A couple of weeks after I came to this church, one of our visitors sent me an email asking how to join our church as a member. Then I got to see that there was no formal invitation for our visitors to join our church membership. So the first thing I did was to put a paragraph in our bulletin, asking the visitors to call either the office or myself. However, how many visitors will do that?
Christianity is an invitation to explore and dedicate your life to follow Christ. It starts with a calling from our Lord. This is where the Holy Spirit leads us to come. However, it is the role of our church to create an invitation to reach out to those who are discerning.
This is why we are excited to introduce our newcomer class: “Explore: Fellowship, Church and God’s Plan.” Explore is a two‐week session, where we invite both newcomers and existing members to come and learn about each other, our church, and God’s plan. We will use this time to introduce one another and our Church. We will have a time to share the vision of this church, and how we are participating in God’s mission through our church ministries and ministries throughout our denomination. After we present the big picture, we will share various ways to join our congregation, as we walk this journey together.
This course will be offered on a regular basis. We will meet on the first and second Sunday of every odd numbered month. With this schedule, we will be able to offer this course to our newcomers on a bi‐ monthly schedule. I pray that we will reach the point of having so many visitors that we will need to offer this course every month. Explore will be offered during our regular Sunday School Bible class meeting time, 9:30am – 10:30am.
Our goal is to have every member in our church go through this course. For the existing members, it will be a refresher. If you are already in a Sunday Bible Class, we will ask your leader to offer this course for your class. If you are an existing member and do not have a Sunday Bible class, we encourage you to join us in this course. And by May of 2016, we hope that the majority of our members will have gone through this course, so we will be able to re‐dedicate our membership to our Lord.
Please continue to pray for us, as we start this new journey to Explore. Please pray for the team, the Cornerstone Class, who is preparing for this new class. Please pray for all newcomers, who will be invited to this class. And please pray for the existing members who will join this journey of invitation.
May God renew our faith as we become more intentional, as we explore.
In Christ, Rev. Seungsoo Jun