A few months ago, the pastor of a small church in the far northeast emailed me. He had read something I had written, found it helpful, and after talking about the issue, he said, “What would be involved in getting you up here to preach for a weekend?”

He was not inviting me, please notice.  He was trying to see if inviting me was something he could do and make work.

I replied something to the effect that in most cases, a host pastor will want to provide air fare, put the guest up in a hotel, and pay him some type of honorarium.  If the church is small, this means the pastor must lead his people to anticipate such an event and set money aside for it. If the guest drives, the government allows ministers to be reimbursed at something like 56 cents per mile or more.  For a small church, I pointed out, going to such expense to bring in a preacher only for a Saturday and Sunday might be more than it could handle.

Some weeks later, he replied that he had given it much prayer and thought and agreed that he should look for someone closer to home.

This week, it happened again. This time, the pastor of a church perhaps 800 miles away told me his church runs 15 in attendance. Again, he asked, “What would be involved in inviting you to do a revival in my church?”

I ran that one by my family of Facebook friends. The answers–it will not surprise you–were all over the place.  “Just invite you,” a surprising number of my “friends” said, “and you will go anywhere at anytime to preach the gospel.”

Oh? I will?

I imagine we have all heard full-time vocational evangelists say that once they accepted God’s call into that field they agreed to accept any invitation, large or small. On the surface, that sounds noble, and apparently a lot of my “FB friends” buy into that philosophy.

I don’t.

Why should I let someone else dictate to me what God wants me to do? Don’t I have a say in this? Don’t I have both the right and the obligation to consult the Lord as to whether accepting that invitation is His will or not?  Or, am I duty-bound to go wherever I’m invited?

I’ve turned down several meetings in the last six months.

–One that came in November was inviting me to speak at a large church in England, all expenses paid.  I took two days to pray over it, then declined with appreciation.  Why? The simplest answer is I did not sense a leading from the Holy Spirit to do it.

–Some I turn down simply because something else was scheduled at the time they requested.

–And more than one were from stateside churches where the pastors seemed somewhat tentative about the invitation, and as I prayed, I received no leadership from the Lord to accept.

It’s important to state here that the invited guest does not need to give a reason to the inviting pastor.  It’s sufficient to say, “As I pray, I sense no indication from the Lord in this direction. I sincerely thank you for the invitation.”

If I chose to give the inviting pastor “more information than he needed,” I might tell him some of the following: my wife has health issues which more and more make it necessary for me to stay close and not be gone for as much as a week at a time, I am retired and living on a fixed income without an outside source of finances (which means a meeting or two where I have to absorb most of the expenses could hurt me quickly), that I have extended family who need my financial support, and that being in my mid-70s now, I take longer to recuperate from some ministry weeks than previously. But, the inviting pastor does not need to know all this. It is enough to simply thank him and tell him I need to decline for the time being.

When I was the pastor and inviting speakers to my church, I was certainly turned down by some good people. Warren Wiersbe was the one that hurt the most. This distinguished pastor/preacher/author will bless any congregation and inspire any host pastor.  But, his schedule was becoming burdensome, he said, and felt he needed to guard his time to the best advantage. I understood that.

Billy Graham turned me down, if you can believe that! (smiley-face goes here) We were preparing to dedicate the new sanctuary of Charlotte’s First Baptist Church where his sister and her family were members and his associate evangelist Dr. Grady Wilson belonged.  In a full-page handwritten letter, Dr. Graham explained to me why he would be unable to attend. (Sure wish I could find that letter!) Brother Grady assured me, “Don’t worry about it, pastor. We’ll get him!” with a big smile. But then, the Lord had other plans and called Dr. Wilson home to glory in November before we dedicated the worship center the next February. We did, however, get Dr. Graham and Bev Shea–and the entire Graham team–for the funeral in our sanctuary, a high time of remembering and praise.

I’ll let you in on a secret: I find myself admiring people who know how to tell me ‘no.’  It’s an art I never perfected and over a long ministry sometimes found myself going places I probably should have declined in order to stay at home with my family and tend to my own flock.

So, pastor, when you are invited to travel to another church to preach, my suggestion is that you cordially thank the inviting pastor, then ask for a day or two to seek the Lord on the matter, then obey Him.

We never go wrong obeying the One who called us to this work in the first place.