"Be My Guest" Sunday at Chain of Lakes Church

This Sunday, December 5 is a very big day at Chain of Lakes Church. We are celebrating “Be My Guest” Sunday. Everyone at Chain of Lakes Church is encouraged to bring one guest to worship. Preferably the guest is not connected to a church and lives in our geographical area. We worship at 10:30 a.m. at the Lino Lakes Senior Center, 1189 Main Street.

The idea for “Be My Guest” Sunday came from Rev. James York, pastor of North Presbyterian Church. James and I served together on the Property Task Force for Chain of Lakes. At one meeting he talked about doing “Be My Guest” Sunday at his congregation. As he talked about all that they did—and it was quite a list—I was waiting for him to say that they had a low number of visitors attend worship. I almost fell off my chair when he said that they received 47 visitors to worship on that day.

A very effective way to have a congregation grow in numbers is for people in the church to be inspired to invite their friends and family to worship. At Community Presbyterian Church in Plainview we often had “Invite a Friend” Sundays. I like the language of “Be My Guest” better.

We are going out of our way to plan a tight and powerful worship experience on “Be My Guest” Sunday. We are celebrating one year of worship at Chain of Lakes as our first worship service was on the first Sunday of 2009; I am starting a sermon series called “Stepping Off the Treadmill;” we are celebrating the baptism of Manka & Bih Tse; Kellie Burriss will share special music; and we will enjoy a power point presentation of our year together.

I wish worship was starting today, so I could enjoy it!

We have done quite a lot among people at Chain of Lakes to encourage everyone to invite guests to worship. Two weeks ago in worship I shared a simple four-step process for extending an invitation; we also watched a skit about sharing a typical invitation. Yesterday in worship everyone was encouraged to write down names of people on an index card of people whom they will invite to “Be My Guest” Sunday. Everyone put those index cards on a bulletin board. As a community we gathered by the bulletin board to pray over the names of the people. Many people at Chain of Lakes have been carrying a wooden coin for the past three weeks that encourages us to “get a round” to inviting people. This week I started an E-mail list among people at Chain of Lakes asking everyone to share what they are doing to invite people.

If you are not connected to a church and live in the north metro, consider joining us for worship this Sunday. If you are connected to a church, please take some time this week to pray for us as we celebrate "Be My Guest" Sunday.