The most common reason people visit a church for the first time is someone invites them. But instead of “selling” church like a product, Bishop Hughes recommends we speak from our hearts and spirits about the peace, comfort, and joy we find in our faith. (Time: 4:13.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark. I’ve been thinking about the reasons people come to church, and there are so very many, but I’ve really been thinking about the reasons people come to the church for the first time, or the first time in a long time.
Part of this is the Holy Spirit working on them. There’s something that keeps nudging them to go. There’s something spinning around in their spirit stirring them up. And they’re wanting an answer, or needing an answer, or needing a sense of hope, wanting the sense of peace that so often they’ve heard of in church or felt in church before. So something draws them that way. But the number one reason people do come to church is because someone invited them, someone asked them to go, and so they went.
And I’m aware that when I listen to Episcopalians talk about how they invite people, one of the things that they do is talk about how fabulous the music program is, or how wonderful my church is and how wonderful the preaching is. They brag on the goodness of the church, and those are all good things, and that is exactly the way you would talk about a new car or a house that you are about to purchase.
But when we’re talking about church, we’re talking about something else. It is spirit talking to spirit. So the Holy Spirit is talking to the spirit of the person who’s thinking about going in the first place. You may not even know they’re thinking about it. They may not have registered that they’re thinking about it, but the Holy Spirit is already whispering into their mind and into their spirit. And when we come in trying to sell the church like we’re trying to sell a car or trying to sell a house, that is marketing, and that is our brain working as fast as it can to figure out how we can make this happen.
Something completely different happens when we allow our spirit to speak to another spirit. When we say to someone, “I’d love to invite you to the place where I find peace.” Or, “I want to invite you to come with me, because lately, I know your schedule is as rough as mine, and this might be a place where you would feel the kind of refreshment that I feel.” You can tell them the story of how your church community is a place where you find comfort. Tell them about the sustenance that you feel. Tell them about the way that you feel loved by God and by others.
Now I know for most Episcopalians to talk this way about their church feels completely foreign. We are much better at talking about the type of service, when the service is, how good the service is, and why we think the service is good. And in many ways, I’m asking you to do the same thing, but to come at it from a completely different place.
Think about Jesus in the gospels. He wasn’t saying to people, you’ve got to pick this God over other gods. He looked directly into them, into their hearts, and said, that broken place in you, I’m going to heal, and your faith is going to keep you connected to God forever. It’s a different kind of marketing. It’s a marketing of the heart, a marketing of the Spirit. It is sharing a piece of our own story. It’s sharing a piece of our own hope, our own faith, our own joy, our own love.
Think about those things that bring you the greatest happiness and the greatest joy as a person of faith. Share that with somebody and invite them to church.
