Feeling the excitement of being invited starts at an early age in our society. School-aged children are introduced to invitations when a classmate has a birthday party and asks them to attend.

Invitations are expected in many cultural gatherings—weddings, anniversary celebrations, high school and college graduations, and so on.

Young children are taught to wait politely before participating in certain activities and with this social norm, or acceptable protocol of etiquette, the need of awaiting an invitation has been deeply ingrained in most of us.

Until recent years, an invitation was also a customary part of the worship service. Those attending worship services could expect to hear an invitation at the end of the service. It was a time when the application of the message proclaimed was driven home—a time when people were challenged to put the content of the message into action by walking forward to confess faith in Christ as the Son of the living God, to repent of sin, and to accept Christ as Lord and Savior, being buried with him in Christian baptism and rising to walk in the newness of life.

But something has happened in recent years. Far too often, sermons merely end and the service is brought to an abrupt closure—with no invitation for seekers to accept Christ.

When and how this recent omission began is not important. The mere fact that it has happened, is. Somewhere, somehow, a generation of preachers made a conscious decision no longer to include the invitation as a part of the service, or unwittingly fell into the common trend of omitting the invitation. Whatever prompted the trend, the result remains the same: in some churches, people are no longer being invited to come to Christ. And if they are not being invited, then—in far too many cases—they are not responding to the biblical plan for accepting Christ as Savior.

It would be wonderful if people today had the boldness, the feeling of urgency to shout out in the middle of a sermon (like the crowd in the books of Acts did) to implore, “What must we do to be saved?” But our culture does not encourage nor nurture this type of boldness. The structure and environment of most worship services today prevent this from happening.

Today’s hearers of the Word are more reticent by nature. They are reluctant to step forward and ask for something that has not been officially offered first. We’ve been conditioned by the society in which we live to courteously wait to be invited, and if the invitation never comes, neither does the necessary response.

If the plea of the gospel remains the same—telling others of the salvation Christ has provided through his death and resurrection—then the urgency of the need for people to respond to that gospel also remains unchanged.

The New American Heritage Dictionary defines an invitation as “a spoken or written request for one’s presence or participation”—a definition that asks very little of the one extending it. The extending of it, however, could mean the difference between someone accepting Christ or never receiving salvation.

It is time to return to the thoughtful, imploring act of extending an invitation. It could be the very act that would resolve the concerns of many ministers when lamenting, “Why aren’t people responding to the message?” Perhaps people have not been invited to respond. |L

OTHER COLUMNS:
November 15, 2009 - Bringing Christ to French Guiana
November 1, 2009 - Walking the edge
October 18, 2009 - Watch what you say
October 4, 2009 - Proposing a new proverb
September 20, 2009 - Fear and trembling
September 6, 2009 - Elwyn
August 23, 2009 - Where did the Bible go?
August 9, 2009 - The public school: a local mission field
July 26, 2009 - Astonishing the judges
July 12, 2009 - Letting the past go
June 28, 2009 - Line up
June 14, 2009 - The path to spiritual growth
May 31, 2009 - A tribute to one of my heroes
May 17, 2009 - Silent soldier
April 19, 2009 - Operation Resensitization
April 5, 2009 - The temptations of ministers
March 8, 2009 - Conversation over shoes
February 22, 2009 - By their plurals you shall know them
February 8, 2009 - What is missing from your retirement plans?
January 25, 2009 - Turn the page
December 28, 2008 - Abba, Father
December 14, 2008 - Elementary truths
November 30, 2008 - The illusion
October 19, 2008 - Acting like a toddler
October 5, 2008 - Don’t miss this
September 21, 2008 - Foolish schemes
September 7, 2008 - God’s hand is everywhere
August 24, 2008 - The dance
August 10, 2008 - Strange land
July 27, 2008 - God’s amazing grace
July 13, 2008 - A best seller
June 29, 2008 - My grandfather’s clock and worship
June 1, 2008 - Reclaiming the name
May 4, 2008 - God is not our fairy godmother
April 6, 2008 - Success: what is it and who can measure up?
March 9, 2008 - Need to know
February 10, 2008 - The top three myths of singleness
December 5, 2007 - Yes, Abbie, there is a Jesus
November 18, 2007 - 10 Ways to be a good Christmas customer
October 21, 2007 - The dividing line
September 23, 2007 - What do you fear?
September 9, 2007 - A life well lived
August 26, 2007 - To murmur, or not to murmur
July 29, 2007 - The cross and the Christian
July 15, 2007 - Turning the other cheek: still a valuable biblical principle
July 1, 2007 - Why the tie?
June 3, 2007 - The death of a son
May 6, 2007 - A prayer for the dying
April 8, 2007 - The omnipresent God
March 11, 2007 - Do the Amish have superheroes?
February 11, 2007 - What’s your black history?
January 14, 2007 - The split branch
December 31, 2006 - The house of regret
December 10, 2006 - The redemption of the innkeeper
November 26, 2006 - Too many choices
November 12, 2006 - Break the bashing habit: Learning to love the unsaved like Christ does: November 12, 2006
October 15, 2006 - Be ‘salt and light’ this Christmas!: October 15, 2006
September 17, 2006 - Who is a legalist?: September 17, 2006 Issue 38
July 23, 2006 - God speaks through our brokenness: July 23, 2006 Issue 38
June 25, 2006 - 'What I am looking for in my church leaders'