I asked Pastor Nelson at the outset if I might serve on the Outreach Committee and was honored earlier this year when the Nominating Committee asked me if I would serve as the chair. In discussing this wonderful opportunity with Pastor Nelson he asked me if I felt we needed any additional members for Outreach, and I responded that I thought about two hundred additional members would be about right. 

With all of the wonderful ministries that you are engaged in at Libertyville Covenant that number might be optimistic but the idea contains within it a heartfelt thought on my part that this is a good time for each of us to examine our personal commitment to evangelism and the outreach of our church. 

In that regard I do want to share with you my general impression that the 20th Century American church somewhere along the way has abdicated and conceded to our professional clergy and staff the task of outreach and evangelism. In the alternative it is my strong belief that the cause of evangelism was designed from the outset to be carried from one person to another and this is the time for each one of us to determine anew our dedication to that cause. 

So our Outreach Committee has been discussing ways in which we can encourage each other as a congregation to reinvolve ourselves in ongoing outreach activities and we are going to start this effort with a "Friends and Family Invitation Sunday" on April 30 of this year. 

The plan is simple; we are asking that each member of the church invite and bring with them to church on Sunday, April 30 their friends, neighbors and family members. We are going to do this because (1) we are proud of our church, its message, its people and its music and we are anxious to share these things with our friends and family; (2) we want to experience again the feel of our church when it is filled with the faithful and the sound of our voices raised in song and prayer; and (3) because we want to frame our minds into a recurring pattern of thinking each week about whom we might invite to join with us at worship.

As church membership and attendance have slowed and then declined over the last several decades a number of studies and reports have been prepared to analyze and correct this situation. One factor stands out from each such study ever done in this area and it is this: that most of the new members in any church are there because some one person invited them, shared the gospel message with them and made them to feel at home. My family has seen first-hand over the last year how wonderful this congregation is at doing just those things. Your warm-hearted Christian spirit is perfectly suited for the cause of outreach and evangelism. Let us then press on in this direction with joy and all deliberation remembering always the gospel message from the ninth chapter of Matthew that "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field." (Matthew 9: 37-38)