What I Learned from the 52-Week Challenge

One year ago, I announced in the church bulletin and on my Facebook page that I was going to try an experiment in evangelism called, “the 52-week challenge.” Everyone who talked to me about this effort was very positive and encouraging. I want to thank everyone for their support. Quite simply, the 52-week challenge was an effort on my part to invite at least one person to come to church with me, in every single week of the year. It was hardly a monumental effort. In fact, it seemed to me like an absurdly simple task, with not much “challenge” to it, at all. Yet, it was, in the end a very rewarding experience, and I would like to heartily recommend that every Christian take up the 52-week challenge in the coming New Year.

As the year is drawing to a close, most people are asking me, “How many did you invite?” That’s actually pretty hard to say. I didn’t keep a running tally of how many souls I invited to come with me to church. Sometimes, I forgot to keep up with weekly postings on Facebook, but I can assure you that I did not fail to invite at least one person to come with me to church, in every week of 2013! In many cases, I invited the same people to come to church several times, during the year. In other cases, I invited complete strangers to come to church, whom I have not seen again. The results of this effort, however, were very surprising to me, and learned some valuable lessons along the way.

One of the first people that I invited to come to church, in the early days of the 52-week challenge was a woman I ended up baptizing a few weeks later. She still has her spiritual struggles, but she doing the best she can to fight the good fight of faith. I must say that I never expected a result like that so quickly!

Another interesting case was the week that I invited the men who worked on the roof of my house to come to church—and two of them actually showed up. They have not been back to church since then, but I never thought they would come in the first place. It just goes to show that it pays to ask.

I thought, when I began the challenge, that I might have to look high and low for people to invite, but I found that I didn’t have to. Opportunities to invite people to come to church were everywhere. Once I was actively looking for opportunities, it wasn’t hard to find one every week. Sometimes, I would get down to Friday, or Saturday, and would think, “I’ve gotta find somebody,” but then I would go to the store and find a friend, or an acquaintance, or even a total stranger and invite them to come to church.

I thought, when I began the challenge, that I might have to force myself to inject an invitation to church into my conversations with others, but as time went on, I found that it was a very natural thing to wrap a conversation with someone by saying, “Hey, why don’t you and your family come to church with me, this Sunday?” I found that it also helped, if I kept plenty of business cards or tracts on hand to give to them.

Evangelism is the most important activity in which a Christian can engage. The words of the Savior, in Matthew 28:19-20 should inspire us all, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” It is easy to take it for granted that someone else will do the work of the Lord and invite people to “come and see” what the church of Christ is all about. But, who is going to reach out to your friends, your family, your co-workers? There are people out there who’s only exposure to New Testament Christianity is you. Will any of them utter the chilling words of that old song, on the Day of Judgment: “You never mentioned Him to me?”

As for me, while I will not be reporting it on my Facebook page anymore, I do plan to continue to invite at least one soul to come to church with me, in every single week of next year, too. Once again, I would like to invite you to join me, in this effort. Think of the difference we could make, if all of us were committed to such a challenge! While most of the people we invite may never come to church, some of them will. While most of those who come may never come again, some will. While most of them might never be baptized, some will. What if we all persisted in hard work and each of us converted one souls to Christ in every year? There would be no limit to the results!