WEEK 3 | INVITATION
03 INVITATION
The second value we seek to embody as we pursue our mission is this:
We foster a culture of love and invitation.
Jesus said on multiple occasions that the two greatest commands are to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30–31). Paul even said that this second command to love your neighbor is the fulfillment of the entire law (Galatians 5:14). For this reason, we want every interaction and our entire culture as Creekside Church to be characterized by love. And on a practical note, we pursue that love in the form of personal invitations.
READ
Luke 14:12–24
THE PRIORITY OF LOVE
Because Jesus said that love matters more than anything else, we need to prioritize it as well. The sad reality is that we could become doctrinally correct on every point, but still be loveless. Paul explained the bankruptcy of this situation:
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:1–3).
Paul had to warn about the dangers of a theologically accurate yet loveless faith because it was a reality then. And it's still a reality now. In fact, the Church has proven its tendency to pursue doctrinal certainty even as it ignores the commands to love, which Jesus said matter more than all else.
This doesn't mean, of course, that we should neglect theological accuracy. As we saw in the previous session, being shaped by the gospel means digging ever deeper into the truths of Scripture. Every word that God says in the Bible comes from his very mouth and is intended to shape us into who God made us to be (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Because "God is love," John tells us that the person who doesn't love doesn't truly know God, while the person who does love does know him (1 John 4:8, 16). That's a big statement, but it gives us this rule of thumb: If our doctrinal beliefs lead us to act in ways that are unloving, then something is wrong. In fact, if our theology leads us to live in a way that does not look like Jesus, then we've got the whole thing wrong.
So as we seek to find life in Jesus together and invite others to do the same, we work together to foster a culture that is shaped by love.
A LIFESTYLE OF INVITATION
The last word in our second value is "invitation." Why? Because a major practical way in which we seek to foster that culture of love is through invitation.
In Luke 14:12–24, Jesus told a parable in which he describes entering the kingdom of God in terms of an invitation to join a feast. In this parable, a man is having a feast and he invited many people to join him. This is a beautiful picture of that gospel invitation we explored in the last session. And it reminds us of our mission, which is finding life in Jesus together and inviting others to do the same. It's as though the point of it all is to sit shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of other people to eat a meal with Jesus. Actually, that metaphor will eventually become a literal reality. And even in this life, it's far more literal than we typically imagine.
In the parable, people make up excuses and refuse to join the feast. So the master sends his servants out to invite anyone and everyone to come and join him at the table. This is a beautiful picture of the love of God! And when the master sends out his servants to offer the invitation, we have a lovely illustration of our second value. We foster a culture of love and invitation. Our life together is all about finding that life in Jesus and inviting other people to experience it with us. It's never a thing that we want to experience purely on our own. There are always more seats that need to be filled. There's always someone who needs to know they belong. There's always another person we can enjoy this feast with!
Within Creekside Church, we try to embody this value through groups of people trying to find life in Jesus together. We love to see our groups growing naturally through personal invitations. If you're part of something, invite someone to join you! It doesn't matter if they've been part of the church family far longer than you have, we foster a culture of invitation! Invitation is also at the heart of the "outreach" we do at Creekside. Rather than trying to attract people to a building, we go out into our community with our own loving relationships. We try to overlap our lives in the midst of our neighborhoods. And as we share our lives with each other in this way, we invite our friends, neighbors, and coworkers to join us. It's that simple, but that profound. This culture of love and invitation drives a relational approach to ministry where we move into our communities and sit together over meals to invest in each other's lives.
When we operate with love and invitation as a major shaping influence, we discover that we are surrounded by people in whose company we find life in Jesus. And if we ever stop to realize that it's been a while since we've invited someone to join us, it's time to recover this crucial value.
PROCESS & DISCUSS
1. What would a culture of love and invitation look like in the context of a church family?
2. What would a culture of love and invitation look like in the context of your neighborhood, workplace, school, or friend group?
3. How does this culture differ from the kind of culture that often gets cultivated within churches? How can we work to foster a loving, invitational culture?
4. As we talk about a culture of invitation, who is God putting on your heart to invite to something? What might you invite them to?