Dear Church Friend in Mobile, Alabama,

Have you ever invited the guy you work with or the lady at that office or the couple in your neighborhood to attend your church but they just haven’t?

Maybe you have great Bible conversations with someone who doesn’t attend church anywhere. Maybe you’ve heard the same excuses as I have for not attending – burned-out, hypocrites, politics, clicks, personality conflicts, boring, bla bla bla..

However, there really are some legitimate reasons why the person you may be trying to get to your church has not gone. There are some bonafide reasons that someone may have for not going to church with you.

Some people experience anxiety when they are in a crowd or a gathering of people. The anxiety may be sever enough to cause their pulse to race, maybe even to perspire, or to become extremely jittery just sitting in the pews. Sometimes the thought of dealing with it in public makes it easier to just stay home.

Some people won’t attend church because of physical problems that make it difficult to walk a great distance. You may not realize it, but it is not uncommon for elderly people to count and know the exact steps required of them to go from their parking space to their pew at the church they attend. Walking with arthritis or any type of bone disease is not easy and avoiding any activity that requires excessive walking makes it easy for such sufferers to stay home.

Some people who have vision problems or blindness will limit their attendance at church because of the distance or obstacles between parking and navigating the sanctuary. Sometimes the stress of making that adventure conjures up thoughts enough to keep them at home.

There are actually a lot of reasons why people may not want to attend a church service, although they have a relationship with the Lord and would love to fellowship with believers.

So, I want to ask you to remember us at CrossHope Chapel next time you feel like you’ve exhausted every invitation possible to your friend at work, your neighbor, or your family member who just won’t go to church with you on Sunday morning.

At CrossHope Chapel we follow a model of doing church that has been a blessing in reconnecting dis-affiliated people in fellowship despite anxiety, physical challenges, and even burn-out. We offer a smaller location that eliminates the distance and various obstacles for the aging, vision impaired, or those with joint inflammation.

We use round tables so we can place our Bible’s and our coffee before us, and that also eliminates trying to navigate the aisles for pews or rows of chairs. We do not play loud music or have a band, but have a gifted keyboardist to lead us in hymns, praise choruses, and worship songs. Our meeting space and music is hearing aid friendly.

At CrossHope Chapel, however, we are not all about making things easy and comfortable for those who can’t do big congregations and buildings. We are all about simply teaching the Bible simply.

We have a fellowship that is more like a family get-together than a corporate event and a conversational teaching series that takes us through a book of the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse, and we all enjoy interacting with our questions and comments, too.

You can always learn more about CrossHope Chapel at our website www.crosshopechapel.org but please think of us when you realize the person you are trying to reach needs a more relaxed community to connect with and to thrive with in their growing relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

If I can answer any questions, please ask.