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Title: Going, On Mission

Text: Jonah 1

The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach
against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a
ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from
the Lord.
4 Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to
break up. 5 All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into
the sea to lighten the ship.
But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 6 The captain went to
him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that
we will not perish.”
7 Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this
calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah. 8 So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for
making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from? What is your
country? From what people are you?”
9 He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the
dry land.”
10 This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from
the Lord, because he had already told them so.)
11 The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the
sea calm down for us?”
12 “Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my
fault that this great storm has come upon you.”
13 Instead, the men did their best to row back to land. But they could not, for the sea grew even wilder
than before. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life.
Do not hold us accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you
pleased.” 15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. 16 At this
the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows to him.
Jonah’s Prayer
17 Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days
and three nights.

Introduction
Good morning! This morning we’re doing something a bit different than what we
have been up to the last few months. If you’ve been with us, you know we’ve been
preaching through the book of Exodus. We’ve been doing that for a while, then in that
we slowed down for the last ten weeks to preach through the Ten Commandments,
which we finished last week.
That might make you a bit curious about why our Scripture reading for this
morning is from the book of Jonah. Here’s what’s going on. We will come back to
Exodus and finish it up – we’ll do that in a few weeks. However, we are going to press
pause on that series for a couple weeks and have a brief series working through this
book. If you’re wondering “why,” well, we’ll get there in a few minutes. First we’re going
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to just walk through this chapter and tell this first part of the story of Jonah and discuss
what’s going on. Then, after that, we’re going to discuss two key insights we get from
this first chapter of Jonah. And then we’re going to discuss some very practical ways to
live those insights out and discuss why we’re pausing to preach through this book.
Make sense? Alright, let’s go.

Telling the Story

So verse 1, we get introduced to the big picture story of the book. “Now the word
of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great
city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”” (Jonah 1:1-2)
Immediately, right up front, we should be wondering two things: who is this
Jonah guy, and what is Ninevah?
First, Jonah. We actually have Jonah this same prophet mentioned in the book of
2 Kings. That is this collection of the histories of the kings of the northern kingdom Israel
and the southern kingdom Judah. During the reign of Jeroboam II, we read this:
“[Jeroboam II] did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn away from any of the sins
of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit. He was the one who
restored the boundaries of Israel from Lebo Hamath to the Dead Sea, in accordance
with the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, spoken through his servant Jonah son of
Amittai, the prophet from Gath Hepher.” (2 Kings 14:24-25)
So there’s not a lot about Jonah there, but we know two things from that. One is
that Jonah is a prophet to Israel, the northern kingdom. And two, importantly, his
prophecy came while Israel and their king were doing “evil in the eyes of the Lord,” but
that prophecy was one of God’s grace, that God would restore the boundaries of Israel
from what was lost. Remember that – Jonah was sent to Israel while they were doing
great evil and because of His message God showed them grace. That will be important
in a minute.
Looking at the first verses again, we also need to discuss Ninevah.
Ninevah is not a part of Israel or Judah. It is part of the Assyrian empire, which in
this day is Israel’s big enemy. Assyria will ultimately be the empire God uses to destroy
Israel and take them into exile. Ninevah was not the capital of Assyria in this time
period, but it was the largest city in the empire, this historic city that really represented
the empire in most peoples’ minds. Sort of like how New York City, in the minds of many
people in other countries, represents the U.S.
That is important because, when we put that together with what we just said
about Jonah, we realize there is a big problem. Jonah as a prophet went to Israel while
in was doing evil in the sight of God, and God showed mercy to Israel and gave them
victory over their enemies. Now Jonah is being sent to Ninevah because Ninevah is also
doing evil in the sight of God. Except Jonah is a Jew. He wants God to show grace and
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give victory to Israel. Ninevah, not so much. Ninevah being judged for its evils sounds
like a pretty good thing to Jonah.
It would be like if God sent you as a prophet to Washington D.C. to proclaim
God’s favor there, and great blessings and military victory flowed to the U.S. You’re
feeling pretty good. And then God says, “Alright, now you’re going to get on a plane and
go to Tehran in Iran and announce the same thing.”
Understanding that helps us understand Jonah’s response in verse 3: “But Jonah
ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he
found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for
Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” (Jonah 1:3) Instead of going to Ninevah, Jonah goes to
Joppa and heads for Tarshish.
For that to make sense, here is a map. Just looking at that should make obvious
what is going on. Jonah is heading in the opposite direction.
Why is Jonah fleeing? Why is he “running away from the Lord”? Importantly, it
isn’t that he is fleeing his calling as a prophet. He is already a prophet. Likewise, it isn’t
that he think he can somehow escape from God. He knows, on a theological level, that
God is everywhere, as we’ll see. What Jonah is fleeing is God’s specific calling to go to
Ninevah. He doesn’t want to go preach to Ninevah because he doesn’t want God’s grace
to come to this enemy of Israel. Therefore, he heads as far away from Ninevah as he can
get.
Here’s how that choice plays out. In the next few verses God brings up this great
storm against the ship. The sailors are terrified, although initially Jonah is sleeping
through it. The sailors try to lighten the ship, and they start praying to every god they
can think of, trying to appease whatever deity is responsible for this storm. Ultimately
they cast lots, a process where they take little stones or tokens and assign them to each
person, trying to figure out who is responsible. And the stone that falls out is the one
they assigned to Jonah.
Here is what happens next: “So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for
making all this trouble for us? What kind of work do you do? Where do you come from?
What is your country? From what people are you?”” (Jonah 1:8)
The sailors ask all these questions, but they are probably all trying to figure out
the same thing they’ve been wondering: what god is angry at us? In their world, you’d
have different gods you worshipped based on what you did, where you were from,
where you lived.
And Jonah answers them in a way that acknowledges what they are asking. Here
is his response: “He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the Lord, the God of
heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” (Jonah 1:9)
Jonah’s response is striking because he acknowledges the truth about God. Again,
we have to get in the mindset of the ancient world. The sailors believe in this
polytheistic, tribal world where there are lots of little gods over specific regions of the
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world. That’s probably why they’re trying to outsail the storm – they figure if they can
get out of reach of whatever god is angry at them, they’ll be fine.
Jonah tells them, though, that he worships Yahweh. First he calls them the “god
of heaven.” We know, in this world, that one of the gods sailors were most afraid of was
named Baal Shemam, god of storms, who was described by the Canaanites as the “god
of heaven.” Jonah is intentionally acknowledging that the Lord is actually the god who
occupies this place of absolute power. And he doubles down by proclaiming that the
Lord made all things, the sea and the dry land.
Understandably the sailors are terrified. They ask Jonah what to do, and here is
what he tells them: ““Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will
become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.””
(Jonah 1:12)
We need to stop and think about that request, because we can misunderstand it
too. Is Jonah asking for the right thing?
On the one hand, it does show something good about Jonah. He doesn’t want to
just let all these sailors die, and he knows that it is his fault they are in danger.
However, here is the issue. What does Jonah not say? He doesn’t say, “I will
repent to the Lord, I will repent and He will forgive me.” Jonah knows that God is
gracious. That is why he isn’t going to Ninevah. He flat out says it in chapter 4, which
we’ll look at in a few weeks: “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God,
slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (Jonah
4:2b) Jonah knows that if he repents and turns from his sin, God would end the storm.
However, he isn’t willing to do that. He’d rather die.
Being thrown overboard is Jonah’s final attempt to flee from God. He hoped to
keep Ninevah from hearing the good news by going the opposite direction. However, if
God will chase him even to Tarshish, Jonah figures he’ll go the one place he figures God
can’t get him: into death. To the bottom of the sea.
Initially, the sailors don’t do it. They try to row through the storm. Which we are
supposed to see as noble on their part. However, it finally proves impossible.
Importantly, we are starting to see that the sailors are also learning about this god of
Jonah. Before they throw Jonah overboard, they pray to the Lord: “Then they cried out
to the Lord, “Please, Lord, do not let us die for taking this man’s life. Do not hold us
accountable for killing an innocent man, for you, Lord, have done as you pleased.””
(Jonah 1:14) Jonah isn’t praying. But these pagan sailors are praying to Yahweh even as
Jonah is trying to die to avoid His call.
Finally, though, they do what Jonah says. They throw him into the sea, and the
storm stops. And two things happen.
One is that, as a result of this moving of the Lord, the sailors believe in Him. Verse
16: “At this the men greatly feared the Lord, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and
made vows to him.” (Jonah 1:16)
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These men become followers of Yahweh. People like to speculate about whether
they truly became believers or not, and the text doesn’t go into all the details, but what
it does say they did, in the Old Testament, was how you expressed your faith – you fear
the Lord, you offer sacrifices acknowledging your need for His mercy, and you commit
yourself to His service. It sure looks like these people become believers.
And Jonah, meanwhile, doesn’t escape either. Verse 17: “Now
the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish
three days and three nights.” (Jonah 1:17) If you’re wondering about the fish thing itself,
we’ll discuss it more next week. For now, notice the point. God is going to send Jonah to
Ninevah, and even the bottom of the ocean is not an escape from this calling.

Two Key Insights

Alright. That is the story of this first chapter of Jonah. Thinking about that, I want
to offer two key insights we get from this first chapter. Two things it teaches us.
First, God is Committed to Spreading His Name. That is the first thing we are
supposed to learn – that God is committed to spreading His name.
From the beginning, Scripture insists that God’s calling of a people was a
missionary calling. He tells Abraham that He is blessing him so that, through him, all the
nations of the earth will be blessed. As we saw in our series through Exodus, God
rescues Israel and defeats Egypt so that His name might be glorified among the nations,
including Egypt. Over and over, that is the theme of the Old Testament, and it of course
is only heightened in the New Testament, as Jesus throws open the floodgates and
starts drawing all the nations to Himself.
Scripture often also notes how we as God’s people fail to join into this mission.
That is one of the main reasons we have the book of Jonah. It is a story about a specific
thing that happened in history, yes. However, the reason we have this story is because
in Jonah’s failure we are meant to see both Israel’s broader failures in his time and our
failure as God’s people today. God is merciful and loves to save people, bringing them to
repentance and showing them grace. We, for all kinds of sinful reasons, fail to share this
commitment.
However, one of the beautiful things about Jonah is that it also stresses that even
when we fail, even when we sin, that doesn’t change God’s commitment to this mission.
The result of Jonah’s attempt to flee God’s call is that this boat full of pagan sailors end
up repenting and fearing the Lord. God will literally move earth and heaven, He will
literally go down to the bottom of the sea, in order to accomplish His mission of
salvation. The question of Jonah is not whether God’s mission will be accomplished:
the question is whether it will be accomplished by His using us or by His judging us. Let
me say that again: The question is not whether His mission will be accomplished: the
question is whether it will be accomplished by His using us or by His judging us.
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So that is one insight, and we’ll talk about applying it in a minute. First, though, I
want to note a second insight: that God Accomplishes This “As We Are Going.” God
accomplishes this mission through us as we are going.
That language probably doesn’t make sense, so let me show you what I mean.
Jonah in this story is not an example we should follow. The opposite. However, there is
one thing he does right: even though the context is God literally threatening to kill him
for his sin, Jonah does acknowledge to these sailors the truth about the Lord. He
proclaims the absolute power and greatness of the Lord of heaven. That is how they
know who this God is, and it is what God uses to draw them to belief.
Which is to say that God’s mission to spread His name isn’t only accomplished
when Jonah arrives in Ninevah. God is accomplishing His mission all the time, through
each step of the journey, even in the messy parts.
Let me show you something from the New Testament that we often
misunderstand. Here is what is called the “great commission” from Matthew 28. Jesus
sends out His disciples on this mission to proclaim His name, and this is the mission he
gives them: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of
the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
When we read that in English, is seems like there are four commands. Four things
we are commanded to do. What are they? “Go,” “make disciples,” “baptize,” “teach.”
That is how we tend to hear it.
In the Greek, though, there is only one command, one word that is an imperative.
“Make disciples.” That is the command.
The other three words explain things about that command to us.
“Baptize” and “teach” are participles explaining the content of making disciples.
They explain the content – “here is how you do that.” You make disciples by bringing
them into the church, calling them to believe in Jesus and marking them as a part of
God’s people, and you then continue to grow them as disciples by teaching them how to
follow Jesus, teaching them everything He says. That is the content of discipleship.
“Go” is a participle explaining the context of the command. The context – where
and when it is happening. It might be better to read it “As you are going.” As you are
going, make disciples.
We might ask, “But where are we going?” And the answer to that is “wherever.”
We are all going – into our neighborhoods, into our workplaces, into friendships and
families. And our job, according to Jesus, is to be on this mission of disciple-making
wherever it is that happens to take us.
Here is why that matters. When we read “go” as a command, we think the rest of
that is only meant to happen in some specific place or to apply to certain people. We
think God will only make His name known in Ninevah. That if we aren’t on some mission
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trip or evangelistic project, if we aren’t missionaries or pastors or something, this

commandment isn’t really for us.
When we understand that it really means “as you are going,” as you go about
your life, that reminds us that all of us are meant to be on this mission all the time. Yes,
it includes those people who God calls to go to foreign countries, like Jonah is supposed
to. But it also includes us at home, going about our daily lives. God works out His
mission through us everywhere, and He is calling us to be on that mission everywhere.

Going, On Mission
Alright. So those are two insights. Now let’s apply them, and discuss why we are
talking about this. We are going to be spending the next few weeks in Jonah focused on
this one question: what does it mean for us, here at Kish, to be “on mission as we are
going?” What does it mean for us to be “on mission as we are going” about our lives?
To explain what I mean, first I want to just talk very openly about where we are
at as a church. We’ll come back to those insights from Jonah in a moment, but first, let’s
just discuss where we are at. And to do that, I want to back way up and introduce some
categories for us to think through.
First of all, growth. We as Christians are called to be growing, and we as a church,
a community of Christians, are also called to pursue growth. When we say that, though,
there are two ways we are called to be growing.
One is growing upward – growing to be more like Jesus. More Christlike, more
obedient, more in love with God, more gracious, more grounded in the gospel of God’s
love for us in Jesus Christ. That is in the great commission – “teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you.”
At the same time, we are also called to be growing outward. To be going into the
world to spread the name of Jesus. To be introducing people to Him. To invite lost
people to experience the love of God and enter into that process of discipleship. To
draw people into God’s family of the church and baptize them into His name.
How are those two things related?
Well, growing upward in some ways has to come first. It has to come first for two
reasons. One is that it is the only way to learn how to grow outward well. There are
ways to grow outward that have no depth. You put on a snazzy show that keeps people
entertained. You guilt people into reaching out, beating them up until they do it out of a
sense of guilt or fear. Those are destructive ways to grow. A church built on such
foundations is like a house built on the sand; it is going to collapse. We need to be
growing in our relationship with Jesus ourselves before we invite others to follow him.
Second, growing upward is necessary because it is the point of growing outward.
The goal of Christianity is not to get bodies in pews. The goal of Christianity is not even
just to get people saved. The goal of Christianity is to make disciples. When we reach
out to someone outside God’s people, what we should be doing is inviting them into a
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life of discipleship. A life of growing upward. If we aren’t growing to be more like Jesus
ourselves, we have nothing to invite people into.
So growing upward has to come first, but it cannot stand alone. An essential part
of our growth to be more like Jesus is our growth in reaching out. We cannot become
more like Christ without being on this great mission He gave to His disciples.
When our family came here three years ago, while many of you all that were here
were individually loving Jesus and walking with Him, as a church, we were not doing a
very good job of doing either of those things. Structurally, in terms of what we had
available for people, while there was plenty that was good, there was a lot of work to be
done.
I think plenty of people felt that in terms of outward growth. I know Kish had
been through a season of significant struggle as a church a few years before that, acute
struggle where we lost a number of people. More than that, it had been a long time
since we had seen significant outward growth. While numbers can’t measure it fully, the
last time Kish grew numerically was fifteen years ago. There were some seasons of
stability in the last fifteen years. We’re in a season of stability now – the last few years
have been very stable in that numerical sense. But we haven’t seen a season of outward
growth in a while.
When we came, at a church level, we also weren’t doing much to grow upward.
Again, some of us as individuals were, but as a church – we just didn’t have a lot going
on to invite people into. So when we came here, in talking to the search committee, in
talking to people who wanted to ask about growth – what I said from the beginning was
that we needed to do some things to start to address that first. To start deepening and
structurally putting in place a process of discipleship and training and growth. Because
we have to do that first.
As a church, we have done a bunch of things to start to address that. In terms of
preaching and content, that has been one of my goals. It’s why we have small groups
running. It’s why we restructured adult education. It’s why we have sought to grow in
our leadership in having elders who are able to help us in that process of discipleship.
And of course all of us as individuals are still in different places with that process. And of
course there is a ton more to do – we are still talking about working on those things.
However, this is the point where I am convinced that we as a church also need to
also start talking about growing outward. We need to start having some intentional
conversations about that part of our mission. And so that is what we are going to be
doing in all kinds of ways. This sermons series, however, is where I want us to start
discussing that as a church.
So that’s where we are at. Now let’s talk about how we pursue that kind of
outward growth.
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When we think about reaching out, there are really two things we are inviting
people into. Two parts of reacing out.. One is inviting people into relationship with
Jesus. The other is inviting people into relationship with the church.
Here is the key thing to recognize: you have to do both of those things. In our
world we separate them, but they belong together.
On the one hand, just inviting people into relationship with the church is
meaningless if we aren’t inviting them into relationship with Jesus. To be blunt, there
are plenty of churches that have done that. It is one of the reasons the church in
America is such a trainwreck. If you aren’t meeting with the living God, encountering the
gospel of Jesus Christ and being transformed by it and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, if there
isn’t this supernatural process of repentance and conversion and discipleship happening
– if the church isn’t doing that, there is no value in just coming to church. Frankly, it’s
probably worse to come to a Christless church that to just happily go on as an
unbeliever.
So that is true – there is no value in inviting people into the church if we aren’t
inviting them into relationship with Jesus – but on the other hand, inviting people to
know Jesus without the church is also incomplete. This is the community God uses to
make disciples. We do it together, we learn about Jesus together, and one of the main
goals of discipleship is life together.
More than that, when the church is doing its job, this is often the place where
people meet Jesus. It is common for people to start to move into relationship with God’s
people and through that relationship to move into relationship with God. When I get up
to preach every Sunday, it is not just for people who are already Christians. Every week I
seek to exalt Christ in the eyes of all people. Every week I pray that the Holy Spirit would
move and give new life and new birth to spiritually dead hearts.
So we need both of those things, together. Inviting people into relationship both
with Jesus and with the church. We’re going to be discussing both of those things in the
next few weeks as we work through Jonah. However, for this morning, I want to zoom in
just on that second one: the basic, practical calling we have of inviting people into the
church.
How do we do that?
Again, there are two parts of the process. Two parts of drawing people into
relationship with the church.
One part is being welcoming. Being an inviting church in the sense that people
feel welcomed in and greeted warmly, drawn into fellowship. If you get someone to
walk in the door but then you give them the cold shoulder, you have not invited them.
Kish is pretty good at being welcoming. Not perfect. There is absolutely room for
growth here. However, I am often encouraged by the way people seek to greet and be
loving toward those who visit. And we’ve tried to grow in a bunch of practical ways too
in that regard – it is why we have a new web site and signs for visitors and other things
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to make it less daunting to show up here on a Sunday morning. So keep working on

being welcoming, but also be encouraged.
The second part of inviting people into the church, though, is… well, it’s inviting
them. Personally, relationally inviting them to come check things out.
And this is an area where a lot of us have a lot of room to grow.
So straight talk – I make a point of trying to meet and visit with all our new
visitors. Sometimes I do a better job than others, but one of the questions I always ask is
whether they know someone who goes here who invited them. And the answer is
almost always “no.”
In our last new members class, we had eleven people, and they’re all awesome –
you’re all awesome. Grateful for you guys. However, of those eleven, as far as I know
only one of them started coming because they had a relationship with someone who
already attended here, and that was not a normal, replicable sort of relationship.
Everyone else came of their own initiative and the working of the Spirit. Which is great,
and it’s good to be a church that is welcoming and everything, but it is not us being on
mission. The task of going into the world to make disciples is not a job given to the
institutional church. It is a job given to each of us as Christians.
What’s more, inviting people to church is pretty effective. There are people who
research these things, and I’m always a little uncomfortable with the simple numbers
they give, but what they all say is that, if people who don’t regularly attend church are
invited to visit a church, they say “yes” between 35% and 50% of the time. More than
that, the vast majority of them say they wouldn’t mind if someone invited them. Under
5% of unchurched people say they would be offended if they were invited. And look,
those people – you probably know who they are. You probably know the one person at
work who would be in that 5%. That person will take a lot of prayer and relationship and
healing, but everyone else – they’re not going to be bothered if they’re invited.
So the simple thing I’m going to ask us each to think about this morning is how
we can invite people? How we can invite people to church?
Then two last questions – who should we invite, and how do we invite them?
First, who should we invite? I’d suggest two answers to that.
First, just because it should be said – don’t invite people who are actively
engaged at another church. Don’t invite people who are actively engaged in another
church.
Now, that doesn’t mean people can’t switch churches. They can, and sometimes
they do, and that is fine. However, one of the great crimes of modern evangelicalism is
that often “growth” is simply the shuffling around of already-church people. While
people moving between churches is fine, we’re all part of Christ’s church, our goal
should never be to pursue people who are already churched. That is to divide Christ’s
body against itself.
That said, beyond that one caveat – cast a wide net. Cast a wide net.
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One of the things that can happen to some of us is that we do invite people to
church, which is good, but it’s just the same two people. Over and over. It’s that one
best friend or wayward child or unchurched relative. Now, that isn’t a bad thing. We
should keep praying for and pursuing those people who are near and dear to us.
However, we can so fixate on that one person that we fail to see all the other people
God has placed us in relationship with.
When I hear peoples’ stories about how they started coming to church, while
many of them were invited by someone else, it often wasn’t a close relationship. I know
of at least one person here who started attending because their dental hygienist went
to Kish and was talking about how much she loved it. The church I started attending in
college, which profoundly shaped my life and which I later was ordained and served as a
pastor – I started going there because a girl who lived on the same dorm floor as the girl
I was dating as a freshman in college walked down the hallway Saturday night telling
everyone with an open door that they should come to church with her in the morning.
We interact with people all the time, lots of people – cast a wide net in seeking to
invite them.
And the second question – how do we invite them? What do we actually say?
I think this is probably one of the most daunting questions for most of us. We feel
completely lost. So while you have total freedom and there are lots of ways to approach
that question, let me just offer a simple one.
Two weeks ago I went and saw the movie Avengers: Endgame. It was awesome.
You should totally go see it.
That’s it. That’s how you invite someone to church.
If you appreciate something, it is normal to talk about it with people. So if you
appreciate the community of faith, just share that fact. When you’re talking about your
weekend, say “I was at church this weekend. It was great, I love my church. You should
come with me and check it out.”
That said, two things are happening there, and both of them are important.
One, what we are talking about is what we love about our church. Sometimes
instead of saying “church is good” what we do instead is say “you are bad.” Maybe not
that obviously, but when you tell someone, “Church is really important. You really
should come to church,” that has the potential to feel like an attack. So talk about the
goodness of the church.
And the, two, actually invite them. Sometimes we do the first part and just talk
about how awesome church is a lot and think that makes people feel invited, but it
really doesn’t. What they hear is “I really love this club that I’m a part of and you
aren’t.” What makes it an invitation is to say, “You should come. You should join me.
You should visit and see what I love about it.”
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And that’s it. If the person doesn’t seem interested, nothing is lost. If they do,
then follow up with them. Invite them a couple more times to that Sunday’s service or
something. Don’t pester them, obviously, but bring it up once or twice more. That’s it.
If it’s helpful, we also made little invite cards. We put one in the bulletin, if you
want it, and we have more out on the book table. You can give them to someone you
invite. Now, that isn’t for everyone. If you’re inviting a close friend, giving them a card
probably feels weird. But if you’re inviting a barista, it might be really helpful.

Conclusion
Alright. So we’re going to be talking more about reaching outward over the next
few weeks. Jonah has a lot of other things to teach us. But here’s what I want to leave
us with this morning: as we think about doing all of that, as we think about this mission
we have – the great hope we should feel is that this is God’s mission, and He is the one
who will make it fruitful.
Jonah, in our story, is an idiot. He is a terrible witness. However, God still uses
him to save this boat full of lost people. That is a product of God’s work, not Jonah
having it all together.
Realizing that fact transforms how we then witness. It even transforms how we
think about something as simple as inviting people to church. It gives us the freedom to
simply be obedient and then leave the results in the hands of God.
Here’s what I mean. If you do what we talked about, if you cast a wide net and
invite people – some of them will visit church with you and some of them won’t. Plenty
won’t, although plenty might as well. And as they visit, even if we are faithful in being
welcoming, some people will be drawn into the community of faith here and some
won’t.
The crucial thing to realize is that is okay. Our job is not to get some measurable
results. That is what God does. Our job is simply to invite – to give God an opportunity
to work through us. The more we realize that, the more freedom we will feel. God is on
this mission. He will fulfill it. The question we have to answer is simply whether we will
obediently join with this mission and so be blessed to be used by Him. God is on the
move. As we are going, let’s seek to join with His moving.