The Power of an Invitation

I want to start today with something that’s actually very simple.

If you look back over the course of your life, a lot of the moments that ended up changing your life started with something very small.

You might even try something with me for a moment.

Think about your own life for a second.

Think about the moments that ended up changing your direction — maybe the school you attended, maybe the job you took, maybe the relationship that became part of your life.

If you trace those moments back to the beginning, very often they started with something surprisingly simple.

Someone invited you. Someone said —

“You should try this.”
“You should come with me.”
“You should check this out.”

If you think about it, that’s how a lot of big moments begin.

Someone invites you to a school you hadn’t considered, and suddenly your whole path changes.

Someone invites you to dinner, and that dinner eventually turns into a relationship that changes the rest of your life.

Someone invites you to apply for a job, and years later you realize that one conversation set your career in motion.

And sometimes the invitation works the other direction too. Someone invites you to a startup that promises to change the world… and five years later you’re explaining to your parents what your stock options used to be worth.

But the point is the same — invitations have a way of setting things in motion.

When you look back, the moment itself didn’t seem that dramatic. It just felt like a normal invitation. But over time you realize it opened the door to something much bigger.

And the same thing is often true spiritually.

If you talk to people about how their faith journey began, it’s actually surprising how often the story starts the same way.

Not with a sermon.
Not with a book.
Not with a dramatic spiritual moment.

Very often it starts with someone saying something simple like, “Hey… do you want to come to church with me?” Or, “My church is doing something next week. You should come check it out.”

And at the time it may not even feel like a big moment. But sometimes that simple invitation becomes the first step in a story that ends up changing someone’s life.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again. Someone comes to church because a friend invited them.

At first they’re just curious. Maybe a little skeptical. But they keep showing up. They keep listening. They keep having conversations and asking questions.

And somewhere along the way something begins to change. Their understanding of God begins to shift. Their understanding of themselves begins to shift.

And before long they found themselves beginning a relationship with Jesus that reshaped their life in ways they never expected.

And when you trace that whole story back to the beginning, very often you find that it started with something incredibly simple.

Someone cared enough to say, “Hey… would you come with me?”

And the reason I’m thinking about this today is because over the next few weeks our church is heading toward one of the most important moments in the Christian calendar.

And historically, Easter has always been one of those times when people are more open than usual to exploring faith.

People who normally wouldn’t think about church start thinking about it.

Which is interesting, because in the Bay Area people are actually very open to exploring things that might change their lives.

Meditation apps.
Cold plunges at six in the morning.
A new productivity system that promises to organize your entire existence.

So it turns out people are actually very willing to explore things that might improve their lives.

Sometimes they just need someone they trust to say, “Come check this out.”

Which raises a question that I want us to think about together this morning.

Who might God want to reach through you?

If you have a Bible, turn with me to Luke chapter 15.

Before Jesus tells any of the stories in this chapter, Luke gives us a glimpse into what was happening around him. He writes:

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:1-2)

That little moment tells us a lot about Jesus.

The people who seemed most drawn to him weren’t the religious experts. They were the people whose lives were messy. Tax collectors. Sinners. People who knew they didn’t have everything figured out.

And Luke says they were gathering around Jesus. Which means something about Jesus made them feel like they could come near.

They didn’t feel pushed away. They didn’t feel judged. They felt welcome enough to listen.

But the religious leaders are watching all of this happen, and they’re not impressed. They begin muttering to each other: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

In their minds, that was criticism. It was their way of saying, “If he were really from God, he wouldn’t spend time with people like that.”

But what they meant as an accusation actually turns out to be one of the most accurate descriptions of Jesus in the entire Gospel — He welcomes sinners. That’s what Jesus does.

And when he hears them grumbling, he responds the way great teachers often do. He tells a story.

Actually, he tells three stories.

And that’s not accidental. In Jewish teaching, repetition was often used to emphasize something important.

When a rabbi repeated the same idea several times in different ways, it was a way of saying, “Pay attention. Don’t miss this.”

So Jesus tells three stories that all point in the same direction.

The first story is about a shepherd who has a hundred sheep.

One of them wanders off. And instead of saying, “Well, ninety-nine out of a hundred isn’t bad,” the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes searching for the one that is lost.

And when he finds it, he doesn’t scold the sheep or drag it home in frustration. Jesus says he puts it on his shoulders and carries it home rejoicing.

Which, if we’re honest, is probably not how most of us would respond.

If I had ninety-nine sheep safely accounted for and one wandered off, my first instinct might be something like: “Well… statistically speaking we’re doing pretty well.”

But Jesus tells the story differently, because the shepherd isn’t thinking about percentages. He’s thinking about the one that’s missing.

Then Jesus tells a second story.

This time it’s about a woman who has ten silver coins.

One of them goes missing. And she lights a lamp and sweeps the house and searches carefully until she finds it.

And when she does, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me — I’ve found my lost coin.”

And then Jesus tells the third story.

A father has two sons.

One of them takes his inheritance and walks away from home. He leaves the family. He squanders everything. Eventually he hits rock bottom.

And when he finally decides to come home, Jesus says something remarkable. He says that while the son was still a long way off, the father saw him.

Which means the father must have been watching. Waiting. Looking down that road day after day, hoping that one day his son would come back.

And when he finally sees him in the distance, the father runs to him.

Which would have been shocking in that culture.

Dignified patriarchs didn’t run. But this father runs. He embraces his son. He restores him. And he throws a celebration.

Three stories. Different characters. Different situations. But the same theme running through all of them. Something valuable is lost. Someone goes searching. And when what was lost is found, there’s a celebration.

And Jesus tells these stories because he wants us to understand something about the heart of God.

God is not indifferent about people who are far from him.

He’s not distant. He’s not uninterested.

He’s like a shepherd searching.
He’s like a woman sweeping the house.
He’s like a father watching the road.

And when someone who has wandered away turns back toward God, heaven celebrates.

Think about that for a moment. According to Jesus, heaven celebrates when people come home. That’s what moves the heart of God.

Not religious performance. Not spiritual status.

People. People who are lost being found. People who are far from God coming home.

And if that’s what matters most to God, then it begins to shape how we see the people around us as well.

The coworkers we see every day.
The neighbors who live down the street.
The friends we spend time with.

These aren’t just random relationships. They’re people whose stories matter deeply to God. People heaven cares about. People heaven would celebrate.

One of the quiet assumptions that often sits in the back of our minds when we talk about reaching people spiritually is the idea that this is really something meant for a certain kind of Christian.

Some people hear a message like this and immediately think of pastors, or missionaries, or people who seem unusually confident talking about their faith.

They imagine someone who has all the right answers, someone who can quote Scripture easily, someone who never feels awkward in spiritual conversations.

And if we’re honest, many of us instinctively think, “That’s probably not me.”

But when you begin reading the New Testament carefully, what you discover is something that might surprise you.

The spread of Christianity was never primarily driven by a handful of famous leaders.

Yes, there were apostles like Peter and Paul whose names we recognize, but when you look closely at the early church, you realize the movement of the gospel was carried forward mostly by ordinary followers of Jesus.

You can actually see this very clearly in a place that many people tend to skim past when they read the Bible.

At the very end of Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 16, Paul begins doing something that at first seems fairly routine. He starts greeting people.

He says things like:

“Greet Phoebe.”
“Greet Priscilla and Aquila.”
“Greet Mary.”
“Greet Andronicus and Junia.”
“Greet Tryphena and Tryphosa.”

And if you’re reading through Romans quickly, it can feel like one of those sections where you simply move on to the next book.

Romans 16 is one of those chapters where a lot of Bible readers suddenly become very efficient.

You look at all the names and think, “Paul greeted a lot of people. Good for Paul.” And then you keep moving.

But if you slow down and pay attention, something really interesting is happening in that chapter.

Paul is not just saying hello. He’s naming the people who were helping build the early church.

In that one chapter alone he mentions more than two dozen individuals… and what stands out is how remarkably ordinary they appear to be.

Some of them were women who served faithfully in the church.
Some were couples who opened their homes so that believers could gather together.
Some had worked alongside Paul in difficult circumstances.
Some had risked their lives for the sake of the gospel.

None of them were famous in the way we think of famous today.

They were not public figures.
They were not celebrities.

They were simply men and women whose lives had been touched by Jesus, and who chose to participate in what God was doing.

And here’s something worth pausing to consider.

Most of the people who lived in the Roman Empire during that time have completely disappeared from history. Their names are forgotten.

But these ordinary followers of Jesus — people who quietly served, welcomed others, and helped the church grow — their names are still remembered two thousand years later.

That’s remarkable when you think about it.

Because what it reminds us is that the story of the church has never been about a few well-known leaders doing everything.

It has always been about thousands upon thousands of ordinary believers who simply allowed God to use their lives.

They opened their homes.
They cared for their neighbors.
They welcomed people who were curious about Jesus.
They made space for others to encounter the gospel.

And through those countless ordinary acts of faithfulness, the message of Christ spread across cities, across cultures, and eventually across the world.

When you look at it that way, you begin to realize something important — God has always loved to work through ordinary people.

People who don’t necessarily see themselves as spiritual experts.
People who may feel hesitant or unsure at times.
People whose faith is sincere but still growing.

In other words, people a lot like you and me.

And the reason that matters for us today is because it changes how we think about our own role in the story.

If the mission of God depended only on a few unusually gifted people, most of us would simply sit on the sidelines.

But if the mission of God has always moved forward through ordinary followers of Jesus, then suddenly every one of us begins to see that we have a place in what God is doing.

Not because we have to be impressive. Not because we have to be perfect. But simply because we’re willing.

And very often the way God begins working through someone’s life is not through a dramatic moment on a stage, but through a quiet moment in an everyday relationship.

A conversation.
A friendship.
A moment of hospitality.

Or something as simple as saying to someone you know, “You should come with me.”

One of the things you begin to notice when you read through the Gospels carefully is how relational the spread of faith actually is.

We sometimes imagine that Christianity spread primarily through large public sermons or dramatic moments where thousands of people suddenly believed all at once.

And there certainly were moments like that in the book of Acts. But when you go back to the very beginning — when people were first encountering Jesus — you see something much more personal happening.

Over and over again, people simply brought someone they knew.

And one of the first examples of this shows up very early in the Gospel of John.

John tells us about a man named Andrew.

Andrew had been listening to the teaching of John the Baptist, and at some point he becomes convinced that Jesus really is the Messiah.

Now imagine that moment for a second.

For generations the Jewish people had been waiting for the Messiah. They had grown up hearing the promises from the prophets — the hope that one day God would send someone who would restore his people and renew the world.

And Andrew becomes convinced that Jesus is that person.

The very first thing Andrew does after realizing this is not organize an event or launch a ministry. The first thing he does is go find his brother.

John tells us that Andrew goes to Peter and says something very simple.

He says, “We have found the Messiah.”

And then John adds a small but powerful detail. He says Andrew brought him to Jesus.

That’s it. Andrew simply brings Peter along.

When you look at church history, you see this same pattern again and again.

There’s a story about how one simple invitation created a ripple effect that reached millions of people.

In the 1800s there was a Sunday school teacher in Boston named Edward Kimball. He had a teenage boy in his class who worked in a shoe store, and Kimball felt concerned about his spiritual life.

One day Kimball walked into the shoe store, found the young man in the stockroom, and talked with him about following Christ.

That young man eventually put his faith in Jesus. His name was Dwight L. Moody.

Moody went on to become one of the most influential evangelists of his generation.

Through a chain of events that followed, Moody influenced other leaders who eventually influenced Billy Graham, whose ministry reached millions of people around the world.

And when you trace that story all the way back to the beginning, it didn’t start with a stadium.

It started with a Sunday school teacher walking into a shoe store because he cared about one young man.

One conversation. One invitation. And the ripple spread across generations.

And of course Peter ends up becoming one of the central leaders of the early church.

His preaching on the day of Pentecost helps launch the Christian movement in Jerusalem.

But if you trace Peter’s story back to the beginning, it starts with his brother saying, “You should come meet this person.”

The same thing happens just a few verses later in that same chapter.

Jesus calls a man named Philip to follow him, and Philip’s response is almost identical to Andrew’s.

He goes looking for a friend. His friend’s name is Nathanael.

And when Philip tells Nathanael that they’ve found the Messiah — Jesus of Nazareth — Nathanael reacts the way many thoughtful people do when they hear something surprising.

He’s skeptical. He says, “Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?”

Now there’s actually a bit of cultural humor hidden in that moment.

Nazareth was a tiny, unimpressive village. Archaeologists believe it may have had only a few hundred people living there in the first century. It wasn’t politically important. It wasn’t culturally significant. It was the kind of place most people in Israel would never expect a Messiah to come from.

So Nathanael’s reaction is basically saying, “Really? From there?”

It would be like someone saying today, “The person who’s going to change the world… is from Tracy.”

Okay… If you’re from Tracy — we love you at Blue Oaks. You’re welcome here. But you understand the reaction.

I love Philip’s response. Philip doesn’t try to win an argument. He doesn’t try to solve every objection.

He simply says, “Come and see.” Just come and see.

In other words, Philip understands something very important — sometimes the most powerful thing you can do for someone spiritually is simply help them encounter Jesus for themselves.

And you see this same pattern again in John chapter 4.

Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well outside a village called Sychar.

Their conversation is long and layered, crossing cultural boundaries that normally separated Jews and Samaritans in that time.

When the conversation ends, the woman goes back to her town and begins telling people about Jesus.

And John says something fascinating. He says many people believed in Jesus because of her testimony, and many more came to believe after they met Jesus themselves.

Think about the progression there.

One conversation.
One woman.
One village.

And suddenly an entire community is exploring who Jesus is.

When you step back and look at these stories together, a pattern begins to emerge.

Andrew brings Peter.
Philip brings Nathanael.
The Samaritan woman brings her town.

The message of Jesus spreads through relationships. It spreads through ordinary connections between people who already know each other.

And if you think about your own faith story for a moment, there’s a good chance the same thing is true for you.

For many people, the first step toward God wasn’t a perfectly crafted argument or a dramatic spiritual moment.

It was someone they trusted saying something simple like, “Come with me.”

Which is why I want to ask you to start thinking about something very specific today. Not in a vague way. But in a very personal way —

Who is your one?

Who is the one person in your life right now who might be open to taking a step toward God?

Maybe it’s someone you work with.
Maybe it’s a neighbor who lives down the street.
Maybe it’s a friend you’ve known for years.
Maybe it’s someone in your family.

Someone who might never walk into a church on their own, but who might be willing to come if you invited them.

You don’t have to convince them of everything. You don’t have to answer every question. Sometimes the most meaningful thing you can say is simply, “Come and see.”

It’s not complicated. It’s not strategic in the way we often think about strategy. It’s simply people who have encountered Jesus helping someone else encounter him as well.

I want you to think of something — what might happen if our entire church leaned into this together?

Not just a few people who feel especially outgoing. Not just pastors or ministry leaders. But ordinary people across the whole church simply paying attention to the relationships God has already placed in our lives.

Because if you think about it, every one of us already lives inside a network of relationships.

You have coworkers.
You have neighbors.
You have friends.
You have family members.

You have people you see regularly at school events, at the gym, at a coffee shop, or standing on the sidelines of a soccer field.

And most of the time those relationships feel very ordinary.

But when you read the Gospels, you begin to realize that those ordinary relationships are often exactly where God loves to work.

The early church didn’t spread because believers had access to large buildings or sophisticated communication tools.

They didn’t have podcasts.
They didn’t have livestreams.
They didn’t have social media.

What they had were relationships. Homes where people gathered. Conversations that happened around tables. Friendships that created space for people to encounter Jesus.

And through those ordinary connections, the message of Christ slowly moved from one person to another, from one household to another, from one city to another.

So… who’s your one?

Who is the one person in your life who might be open to exploring faith?

Because the next few weeks give us a unique opportunity as a church.

Next Sunday we’re beginning a series where we’re going to walk through the most important week in the story of Jesus.

We’re going to look at the moment when Jesus entered Jerusalem and the crowds were cheering, convinced that something extraordinary was about to happen.

We’re going to look at the moment when everything seemed to collapse at the Cross.

And then on Easter we’re going to look at the moment that changed the course of human history — the Resurrection.

For someone who’s curious about faith, that week of the story is incredibly powerful.

It answers some of the deepest questions people carry about God, and suffering, and hope, and forgiveness, and new life.

And every year around Easter something interesting happens.

People who normally wouldn’t think about church begin to feel a little more open.
Conversations about faith happen more naturally.
People become more willing to say yes when someone they trust invites them.

And that’s why these next few weeks matter so much.

Because the moment that begins someone’s spiritual journey is often much simpler than we imagine.

It might start with a conversation. It might start with someone saying, “Hey, our church is starting something next Sunday. Would you want to come with me?”

And imagine what could happen if hundreds of people in our church simply began praying for one person and inviting them to come along.

Not because we’re trying to grow a crowd. But because we believe people matter to God.

Because we believe heaven celebrates when people come home.

And because we believe God still works through ordinary people who are willing to open the door for someone else.

As we come to the end of our time today, I want to come back to that question we started with earlier.

Who’s your one?

Not a long list. Not ten people. Just one person.

One friend.
One coworker.
One neighbor.
One family member.

Someone in your life who might be open to taking a step toward God.

Because if you look back over the story of the church — from the Gospels all the way to today — again and again the turning point in someone’s spiritual journey begins with something very simple.

Someone invites them. Someone says, “Come and see.”

So as we head into this next week, I want to encourage you to do three simple things.

First, Pray for that person.

Ask God to begin working in their life. Ask God to prepare their heart. Ask God to open a moment where a conversation or an invitation feels natural.

Second, Invite them.

It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be a perfect explanation of everything you believe.

Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, “Hey, our church is starting a series next week leading into Easter. Would you want to come with me?”

And then third, Bring them.

Sit with them. Introduce them to people. Help them feel welcome.

You never know what God might do through that moment. Because sometimes a story that changes someone’s life begins with something as simple as an invitation.

Someone saying, “Come and see.”

And who knows? The person you invite this Easter might be the beginning of a story that reaches far beyond anything either of you can imagine.

Would you pray with me as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.