you better be prepared to jump in and help out. We have great fellowship with each other during our early morning set up but not so much in our lightning fast tear downs. Coming to Journey is a lifestyle change for some Christians. Most of our communing with each other comes the remaining 6 days of the week. Life groups, band practices, creative team and staff meetings, community involvement. I don't get to meet many people "at church" but I've grown to love many brothers and sisters outside the walls of the theater.