A Church Paid My Kid’s Best Friend to Invite Him to Church

Desperate times…

Last weekend, my youngest son invited his best friend to come over and play. They had a great time. They played video games, built some Lego creations, and somehow made enough slamming and banging noises throughout the house to make me think we invited his entire first-grade class over.

But when they took a break for lunch, my wife overheard an interesting conversation.

My family lives in a small rural-suburban town in Western NY, outside of Rochester, that neither of us grew up in. In this town, you’ll find a decent mix of residence types, from farms to horse stables, to apartment complexes, to quiet suburban tracts. One thing is for certain though — there are a lot of churches here. If this town were a city, it would be in the top 10 list of religious institutions per capita. And all of them here, to my knowledge, are Christian.

So it probably goes without saying that in this community, you’re assumed Christian, much like in the South, where the first question new acquaintances ask you is, “What church do you attend?”