Ever feel like something’s missing..?

Under the banner of ‘A Passion for Life’ (APFL), the churches in the North Cotswold Gospel Partnership will be holding a collective month of invitational Sundays over the course of four Sundays in September and October. Building towards this, we have a shorter 3-week series to prepare the church family to go out and invite their friends, family and neighbours.

A national survey conducted by ‘A Passion for Life’ revealed that our cultural context has shifted in recent years to a situation where many more people (20% in the survey) are ready and willing to respond positively to an invitation directly to church than in previous decades. They also discovered people indicating a preference for being invited to experience what we do routinely, rather than to a one-off event. The themes of our guest services are a reflection of the survey’s findings of the top four things that people felt were missing from their lives.

The emphasis within both sermon series for the church family will therefore be on taking responsibility for issuing the ‘invitation’ (and trusting God to use that invitation to draw people in), rather than on worrying unduly about the end-result in terms of attendance. In other words, for those who are ready to receive an invitation, we pray that God will help it land positively and that the people who respond will then meet us in an authentic expression of our worshipping life together, rather than in a more contrived bridging event.

The Sermons