Why should such a thing take courage and wisdom? Let me give you my perspective.
We live in a culture where we are constantly inundated with advertising. Many people, understandably, mistake an invitation to a Christian worship gathering as a form of advertising for a spiritual product. In fact, Western Evangelicals have done a lot to cause this misunderstanding by directly engaging in forms of communication in the name of Jesus that are indistinguishable from the predominant folk-religion of our culture, which is completely oriented around the purchase and consumption of experiences. The result of living in a culture so full of advertising with many people leads to a default position of skepticism and cynicism concerning the advertised "promise." We have cliché adages to communicate the wisdom in a position of skepticism and cynicism towards the plastic promises of so many advertisers--modern proverbs if you will-- "I'll believe it when I see it." "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
For example, Geico "could save me 15% or more on car insurance with a 15 minute phone call," but in reality they expect you to have detailed records about every car accident you've had in the last 5 years, including the time of day and date, and ticket number for the accident, as well as the insurance claim number and the insurance company of the other drivers involved in the accident. No one is prepared with this level of detailed information when they call, the call takes longer than 20 minutes, and they can't really offer a rate reduction of 15%, if they can offer a reduction at all. Now, let me tell you what Jesus can do for you in the afterlife.
That's one challenge. I think that it's a challenge that can be overcome if the person being invited is convinced that the person inviting them is doing the inviting out of a sincere care for the invited, which simply takes time and sincere love. It can't be overcome if the person doing the inviting thinks that they are advertising a spiritual product or is attempting to sell the other person their brand of religion or spirituality.
Here's the bigger challenge.
Everyone has faith. Everyone. There isn't a human being that doesn't have deeply held beliefs that guide the direction of their lives and daily actions. It is impossible to be a person and not have deeply held basic assumptions that drive the course of our actions, upon which we trust and hold to be self-evident and unquestionable to the point of risking our lives on them. The fact that a lot of people aren't aware of what they trust to be the absolute truth doesn't change the plainly observable fact that they have a certain subjective perspective on reality in which they operate that they do not regularly question and which guides the direction of their lives. This is true for the Christian, the Buddhist, the Jain, the Jew, the Atheist, and the apathetic. A person who believes that all religions are just different paths to the same mountain top, or a person whose disposition towards questions of ultimate reality, meaning, and purpose in life is apathetic or disinterested has no less faith than the Mormon or the Muslim, the only difference is that their faith isn't as well thought out or articulated as someone who fervently ascribes to a more trial-tested tradition. The person who says, "There is no god but Allah" as well as the person who says "it doesn't matter what a person's religion is," or "no one can know whether there is a God or not"--they all live and act as if those beliefs are absolutely true. They put their trust in those basic assumptions about reality and act as if their reality is really real. And although that person can give reasons for why they believe or don't believe whatever they believe, no one agrees on how to evaluate these beliefs. Without a way to test the truth of these perspectives, out of necessity we let them drive our thoughts, actions, attitudes--the very content of our time on earth and our understanding of the certain end of that time. (In that way, some of us have a test.)
The subjective nature of these beliefs and how these beliefs are formed is a deeply personal and emotional thing. To varying degrees there may be layers of reason and intellect that defend these beliefs, but if anyone tells you that they have faith in God or don't have faith in God for purely intellectual reasons and that they are completely emotionally detached from the issue, they either 1. don't understand what is being discussed or 2. aren't being honest with themselves. (I guess a third possibility is that they're not human.) It is only natural for a person to be defensive when those beliefs are challenged. This defensiveness is not rational, as can be seen in the rhetoric on many a YouTube video about evolution--on both sides. If we're really asking these questions about ultimate reality, then we all have a dog in the fight.Now, in operating out of my faith, in acting as though the things I say I think are true on Sunday morning are actually true all the rest of the time, it is only natural to invite someone who doesn't gather for Christian worship to investigate the claims of the Gospel and into the experience of God found in giving worth to this God. How could I believe in these things, experience these things, and not want to share what I've found to be a very good thing? How cold must my heart be to not invite someone I care about? How low must that care be to not give an invitation to that experience of God?
But what of the other person's faith? Won't they be offended at the suggestion that their faith might need adjusting, that they might be wrong? Is it inherently disrespectful to call another person's faith into question even if the questioning happens only obliquely and implicitly through an invitation to share in the "fruits" of one's own faith?
I submit that the issue of where to place our faith--what we trust, what we consider real, what we bank on being true, what orients and directs the course of our lives, what we risk spending our time, effort, even our very lives on--that this issue is important enough to risk offending a friend, and to the degree that a person believes they have found real Truth, they must share that Truth. It would be wrong to hold Truth about that kind of thing to one's self. At the same time, it takes wisdom to know how to let people in on your truth in a way that they will be able to accept, since nobody likes to find out that they're wrong. (At least, whenever my faith needs adjusting it always hurts a little bit.)
But are we brave enough to face the conflict that might ensue with humility and love if the other person doesn't agree with us?
