“Thanks, I’ll think about it.”

“It’s just not my thing.”

“I can’t that night, I’m busy. Thanks though.”


Do those responses look familiar? After taking the leap dozens of times in my life to personally invite people to participate in something that I hope will introduce them to Jesus, no matter which way I sliced it, the answer I got back was anything but an unequivocal yes. In my experience these days, I’ve found it hard to get a hard “no, I’m not interested in ‘your God.”. A slippery non-answer was more likely. 

The reality is, no matter how convincing, how intentional, how timely, how well-spoken my invitation was to bring someone to the Discovery faith study, or the Alpha course, to Mass, or to a pizza dinner, rejection was always an outcome at least some of the time. The bright side? Even if they say no this time, it isn’t over until Jesus says so. It’s a good thing that a life lived on mission doesn’t end with the first invitation. It’s about the long game. 

So what’s the ideal missionary disciple’s response to rejection?

I’d like to offer some thoughts to help us better accompany those who say no to our invitation.


Gut check time.

When they said no, they weren’t rejecting you. As Jesus says, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16). The pressure is off. It’s not all on you or me. Our invitations need to come from a place of joy and great expectation, and not dread or fear. So the more we realize it’s Jesus who desires people to show up more than us, the more we can invite, be accepted, and rejected in freedom. 


Find out why.

I get it. My relationship with Jesus is one of the most important and vulnerable things to my life, and the prospect of inviting someone to potentially engage with or reject my faith feels like a rejection of me. That’s why in all the times I’ve been rejected, I simply just left it and never asked again. 

But one thing I’ve learned that can actually be quite fruitful to both my growth as a missionary disciple and the growth of my relationships is to ask one simple question when people say no to my invitation.

“Why?”

So many times I’ve always assumed that they just weren’t interested. But there could be a thousand different reasons why. They could be genuinely busy that night, and would be otherwise interested. They could be going through something difficult or traumatic. They could have some serious misgivings about the Church that they’ve never shared with me, but perhaps now they’d be willing to. The key here is that we’ll never know unless we ask. Asking opens up a whole new gateway to fruitful conversations and mutual understanding. And sure, I’ve been in situations where they weren’t comfortable sharing anyway, but I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t asked. When I ask this question, I am able to understand where my friend is in terms of their trust level with the idea of God and the Church. When I understand that, I may not invite them to the same thing next time - I might consider something that meets them where they are more appropriately.

Imagine your relationship as a “bank account” and make more “deposits” than “withdrawals”. 

I once heard the analogy that a relationship is like a bank account. Every positive action that builds relational trust can be perceived by my friend as a “deposit”. Every ask or invitation I make of my friends can be perceived as a “withdrawal”. When it comes to making invitations, overall, you want to be in the black, not red. This means you’re making more deposits than withdrawals. After you’ve made the “withdrawal” of inviting someone and getting rejected, put a pause on any more invitations for a while until you’ve made some “deposits”.

Put simply, I shouldn’t be making an invitation at every possible opportunity with my friends. Otherwise, the trust level is bankrupt. My friends will quickly see that all I care about is bringing them to the next church event. When was the last time that I showed up or reached out purely just to check on how they were doing? When was the last time that I demonstrated in action that I had their best interest in mind, with no ulterior motives? This is ultimately the challenge of having integrity, actually making invitations because I love people and not just because I want them at Church. This always challenges me to think about my motivations. 

I’ve found that if I put the needs and interests of my friend first, and make more deposits in the relational trust “bank account” than I do withdrawals, I find that my friends are willing to say yes even to the weirdest, churchy things. They’ve seen that I show up to their charity fundraiser, or to their birthday party, or to their kid’s soccer game. They’ve seen that I’ve genuinely had a good time and that I genuinely enjoy their friendship. I’ve taken the time to be a part of their lives, and now that I’ve invited them to be a part of mine, they’re willing to reciprocate.

A word of caution - words like “bank account” and “deposits” can verge into transactional territory. All metaphors have their limits. Nobody is keeping score. At the end of the day, give more than you take, and your trust level will likely grow; grow your relationship in trust and they’re more likely to say yes next time. 


Try again.

The most fruitful missionary disciples in my experience haven’t been the most winsome, convincing salespeople. If anything, they were the most persistent, resilient, and compassionate. Just because they say no now, doesn’t mean they will always say no. We will need to genuinely listen. We will need to build trust and invest in the relationship in a genuine way. And we will need to try again.

My wife Marion went to SFU for 5 years. She’s a faithful Catholic. She went to church regularly and wasn’t by any means far from God. Every semester at SFU, a CCO missionary named Melissa invited her to take the Discovery faith study. She said no. The second semester, and every semester thereafter, Melissa made sure to personally and joyfully invite her to take Discovery, making no assumptions, even if she had said no before. The answer was still the same.

 Melissa made sure to invest in her and keep up a solid connection through the community. In her tenth and final semester, Marion finally said yes to Discovery, in addition to going to a major conference called Rise Up, where we eventually met. Persistence and resilience pays off in the end (And got me a wife).

After getting rejected, it can be so easy to get discouraged and revert back to the easy passive ways of invitation via email list, Facebook, or church announcements. Don’t give in! The Church needs us to be humbly and personally inviting our loved ones and acquaintances to know Jesus, one person at a time. When we take the leap of faith to invite people, even if we get rejected, we’re slowly cultivating an invitational culture. For every soul in our city, in the name of Jesus, I pray that the no’s that we get to our invitations eventually become yes’s, because it isn’t over until He says so.