Prepare the House

When you have guests coming over to your home, do you prepare? I know that's a dumb question. You don't invite people over and leave the garbage overflowing in the kitchen with a sink full of dishes.  Laundry isn't spilling out of the laundry room into the hallway.  An inch of dust doesn't line every surface in the den.  You prepare.

When your guests arrive, do you greet them warmly and welcome them into your home?  I know that's a dumb question too.  You don't leave them standing at the door waiting for several minutes before someone to comes to answer the door.  When you open the door, you don't say to them, "Oh. It's you."  Nor do you refuse to invite them into your home and make them feel welcome.

While guests are at your home, do you simply sit back and bark out orders for them to serve themselves or serve you? I don't need to say it again. That's crazy. You serve them because they are not some unwanted "visitor."  They are a treasured "guest." You invited them and expected them to come. You want to insure their time in your home communicates your love for them. 

We can think of Refuge Church in similar terms.  Here's the points I'm making:

1.  People most often come by invitation. At Refuge Church, if we want people to come, we must invite them.  "If you build it, they will come," typically only works in Field of Dreams.

2.  You prepare for what you expect. If you expect guests are coming to your house, you prepare for them. Are we inviting, praying, and expecting guests to come. Will the presence of guests catch us off guard as though we didn't expect them to come?

3. Guests are wanted while visitors are often considered intrusions. You'll constantly hear me call non-regular attendees by the name"guest." They are treasures we want and expect. We intend for them to return. They are not leeches on our time or resources or intrusions into our group. 

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4.  Guests are our responsibility. They didn't come to serve us.  We are there to serve them. They don't know where everything is located or how everything operates. Therefore, we are responsible to explain and show. We take them where they are going instead of point and send them off alone. We don't make them retell their information in every handoff.  Those we serve are just as important as the ones who serve.

5. We all can remove the roadblocks. Our mission is to display and declare the good news (gospel) of Jesus Christ to individuals near and far in order that they will encounter and be transformed by Jesus Christ.  Churches are often cluttered with numerous roadblocks to the gospel. On Sunday mornings, we want the only thing that offends to be the gospel.  It is offensive, but it's the only thing that should be offensive. In a real sense, all of us are either creating or removing roadblocks.

SEPTEMBER 8 is the official launch. How are you preparing? Invite, pray, expect, value, serve, and remove any and all roadblocks.