All are Welcome

All are Welcome

Familiar words? They should be if only because they are on more church publicity boards than any other phrase. “All are welcome” has such a homely feel to it yet, I believe, it hides one of the most pernicious of delusions and lies that the enemy has ever managed to foist upon the church of God.

OK – let me ask you a question. When was the last time you had an altar call in your church? This week? Wonderful. A month ago? Well OK – at least you did one – or was that a one off? How many of you can say that “We almost never have altar calls at our church.” Well that explains the “All are welcome” on your publicity board then.

Allow me to picture for you an average church council meeting. The vicar or priest or pastor is sitting at the head of the table as chairman of the meeting. To his right is the treasurer and to his left is the secretary. Five or six other worthy souls are also sitting round the table with looks of varying interest and anticipation and, at the other end of the table sits Jesus Himself. He likes to sit in on these meetings as He is quite interested in what His Bride is doing for His Kingdom. The chairman taps his glass to get attention and the meeting proceeds. Various issues are dealt with from funds and the planned Sunday School outing to church cleaning and the voluntary register of coffee servers each Sunday after morning service. Jesus looks bored. Finally, the any other business agenda item comes up and Frank, the young almost new blood on the council starts up – “What about doing an outreach of some kind to attract new people to the church?” He has been waiting a long time to raise this point and Jesus, too, perks up and thinks to Himself, “Hey this is better – they are at last talking about My Kingdom work.” The chairman clears his throat and is clearly almost embarrassed by the question. “Frank”, he starts, “Frank. We had an outreach a few months ago when we invited folk to join us at our summer barbeque. Only three people turned up. Outreach around here just doesn’t seem to work.” Frank looks dismayed – Jesus looks somewhat abashed – “THAT was an outreach?” The chairman, in full flight now, goes on, “That was when we decided to invite everyone to the church. We discussed various ways of inviting them and finally decided that, as they don’t listen very much, we should have a permanent invitation displayed for all the world to see. That is when we had “ALL are Welcome” painted on our publicity board. Jesus got up and left. Frank subsided and gave up.

There was another invitation once. A king or rich man invited many people to a wedding feast but, like today, a lot of those invited didn’t bother to come. They made excuses or they just ignored the invitation. The king was not a little put out by this – after all he was their king and his people simply snubbed him. So he sent his servants out from the palace to go find anyone they could find and not just to invite them but to bring them in to the feast so that all the seats were taken. You find the story in Luke 14:15-24

Perhaps this is why your church hasn’t had an altar call lately – there is just no need and no point having one as no-one will come. Why is that I wonder? Is it perhaps that you have no outreach program; you have no real desire to actually reach the lost. Maybe it’s someone else’s job to do that and all you are there to do is to be a members only club. Maybe you don’t want to risk getting almost radical folk into your peaceful and steady environment. After all, radicals will only cause problems and upset folk – radicals will annoy our neighbours and the local authorities may try to shut us down. Can’t have old Mrs Bloggett in pew 12 upset by someone taking her regular seat – she’s had that seat for over 30 years. Every week, same time, same place. Real old stalwart. No no – can’t have radicals they may upset the really good givers and tithers. That could ruin our finances.

Only those who are guilty will be upset by all of this. I hope some of the rest of you will see to it that the “All are Welcome” notice is removed. After all it probably saves you having to do anything to get people into the kings banquet.

Doesn’t it?