About a month ago we introduced our church to something we're calling the Best Day Challenge! In short, we built an Intentional outreach all around what we believe to be the Best Day in history... the day Jesus' rose from the dead... and Challenged every person in our church to pray for, engage and invite 2 people to attend a dinner the week before Easter.
These dinners are hosted by each of our Intentional Communities and were paid for by the generosity of one of our partner churches. There are 2 goals. The first is to show love to our friends, family, neighbors and co-workers in an extravagant and tangible way. How often does a church offer to buy dinner at a delicious restaurant for 40 people a night? That leads to the second goal. We want our friends, neighbors, family and co-workers who have been invited to ask us why? Why is your church doing this? What's the catch?
And that's when we have the opportunity to share with them. God has loved us so extravagantly, by sending his son Jesus to die for us, that our church tries to come up with any creative way possible to love the people around us in an extravagant way. Through these conversations and explanations, our prayer is that our church would have countless opportunities to share the gospel. We want to specifically share with those we invite how we came to know Jesus and that what Jesus did for us (the church) he also did for them (his creation).
It will never flow completely seamlessly and smoothly. Gospel conversations are often messy and awkward. But the point of the Best Day Challenge and specifically our Intentional Community Dinners is to provide opportunities for the people of our church to engage, and love, and share the gospel with the people they are around day in and day out.
But the Best Day Challenge doesn't end there. Through the dinners we are praying that folks in our church will find out that their friends, neighbors, co-workers and family are intrigued by this extravagant expression of love. We are praying that our church will be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and when he leads, that we would invite some our loved ones to our Easter gathering this coming Sunday where we will be celebrating and talking about the Best Day in History... the day Jesus rose from the dead! We are strategically and prayerfully launching a new 6 week connection group the week after Easter for people to get a short-term taste of community. We have asked all of our existing Intentional Communities to throw parties the week after Easter so that we can have easy invites for our 2 people to be around and have fun with the people of God.
Most ultimately... we are praying and challenging our church to seek opportunities, sometime over the next 2 weeks, to share their story and Jesus' story with their 2 loved ones and then invite them to start following Jesus too! We are praying, we are crying out to God, that as a result of the Best Day Challenge we would see more people baptized on April 19th (our next baptism gathering) than we ever have before and most importantly, that we would see disciples made and lives changed by the hope of the gospel!
Will you commit to pray Monday 3/30, Tuesday 3/31, Wednesday 4/1 (2 dinners) and Thursday 4/2 as dinners are being hosted each evening. Please pray for the Holy Spirit to do something only the Holy Spirit can do.
Thank you!
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