Labor Day is this coming Monday so I took the opportunity on Sunday to remind the congregation that we will still be gathering for worship on Sunday. While I'm sure more than a few members of the congregation will take the opportunity of an extra day off to sneak away for the weekend, I have some hopes that our little sanctuary may be full of people. You see, this weekend there is a major motorcycle rally in the next town over, Tulelake. All around town signs have been going up on local businesses to let bikers know that they are welcome there.
As I saw these signs, I began to wonder to myself if we as a church should put up a similar message. Yesterday morning a group of church folks were gathered in the fellowship hall to fold up our monthly newsletter. I asked them about my idea to put "Bikers Welcome" on our reader board and they all thought it was a good idea. So I went out and hung the letters to invite the bikers who happen to see it to join us for worship on the Lord's Day.
As I have thought about my decision I have been reminded about Jesus' calling his disciples, specifically Matthew's call. "As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him" (Matthew 9:9). Matthew was a tax collector and thus a social outsider, I would argue by his own choice. The biker culture, at least as far as I understand it, thrives on the idea of being an outsider, of being rejected by the society and thus rebelling against that society. Jesus invites outsiders to follow him, to walk with him, to be his disciples. Jesus, in inviting Matthew and bikers to follow him, in essence said, "I do not care what others think of you or what you are trying to do or be. You are my beloved, the one I love and I desire you to walk with me, to love me, to follow me."
Now my sermon is taken from 1 Corinthians 5, Paul's strong chastisement of the Corinthians concerning their sexual immorality. I wonder how that will go over?
Posts
2 comments:
Bill, What a great idea! I'm glad your church thought so too. Did it have an impact of any kind? Even if nobody showed up in your pews that Sunday, it may have planted a seed in someone's mind that will grow elsewhere. Outreach is something we have to continue to focus on or we get caught up in a closed circle environment. Keep up the good work!
Amy
Our little sign didn't bring any of the 1000+ bikers into the pews, but it did illicit some comments from the folks in the pews as they had to ask themselves how they would feel if the church was full of people they might not like to find in the living rooms.
Jesus loves us, and the us is always bigger than the us we want it to be.
Post a Comment