Do You Need An Invitation?

I don’t know if your church gives an invitation or not.  Mine does.  In fact, all churches that I have belonged to during my lifetime have had invitations at the end.  So, of course, the logical question that I have to ask is this.

Why?

Why do we have invitations?

It’s not like invitations the way we do them have been around through the history of the church.  From what I can tell, the way we do them originated around the time of Charles Finney.  Of course, I may be wrong, but that’s what I think.  Correct me if you want.  Based on what I see and hear whenever I raise questions like this you would have to wonder how anyone got saved before we began having invitations at the end of the service.

When I look at how Christ handled people, I don’t see Him inviting people to join them.

His first message was “Repent!!!  The Kingdom of God is at hand.”  He didn’t say anything about how He would be waiting for anyone to make a decision.

When He called His disciples, He said, “Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.”   He didn’t say that He would be waiting for them at the boat.

When Peter gave his sermon in Acts 2, he didn’t preach and then tell the crowd that he would wait for them at the altar.

When Paul preached at Mars Hill,  there was no altar call.

What I notice, though, is that there was always a reaction.

I think the problem is that we don’t trust God and His Holy Spirit to do the work.  I think we act as though we believe that it all rests on us.  We simply don’t believe.

Am I saying do away with invitations?  No.  Invite someone to your small group.  Invite someone to your Sunday School.  Invite someone to the service.

Trust in the Lord to do His work.

Does your church  have a traditional invitation?