Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: A Timely Invitation (John 1:19-51)
Date: December 31, 2023
The culture around us is changing. That’s a pretty bland start for a sermon, so let me explain what I mean. I mean, the culture around us is changing. Clearer now? In a sense, that’s always true no matter when or where we live. Culture is not a static thing. It is constantly moving and morphing and mutating from one thing to another. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Because of this, if you look at it in just the right light, it always appears we are on the precipice of a great shift even if in reality, we are sitting squarely in the middle of a movement. Of course, you can’t see that until long after the fact, so that’s not a terribly helpful observation in a given moment.
Still, the culture is changing around us. As the millennial generation gradually grows up, and as Generation Z takes their place as the one everybody is talking about (at least until Generation Alpha shoves them out of the way), we are experiencing a shift unlike anything we have experienced before. And again, I know that sounds perhaps a bit sensationalist to say, but we really are. And the shift is a religious one. I can put it to you even more starkly than that: As we prepare to close the door on 2023 and move into a whole new year, we are in the midst of the single largest religious movement in our nation’s history. Like I said, the culture around us is changing. But unlike the major religious movements of our past like the First or Second Great Awakening or the rapid rise in church attendance after the Civil War when everyone wanted to just get back to normal, we are in the midst of the largest movement away from the church we have ever experienced. In the last 25 years, 40 million people have stopped going to church.
Over that same period of time there have been numerous programs and approaches created for connecting with the unchurched people around us. There has been an incredible push in the direction of church planting, and of revitalizing older churches that have grown stale or complacent in their ministry and are drying because of it. All the while, people just keep leaving.
I recently had the opportunity to read a book that is a summary of an enormous research project seeking to understand who these dechurched folks are, why they left, and what could prompt them to come back. It was an eye-opening experience for me. It didn’t necessarily tell me anything I didn’t already know, but by putting all the statistics in one place, and by analyzing them for the first time ever in a comprehensive way, the two pastors who did it were able to say some meaningful things about these folks as well as what we as a church can do to see them reconnect with the church. There is a great deal of missional energy being expended right now in churches and denominations across the country on how to connect with the unchurched people around us. That is a good and important thing for us to be doing. Yet at the same time, there are 40 million people scattered across the country who used to go to church, quit for one reason or another, and are mostly willing to come back. It is necessary and even vital to give attention to unchurched people—many of whom are the children or grandchildren of the dechurched generation—yet we absolutely cannot ignore this other group. The authors of this book agree. While they offer several chapters’ worth of observations about what the church can and should do to be a Gospel witness to this enormous, but not monolithic, group of people, one idea stood out above everything else as the key: relationships and a personal invitation are the most important thing.
Well, this morning, as we get started on this new year together, I wanted to give a couple of weeks to taking a look ahead together. I want for us to reflect together on what God is calling us to as a body, what He has accomplished in the last year, and what we can look forward to together in the year ahead of us. God is up to some pretty great stuff among us. Some of them have been moving at pace slower than perhaps we’ve cared to go, but His timing is always perfect and here we are. We have the opportunity to experience something this church hasn’t experienced in quite some time. It’s something we don’t want anyone around us to miss out on if we can help it. This morning, we’re going to talk about what we can do as a body to make sure they don’t. Next week, then, we’ll shift our attention to what we can do individually. You won’t want to miss that to get the full picture of what God is doing and how we can best celebrate it.
Thinking again, then, about this idea of reconnecting with the many, many dechurched people around us, I want to take us back to the very beginnings of Jesus’ ministry to see why this relational key is really something that has always been the plan. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way with me to the first chapter of John’s Gospel. John offers us a really unique picture of how Jesus’ ministry got started here that the other three don’t give us. He starts things off with a summary of the ministry of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. Let’s take a look at this together starting in John 1:19.
“This was John’s testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He didn’t deny it but confessed, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ ‘What then?’ they asked him. ‘Are you Elijah?’ ‘I am not,’ he said [which is really interesting because Jesus would later say he was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Elijah’s return]. ‘Are you the Prophet?’ ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Who are you, then?’ they asked. ‘We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What can you tell us about yourself?’ He said, ‘I am a “voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord”—just as Isaiah the prophet said.’ Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. So they asked him, ‘Why then do you baptize if you aren’t the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?’ ‘I baptize with water,’ John answered them. ‘Someone stands among you, but you don’t know him. He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.’ All this happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”
Now, why read all of that for you? Because I want you to have a picture of just how noteworthy John’s ministry was. While John was a wild guy who looked like he had just come out of the wilderness (which was because he had), he was not an isolated crank to whom no one paid much attention. His ministry breadth was enormous. Mark notes in his Gospel that “the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.” For him to say fairly explicitly that the Messiah was among the crowd gathered out there to take part in the revival movement he had sparked by his charismatic teaching ministry should have gotten everyone’s attention. And as if that weren’t enough, John tells us that “the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I told you about: “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.” I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, “The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.’”
Needless to say, John was pretty excited about seeing Jesus, and made sure to make that as plain as he could. Yet nobody really seems to have paid him much attention. John was the man they were all coming to see. He had the look and the style. He was the one doing the baptizing. This Jesus character didn’t have any of that (just like Isaiah had prophesied). It finally took John’s announcing Him once again as being “the Lamb of God” right in front of a couple of his disciples before anyone really started taking an interest in Jesus. When they did, though, things started moving…slowly.
The two disciples who were actually paying attention to John were sufficiently intrigued by his announcement that they started following Jesus right then and there. And by that I mean they were literally walking around after Him as Jesus made His way through the crowds gathered there by the Jordan. They were like a couple of forlorn puppies tagging along after Him. Finally, Jesus turned around and noticed them. Verse 38: “When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which means ‘Teacher’), ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Come and you’ll see,’ he replied. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.”
So, Jesus’ ministry got started with a couple of guys (one of whom was Andrew, Peter’s brother) tagging along behind Jesus and His inviting them to come and see where He was camping. The next morning, Andrew went and found his brother, Peter, and invited him to come and check out this guy John the Baptist had been talking about. His invitation was fairly simple: “We have found the Messiah.” Or, as we might say it today, “I’ve had an encounter with Jesus. Come on and check this out with me.”
The next day, Jesus’ group grew a little larger when He invited one of Andrew and Peter’s friends, Philip, to follow Him as well. We don’t know why Jesus sought out Philip. Perhaps the two brothers had been telling Jesus about him. Whatever the reason—v. 43 now—“the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and told him, ‘Follow me.’” For his part, Philip did indeed start following Jesus, but not before going to find a friend of his, Nathanael, and inviting him to join the party. “Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law (and so did the prophets): Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.’ ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Nathanael asked him. ‘Come and see,’ Philip answered.” Nathanael goes on to have a pretty profound experience with Jesus and joins the growing party because of it.
So then, what’s going on here? What does any of this have to do with our engaging with the dechurched people in our community? What does it have to do with what God has been doing among us and will yet do in the days ahead of us? Well, think about what’s going on in this story. How does the apostle John present Jesus’ ministry as getting started and growing? It begins when John the Baptist invites people to follow Him. What’s interesting is that John was a really big name who made a really big deal about Jesus, yet from what we can tell in the various Gospel stories, his actual impact in terms of the number of people who started following Jesus because of him was pretty small. We know of exactly two people who started following Jesus because of John. They heard someone else talk about Jesus and started following Him on their own. They did their due diligence until Jesus extended them an invitation Himself. Once He did, they were in. Still, two Jesus followers out of the thousands of people who were there doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
But they didn’t stay two for long. Andrew went and found his brother, Peter, and invited him to come and follow Jesus too. His testimony wasn’t flashy or even particularly profound. He simply said that He’d found the Messiah and left Peter to make his own decision. These two brothers, then, started talking to Jesus about their friends. Jesus Himself wound up going after one of them. He reached right out and Philip responded. Then, Philip got in touch with one of his buddies, Nathanael, and the party was up to at least five.
Okay, but again, what’s going on here? Well, Jesus’ ministry is growing. How? By invitation. Jesus’ ministry is growing by invitation. That may not seem like that big of a deal, but let me assure you that it is. There’s not a single person who starts following Jesus here who was not invited to do so in one way or another. Andrew and the unnamed disciple of John were directed by John and invited by Jesus. Peter was invited by Andrew. Philip was invited by Jesus, but only after Andrew and Peter had been talking to Jesus about him. And before we go forward, don’t let that fact pass you by unnoticed. Jesus may have invited Philip to follow Him, but it was after his friends were talking to Jesus about him. Stay with me here: What do you call it when you are talking to Jesus about someone else? How about prayer? One of the reasons people start following Jesus is because someone else was praying for them to do so. Finally, Nathanael was invited by his friend, Philip. These were all invitations. Every single one of them. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. It always has. It still does.
Now, take that thought and come back with me for just a second to that study on dechurched people I was telling you about a few minutes ago. As the two pastors who wrote it examined all of their data, they noticed that people who used to go to church but quit for one reason or another all fit into one of five categories. There are three that are relevant for us. Some left because they were never really more than cultural Christians, and although they enjoyed their time in church, it was never really a priority or passion for them. Some left because they simply fell out of the habit. Covid caused this break for a lot of people. One last group was hurt by the church in some way.
Of these three groups, the last two report theological beliefs that are remarkably similar to those of people who are actively attending church. A great many of them are likely followers of Jesus, they simply have a hole in their theology of the church, resulting in their not understanding just how important of a thing that is. The last group, the ones who have been hurt by the church, may understand the importance of the church, but their negative experience with it has led them to reject it. Getting them to come back to the church will be difficult, but not impossible. As for the first and second groups, both of them report a high level of willingness to come back to church. Their dechurching was not an emotional or even an intentional decision. It was simply an accident of life circumstances.
So, there are some similarities and some differences among these groups, but there is one thing they all have in common. This is the reason they would be willing to come back to church. While there are different variations of this reason, the underlying theme is the same: relationships. All of these dechurched people would be willing to return to the church, to reengage with the body of Christ where they can begin growing in their relationship with Him once again, if they had the proper relational context for doing so.
Well, make the connection with me. In John’s telling of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, all of the people who connected with Him and started following Him did so because there was a relational context for doing so. The relational context by itself was not enough, though. They needed a catalyst to get things started. And this catalyst was consistently an invitation. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. It did then. It still does today.
This all brings us to the part where I tell you where we’ve been going with all of this. Some of you may have already raced ahead of me and have just been waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Let me put it as simply and directly as I can, and then we’ll talk about it for just a bit. Here goes: Your inviting people to church matters. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. If we want to see the ministry He is doing here among us grow and expand, your invitation is the best and likeliest way that is going to happen. Seeing that happen, though, is going to take two things. The first is a genuine belief on your part that seeing the ministry Jesus is doing among us grow and expand is a good thing. The second is a willingness on your part to actively and intentionally invite other people to be a part of it. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. Your invitation.
But not just any invitation will do. Given the cultural climate in which we are living, inviting random strangers is probably not going to get the job done. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that, but that’s also not going to be the most effective approach you can take. Remember what the authors of that study—and the example of Jesus’ own ministry—highlighted for us. People will come to church when they have a positive relational context encouraging them in that direction. Your personal invitation, though, is the catalyst that will see things pushed into motion. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. Many of you already understand this. In fact, when I was talking about this very thing a few weeks ago at the December business meeting, when I asked the folks in the room—many of whom have been here for a very long time—how many came because they were given a personal invitation by another person they knew, nearly every person there raised their hand. One person even recounted how his family was invited by another person from the church who was invited by someone else. A single invitation can have a generational impact.
Now, this doesn’t mean the first time you invite a friend to church they’ll come and immediately start following Jesus. You may invite them, and they may tell you where you can take your invitation. That’s okay. Invite them again. In fact, as we saw from John’s description of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, there are four types of invitations we can use.
The first is the invitation we never make. Somebody else makes it and we are the happy beneficiaries of it. We don’t know what kind of work God is doing in someone’s life. When they walk in those doors for the first time, that’s an indicator that He has been doing something that may not have involved any of us. That’s okay. In that moment, our job is to step into Jesus’ shoes with Andrew and John’s other disciple, and invite them on in from there. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation.
And just by the way, can we all make sure to not forget about the fact that walking in those doors for the first time takes a ton of courage. It’s terrifying. You don’t know the customs. You don’t know the habits. You don’t know if you’re going to sit in someone’s seat. You don’t know the people. You’re worried everyone is going to be judging you. If you have kids and they make noise, you’re hyper-sensitive to even the most innocent side-eyed glance in your general direction. You’re looking for a reason to not come back. We who are already here have to bend over backwards to make sure that first visit is as easy and welcoming and affirming an experience as we possibly can.
The second invitation that matters is your invitation to your family members. Many of you have family members who used to come to church, but don’t any longer. It may be a child. It could be a parent. It could be a sibling or an aunt or uncle. Maybe it’s just a cousin you’re close to. Invite those people to church. Make it personal. Root it like Andrew did with Peter in your own experience with Jesus. If you’ve got baggage in that relationship, resolve the baggage first. Maybe that’ll take some time, but if the end result of your efforts in that direction is their eternal salvation, that seems pretty worth it to me. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation.
The third invitation is another one that Jesus makes Himself, but He makes it because of your talking to Him about the person. To put that another way, if you have people in your sphere of influence who aren’t connected to the body of Christ, talk to Jesus about them. That is, pray for them. Talk to Him about them so much that He finally goes and seeks them out Himself. Now, this doesn’t preclude your personal invitation, but prayer is a powerful, powerful tool here. Pray for the dechurched and unchurched people in your life. Then, be ready to receive them when they come. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation.
One last kind of invitation is perhaps the easiest and the most likely to succeed. Invite your friends. When Philip had encountered Jesus, he went and found his friend, Nathanael. But, before you think this will be easy, do you remember Nathanael’s response? It was sarcastic and cynical. He had no interest in Jesus. Philip invited him anyway. He simply said, “Come and see.” Now, our job as a church is to make sure there is something worth coming and seeing—more on that next week—but your invitation is the catalyst. If you have friends who used to go to church but don’t anymore, invite them back to church. The odds are pretty good they are willing to come. They’re just waiting on your patient, faithful, recurring invitation. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation.
As for what you need to be doing with this, I hope that is about as clear as it can be. Invite people to church. Invite them to connect with Jesus through His body. Invite them to experience a taste of the kingdom of God among this group of people. Invite them to church. Jesus’ ministry grows by invitation. God is continuing a great work among us. We want for as many people as possible to be able to experience the fruits of that alongside us. Let’s get inviting.