In my discussion there was an assumption that I didn’t make clear and that assumption was that the folks who are doing the inviting have experienced a similar joy in fellowship and benefit from worship. Even so, we are often reticent to invite anyone to the party, especially unbelievers. Thus, I feel I/we need to be reminded not to hold on to the joy we find because of some (perceived or real) risk to us. It was clear in our discussion that day that the folks in the room had experienced a good thing by being in the church family and at worship, yet were reticent to invite others for some reason.

It’s like a party. Is it programmatic and inauthentic to invite anyone and everyone to the party even though you set about on purpose to make invitations and follow-up to folks of differing relational distance from oneself? No way, if your intent is to share something wonderful. In like manner, we should invite everyone every chance we get, and do it well, but we/I don’t. Because we/I don’t I think we’re missing the boat and need to think about it more intentionally. We can’t keep this great gift of our fellowship and what our Lord does in our midst, to ourselves.

My response: If the attitude of some of our leaders is that we should avoid or discourage each other inviting our unchurched friends and neighbors to our gatherings because they are unchurhced, well I find it not only abhorrent but pretty much out of line with the gospel.

If I read that wrong, and the actual context is: we should make a special effort — a program if you will — aimed SPECIFICALLY at inviting the unchurhced… well, I don’t find that abhorrent. I just find it inauthentic. Which is almost as bad.

I wold say this: let us be genuine. If we get value from our worship and our fellowship, and if we have other friends (churched or unchurched, doesn’t matter) let’s invite them toi share what we experience.

Let’s NOT develop and champion programs that encourage invitation of one type of friend — churched over unchurched and vice-versa) — for the simple reason that it would be inauthentic of us to do so.

@Michael – Let me know what in my thoughts was abhorrent (I think that’s what you meant, perhaps not). Maybe my language was unclear but I hope you know my intent. Being a worshipping and inviting church is a bridge of grace we can build for those who are without the knowledge of the hope we have in Christ, and a unique bridge at that. My hope was to help us realize what a gift we have been given in the grace we receive in a special way each weekend and how witholding that gift from others is misguided (because nobody at CR would intentionally withold such a gift from another). I can’t imagine my life apart from you an yours and the whole of CR. This fact grounds my heart for others and (I believe) is grounded in Paul’s application of the gospel in the Corinthian churh for the benefit of those without hope in Christ. I am so glad that once upon a time someone invited me, my life was changed because they did; I saw others receive God’s word, and then I did myself as well. I believe Paul’s intent was to rebuke the Corinthian church because they forgot to make the worship accessible to unbelievers and therefore were acting unkind by putting up (unbeknownst to them) barriers to faith.

I was not a “believer” the first time I attended worship at CRCC. I was not even a seeker or what Paul would call a “God-fearer.” I was just lost. If the attitude you sketch existed then, I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing this to you now.

Not only is “exclusive” POV you’ve outlined abhorrent to me personally, but it’s in violent opposition to Jesus’ own words in Matthew 9:13.

If I was inclined to invite my non-believing friends to worship before (even if I didn’t do it much) I’m less so now.

I’m asahamed that a “leader” at CRCC would take that stance, and it saddens me.

Surely God must be more, we think. We believe God is love, but at the same time… God must also be MORE than love, too, right?

Maybe that’s where the Trinity gives us a hint. In the same way that the triune God fully realizes a father, son and spirit who are each full and complete in their own right… perhaps the love that IS God is the best seen as the expression of all of God’s will, hopes and dreams.

Can we imagine that God — the great I Am, the first cause, the unmoved mover, the ground of all being — would say “None of these titles matter. I desire only to be known as love” … If so, maybe we get a glimpse of how a simultaneous dance of Enormity and Smallness to the Point of Insignificance reveals how The Trinity moves in and through the world.

To be Everything, to be All Powerful, and to then say that all of this serves to create, nurture, bind and revive this one little thing we call Love — an oversold, overused, misunderstood term repeated endlessly in songs and movies and books — it’s an amazing, humbling, confusing idea.

God is of course more than Love. What’s amazing is that the God who is so much more chose to express himself as this one weak, fanciful, term that can so easily become meaningless.

It says awesome, wondrous things about our God, about his confidence in his own plan, and about his confidence in his son to find us a way to this truth.

[The Trinity] matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.

Many people wonder what the significance of the Trinity really is. Both your thoughts and Lewis’ seem to suggest that it is significant in a much deeper and more personal way than we could ever really grasp, which leads us to awe and humility simultaneously.

@Sharon – There are a variety of opinions on this within Christian theology. Briefly, restrictivists would say that unless you have explicit knowledge of Jesus and confess him as Lord by name you cannot be saved, inclusivists suggest that someone who has never heard of Christ, yet who responds to the revelation God has provided them to the extent they can may be saved, but that this salvation is still only possible in Christ. Another view, which is less widely held in the conservative Christian community, is universalism, which comes in two strains. One strain suggests that all people will be saved regardless of their response to the revelation that receive in this life. The second strain, which some call biblical universalism, suggests that only all are offered salvation and will receive it unless they explicitly reject it. At least that’s how I’ve understood the term.

I have friends in all camps, though I disagree with some more than others. Where do I end up? I am more of an inclusivist than anything (see Romans 2:14-16), though this position certainly has weaknesses. For me, I always come back to an essential trust of God, who, in wisdom beyond anything we can imagine, is working out the issue of salvation in a way that we all will one day see as completely wise and good.

@Rick – Also Rick Hawley posted this comment on my Facebook page:

In so much as ALL the characteristics of humanity are part of the “natural” landscape, the sad fact is that the depravity of humanity is revealed in that canvas as well. For some, the balance is tilted to the negative and they have a hard time seeing the glory of Him. So, I’m glad that there are additional ways that God reveals himself.

It also seems to me that our mission is to help tilt the balance back to Him when we encounter people who are having a hard time seeing God in the natural landscape.

Didn’t the early Christians have more than the natural to see God? The miracles, healing, etc.?

1. We see God as the GREAT god, the creator of all. This is the God who inspires us with awe at the wonder of his work, he is so BIG, the transcendant God.
2. We also experience God through his movement on our own hearts and spirits. This is the small God that permeates and touches our souls, the immanent God.
3. But in real, practical terms, God appears to us in the person of his representatives, mostly people, sometimes angels, very definitely the personal God.

It is the ultimate personal God, Jesus, who crowns humans’ perceptions of God. Of course, Christian theologians systematized these three perceptions of the one true God into the Trinity. The Trinity is not at all about three Gods, but about our limited human ability to perceive God. We need three conceptions of God to help us approach an understanding of God. It is an approach to understanding, provided by God himself, but in no way a definitive understanding of God. But entirely sufficient for those sincere and humble enough to stand in awe, experience the intimacy and selflessly serve their fellows.