Preschool Open House

Thursday night was Open House at my son's preschool. I know what you're thinking: "Open house!? At a preschool!?"

Yes, Open House.

At a preschool.

But it wasn’t all bad - there were free cookies and powdered donuts and lemonade!

Cassie and I loved it, even though it was pretty much an art gallery dedicated to the work of 5 year olds! It gave us a little peek into what our son has been doing all year.

In a way, that Thursday night Open House was a bit like this week's sermon text, where a woman invites others to peek behind the curtain to see the whole new reality of God’s Kingdom. She has what the authors of the Contagious Christian curriculum call The Invitational Style. She invites those she already knows to meet Jesus.

This is something we can all do! And I have a sneaking suspicion there are those around us who are eager to find out what our faith is all about.

If your life is anything like mine, it’s segregated, with different friends from different areas of life that you interact with in different activities. You have your friends at work, your friends in your neighborhood, your friends with whom you play Bridge, and your friends at church. And rarely do the members of these groups ever meet!

What if, instead, we were inspired by this woman in John 4. As we will read,

Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony... So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, ‘We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.’

This woman could have easily kept her newfound religious experience a secret, segregated from the rest of her life. Instead, she invited others to this Jesus. May we do the same, inviting neighbors, coworkers, friends, and relatives to see what their life could be like through interacting with our small group, our Bible Study, our church!

Who knows if they might believe in him because of our testimony and invitation? That would be even better than free cookies and donuts and lemonade!

Pastor Curtis