Why Visit for Christ?

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             We must never forget that “a going church is a growing church, and a growing church is a going church.” No church is converting people by accident or attracting people by merely sending printed invitations. The most powerful and interesting preacher in the world is insufficient to draw crowds to hear the Gospel by himself. There must be the added element of the personal invitation, the personal visit, if a great crowd is to be gathered. A church will grow or fail to grow in direct ratio to the number of visits its members make or fail to make for Christ week by week. Jesus knew this very practical reason for visiting and this is why the New Testament so often teaches us to visit. Besides this practical result, consider the following reason             why Christians should visit for Christ:

1. Jesus commands it: “Go out into the highways and hedges, and constrain them to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14: 23). Jesus doesn’t want an empty or even a half-filled house. He recognized that only if we “beat the bushes” will we fill His house.
2. To win the lost: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned.” (Mark 16:15–16). We will never do this by merely announcing that it is available for all who are interested. We have a mandate to go out and arouse interest in the Gospel by teaching and preaching it.
3. To discover and meet needs: “Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. (Jam. 1:27). “Visit” here means more than just a social call. It literally means to inspect, to look upon, to care for, as well as to go and see. Here we are reminded to visit widows and orphans with an eye to discerning and meeting their needs.
4. To restore the weak: “Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness…” (Gal. 6:1). There are many brothers and sisters who have forgotten their Master and have been apprehended by sin again. Christian love dictates that we do our best to visit them and restore them, if possible.

[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in the November 18, 1976, edition of Granbury Gospel, weekly bulletin of the Church of Christ, Granbury, Texas, of which I was editor.]

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