Let me get this straight. Let's say a man loses his wife to cancer. He's not a Christian. He's lost, he knows he's lost, and he can't see any purpose in life. He's borderline suicidal.
He has some vague idea that the church down the street might give him some answers. He comes to the front door.
Do you:
1) Open the doors, hug him , tell him you love him, and ask him to come into the House of the Lord and calm his trouble mind in His presence - or
2) Tell him he must first be saved before he can come in. We'll be evangelising on 21st ave next Wednesday.
"Let me get this straight. Let's say a man loses his wife to cancer. He's not a Christian. He's lost, he knows he's lost, and he can't see any purpose in life. He's borderline suicidal.
He has some vague idea that the church down the street might give him some answers. He comes to the front door.
Do you:
1) Open the doors, hug him , tell him you love him, and ask him to come into the House of the Lord and calm his trouble mind in His presence - or
2) Tell him he must first be saved before he can come in. We'll be evangelising on 21st ave next Wednesday."
Sigh.
This isn't that hard.
Obviously you do everything you can to reach the lost and the hurting and your example is a great opportunity to give benevolence and ministry and all that. And obviously if the church was connected to their community locally (unlike megachurches), they would know about the guy down the street well before this point of crisis.
And I have never said that non-believers are not welcome to attend on Sunday. Of course they are. But the message should not be tapered or compromised to try to meet the needs of the "seeker." Nor should we engage in theological fiction (ie that non-believers actually do "worship") in order to fulfill our Biblical duties of ministering to the lost, the poor, the orphans and the widows (which must happen regardless of whether they are believers or not).
In terms of programming what happens on Sunday, let's say that your guy attends the worship service and it doesn't meet his needs because he is not yet a believer. I would think then that it would be entirely appropriate to announce at that service (and at every service) something like, "if today's message seemed a bit foreign to you, then perhaps you would like to attend our service at XYZ time and place" and that service would be full-throated evangelization and evangelization specifically for the lost. (The only caveat I would say is that every expository sermon on Scripture must contain the full gospel, as that is its meaning...so this example is still rather hypothetical).
This way of doing church is what Spurgeon did. If you want to look into it a bit more, read one of the many excellent biographies of him. He understood that evangelism properly speaking is for the lost, and discipleship is for the believers (so that they can in turn reach the lost). What he did programattically was quite ingenius and very taxing on him as he ended up preaching sometimes 20 times a week.
And of course Metropolitan Tabernacle routinely drew 10,000 on Sunday. Now THAT is a megachurch which seems to me to be along Biblical lines.