| A Christmas invitation to remember I hope your Christmas was merry and bright. Mine was. Let me tell you all about it. Well, okay, part of it. One of the highlights was Christmas Eve night. It was simply gorgeous. We were in Saginaw, Mich., visiting my sister and her family, and just as the pastor began his sermon it began to snow. Big, fluffy, fat flakes fell lazily from the sky, just the kind that Hollywood would make if it could duplicate Mother Nature. When the service ended, it was still snowing. It was one of the most pastoral scenes you could have ever asked for, even if it did make for icy roads. I mention all this because there was only one reason we were together for worship Christmas Eve night. Nephews. Jacob and Dylan are my sisters two pre-teen boys. Together, they add up to about 200 pounds of hockey playing, floor wrestling, video game addicted, non-stop energy. Jacob can tell you the starting lineup for the Detroit Red Wings in his sleep. Dylan has a room that is mostly a shrine to the University of Michigan football team. Together they terrorize their dog, Spike, the pint-sized Jack Russell terrier that my sister mistakenly thinks is the cutest dog in the universe. (We all know that our dog holds this title.) In other words, typical boys. Who did a very untypical thing with their Uncle Erik. Separately, they each invited my family and me to church. You read that right. Each one picked up the phone, on two different days, to make sure to invite me, Sheila, Zach and Sarah to church with them Christmas Eve. If they had not done this, we would have all missed the pastoral scene that unfolded during and after worship. If they had not done this, we would have missed the choir and congregation doing lessons and carols telling the Christmas story. If they hadnt done that, we would have missed one of the strangest worship scenes Ive ever witnessed. Communion that night was done using pieces of bread and tiny, individual communion cups. I noticed before I went up to take communion, that there were no holes in the pews in which to place the empty cups. Before I could ponder that conundrum any further, I noticed that the first people taking communion were placing the empty communion cups in the baptismal font. Really. I guess if baptism can wash away your sins, it can do wonders on communion shot glasses. Now I grant you that Jacob and Dylan probably invited me to church so that they could sit next to their favorite cousin, my son Zach. In fact, they jostled for position to sit next to him through most of the service, which made me thankful that we were sitting in the back row. Bishop May, for years, has been saying with clarity that evangelism is his number one priority for the Baltimore-Washington Conference. He and others stand amazed at any local United Methodist Church that hasnt taken in even one new member through profession of faith in a calendar year. In fact, as reported in this newspaper Nov. 5, statistics from the Baltimore-Washington Conference show that 24 percent 164 churches did not bring in any new members on profession of faith in 2002. You have to wonder why that is. The 2002 statistics also show that on any given Sunday, there are more than 80,000 people worshipping in United Methodist churches in this conference. Heres a modest proposal: How bout one out of 10 of those people (a tithe) invites someone to church this year? One out of 10. That would be 8,000 people inviting, and at least that many coming. Now (stay with me), lets say one-tenth of those at-least 8,000 join a church. Thats 800 people. Thats a lot. Saleem Guahar, the keynote speaker at last Novembers evangelism conference, challenged his audience and, through a Dec. 17 story in this newspaper, you, to take evangelism into your own hands. How? Invite someone to church. The reason inviting people to church is so important, Guahar said, is because between 75 and 80 percent of people who join a church will do so because somebody invited them. Dont wait for someone else to do it, he said; dont just talk about doing evangelism. Just do it. And so now the gauntlet has been thrown down. My nephews my NEPHEWS invited me to church. And we went and it was wonderful and well go again. I mean, if my nephews can pick up the phone and invite someone to church, why cant I? Why cant you? | 
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