March Outreach Thought
Every month we are bringing you concrete tips and ideas around a particular outreach theme.
Outreach Thought: Dealing with our busy schedules
One of the main obstacles that keeps many of us from building new relationships, or investing in the ones we have, is that our schedules don’t permit it. They’re full—almost full as can be—with things that are important, valuable, and enriching; then we put friends and relationships into the leftover space, like water filtering into a bucket full of rocks.
But time with friends—connecting with old ones and making new ones—is valuable and enriching too; and it’s an important “task” of a Jesus follower, as we seek to build relationships that allow us to have faith conversations. So what if you inverted that a little bit, and made “friend time” one of those rocks—a thing IN the schedule instead of an extra if the schedule permits? What if, instead of saying “I can’t accept your invitation because I have to do this or that thing,” you were to say “I can’t do this or that thing because I want to allow time to accept an invitation that may come?”
You don’t even have to know exactly what that invitation will be, or have anything specific in mind; just leave some spaces in the schedule—and schedule them if you need to, with a name like “relationship time”—so you’re able to say yes when an invitation comes, or to initiate a connection when that time arrives.