You're invited to The Crossing Church!

You're invited to The Crossing Church!  Did you receive an invite card?  If you haven't, then be ready!  It's coming up on National Back to Church Week End.  This is the week end where churches try to get people (those bringing in the money) back from Summer vacation and into church.  Churches will have special events to entice people to come, maybe some food, possibly a bouncy house for the kids.  The Crossing Church uses its members to do hard core marketing through inviting others to church using invitation cards.

These are a few cards from previous years and their latest attempt is no exception.  As indicated in this tweet below, they are giving the Crossing people cards with the expectation to hand out and invite.  

I asked my son, who was 11 years old at the time, how he felt about the invite cards.  "I felt I didn't have a choice.  In addition to handing out cards to invite to church, I also was told we had to invite to youth group.  They even threatened us saying that if more people weren't coming we couldn't have the youth group.  Even though I could tell something wasn't right with what I was doing, the way they placed this obligation before us, it made it my main goal.  I had the weight of the world on my shoulders passing out those cards.  I felt I wasn't doing it right because sometimes I left it on a teacher's desk or slipped it in a locker and was too nervous to say it face to face.  The Crossing made it clear that I was risking people going to hell if I didn't invite them to church.  No matter how hard you invited it was never enough.  There would be a new stack of cards the next week and you had to start it all again."

The premise is that it was your fault if your friends and family went to hell if you did not want to invite them to church.  You're told you should want to do this.  But what if you didn't want to invite anyone?  What if you're shy?  Introverted?  Or simply didn't feel this was the best way to reach people?  The shaming was horrific.  Examples were made of those who got large numbers of people to attend.  Staff members were given quotas which they had to meet.  Glares of disgust were given to those who didn't stand up in church to say they would pass out all the invite cards on their chair.  INVITE! INVITE! INVITE!

I have to ask you Crossing Church; how big is your God?  Your loving God would allow his children to burn in hell just because someone didn't pass out an invite card?  Gee...not much grace on tap here.

Bottom line: more people coming = more money coming in.  This isn't a community of believers; it's business.