An invitation is not a witness

The last time you wanted someone to know Jesus, what did you actually do?

Most of us invited them somewhere. To a service, to a special night, to an Easter breakfast where the music would be good and the preacher would be clear. And then we waited. If they came, we hoped something would land. If they didn’t, we felt like we had done our part and it hadn’t worked.

There is no shame in that. It is what almost all of us were taught.

What we did was kind. It just wasn’t the witness.

An invitation is a good thing. It is hospitable, it is warm, and sometimes God uses it. But somewhere along the way most of us started treating the invitation as the witness — as though getting someone through a door were the same thing as telling them what God has done.

It isn’t. And when we substitute one for the other, the person we love can spend years being invited and never once be told.

No one has ever been argued, invited, or entertained into the kingdom.

The man who asked to come along

There is a man in Mark chapter five who had every reason to want a seat. Jesus had just set him free from something no one else could touch. The whole region had watched it happen. When Jesus got back into the boat, the man begged to go with him.

Jesus said no.

Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.” — Mark 5:19 (OTB)

Notice what Jesus does not give him. No training. No credential. No congregation to bring people to. He is sent back to the people who knew him before, with one thing in his hands: a story about what God did.

A story, not a seat.

Why this is good news for you

If the witness were an invitation, then your usefulness would depend on having something good to invite people to — a strong church, a gifted preacher, a program worth attending. Plenty of believers quietly conclude they have nothing like that, so they say nothing at all.

But if the witness is a story about what God has done for you, then you already have everything you need. You are not the expert on Scripture. You are the world’s leading expert on what Jesus has done in your life, and nobody can argue you out of it.

And a story travels where an invitation cannot. It goes into houses, break rooms, and kitchens where nobody is going to walk into a church building any time soon.

Say it as a confession, not an accusation

Before you take this to anyone else, take it to yourself. This is not a discovery that other Christians have been doing it wrong. Most of us — including the people who taught us — have been substituting the invitation for the witness for years, and we did it because we were trying to help.

So the sentence to practice is not “you should stop inviting people.” It is “I used to think inviting them was the same as telling them.”

Start there and people will lean in. Start anywhere else and they will defend themselves, which is fair, because you would too.

Recite this

An invitation is not a witness. A story, not a seat.

Try it this week

Think of one person you have invited somewhere — more than once — and never actually told what God has done for you.

Write their name down. Then finish this sentence out loud, with a real day on it:

I will tell ________________ what God has done for me, on ________________.

Not a sermon. Not an explanation. One story, the way the man in Mark five told his.