Friendship Sunday

This weekend we're celebrating our friendships at MCC Austin. On Saturday night, you can invite your friends to enjoy live music by our special guest, world class guitarist Vicki Genfan. On Sunday, we'll share music that lifts up friendships, give thanks for our friends, and explore what the Gospels might teach us about friendship. I encourage you to bring one or two or even five or six of your good friends with you!

Many of us find it difficult to invite friends or acquaintances to church. With our friends, we may know that they already attend another church, and so we might hesitate to invite them to our church because it may seem like illegal recruiting. Or perhaps we know that our friends embrace a spirituality that is not necessarily in full lock-step with what they will find at our progressive Christian church. With acquaintances, we sometimes feel that we don't know people well enough to know what they might like. I think there can also be a fear that if we invite someone to church, they might misconstrue our meaning, message, or motivation. We're used to wearing our Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts with PRIDE--especially after last week--but truly, who wants to be a P for proselytizer?

For this week, I ask you to come at this invitation thing from a different angle. This week I ask you to think about what being a part of MCC Austin means to you. Are you inspired by worship? Do you love the music? Do you feel at home here, welcomed by your faith family? Do you like the values your children are learning here? Do you find that MCC Austin offers you sacred space in which you can encounter the Holy? When you leave here, are you inspired by the Spirit to share peace, hope, love, joy, and compassion with others?

If any of these things are true for you, if MCC Austin is a gift to you, then give it away! We so often will tell a friend about a new product we like, recommend a doctor or therapist, or tell them they must see a certain movie or read our latest favorite book. Well, it can be just that simple and unencumbered to invite people to church.

This week, I hope we fill the sanctuary at all three services with our friends. The friends we bring this week may never return or they may become members themselves, but don't worry about that. Just think about how glorious it will be to worship the God you love, surrounded by a community you love, with your best friends thrown in for good measure.

Blessings,