Dear BPCWAians, It is the end of the year. What are you looking forward to at this time of the year? Perhaps having your kids come for the Holiday Bible Program, or the Christmas Service and the lunch thereafter? That is good, but I hope that these programs at the end of the year will cause us to be excited about something as well – the opportunity to invite unbelieving friends to church! Let me ask you, when was the last time you invited someone to church? This, I believe is one area that we need to improve on in BPCWA.

Year-end opportunities. The year-end Holiday Bible Program (Mon 17- Wed 19 Dec, 8:45 am – 12 pm) is a wonderful chance to invite your unbelieving friend’s children to come. Today is the closing date, so do make a final push for it. We can accommodate for another week, after which we will not be able to accept any more enrolments. Parents may be more open because they wish to have their children occupied in some meaningful organized program with other children. Then there is of course the Christmas Gospel meeting which we organize every year (Friday 21 Dec, Carolling at 7:00 pm and program at 7:30 pm). Friends are generally more interested in coming to church at your invitation because it is after all Christmas. Christmas season is a time when some tend to be either curious and more open to see what goes on in a church at Christians. But if they cannot come for this, there is always Christmas Service itself (Tuesday 25 Dec, 10 am) that you can also invite them to. You do not need to feel awkward about trying to invite them, because people naturally expect that Christians would invite friends to church at Christmas.

Who you can invite. For the Holiday Bible Program, you can invite unbelieving friends’ children and also those who are not worshiping regularly at a church. This could be friends from your office, your neighbourhood, or relatives especially. There is great opportunity to speak with other parents when you send your kids to school. Or if you know the children, you can ask them to ask their parents. Students, you can invite your unbelieving friends or those who say they are Christians but are not attending church frequently. This year, we have opened up an additional class for the pre/teens, so this wider age group means that there is a bigger window of opportunity for you to invite friends too. For Christmas, why not call up friends whom you invited before who did come in previous years? Again relatives, office colleagues, and neighbours are those you can actively seek out to invite. If you know of some who have stopped coming to church, do get hold of them and extend a warm invitation to them to come again.

Flyers available. Invitation flyers for the Holiday Bible Program and the Christmas Gospel meeting/ Christmas service are available for you to use to invite people. Do avail yourself to them in the foyer. If they run out or if you need more, you can approach Yew Jinn for the Holiday Bible Program and Benjamin Kan for the Christmas flyers. The necessary details are on these flyers. Pray specifically for someone, call them up or look for them and give them a flyer.

Follow up on invitations. Do call them to follow up. For the Christmas Gospel meeting and Christmas service, do call them up a few days again to gently remind them not to forget to come. There will be carolling at 7:00 pm outside the church so do encourage them to come for it too.

Do not miss out on this excellent chance to invite others to come and hear the Gospel. We need to be evangelistic. Much goes on in organising these events to reach out to souls. We must make full use of them. We must be evangelistic. How can we say we love souls when we do not even bother to invite friends to the year end events? I hope that every adult worshipper will resolve to reach out and invite at least one person to come to church for these December events. Encourage your children to invite their friends too.

Yours in our Lord’s service

Pastor