Fri Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ your primary responsibility is not to go to church. Your primary responsibility is to come to church, and then leave the church, and go into your community, go into your neighborhood, go into your workplace as a disciple wanting to make disciples. Our job is to come to church and then go from the church and find people who don’t go to church and invite them to come to church with us. That is why we don’t come to church and stay, but we come to church and go. That is why most of us have grown up with this idea that if we just go to church we are done. If we just go to church we are finished. If we just go to church we’ve done what we need to do. You won’t find one time in the Bible where we are ever commanded to go to church. We are to come to church, so we can go from the church, and be the church, for people who don’t even attend church.

If you believe that, and buy into that, then that has great implications for what we do here on Sundays and the way we do it. Our job is not just to get people to come to church who don’t go to church. Our job is to provide them with such a fantastic experience when they come that they want to come back.

You have heard it said, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” I read something recently that just amazed me. When you first meet a person he or she makes a judgment about you in approximately 4 seconds and their judgment is finalized largely within 30 seconds of first meeting you. If that is true do you understand how important the first 4 seconds are when people drive onto this campus? How important the first 30 seconds are when people walk into our doors?

If you have ever been to Disney World you know that everything they do is with a purpose and it is with excellence. I have a quote on my desk at home from Walt Disney that I have given to our staff and it says this, “Do what you do so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” Listen. If Walt Disney believed his people ought to put that much effort into getting people to make a return visit to see Mickey Mouse, how much more should we make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that people want to come back and hear about Jesus?