Praying for more church invitations

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Church Invitations

In this series on getting more church invitations and visitor traffic, I’m looking at various ways to increase the number of personal invitations to church that your church members give.

The statistics show that a personal invitation from a friend is the best way to get church visitors. I’m going to look at 6 different ways to increase that number of invitations.

Today’s area is centered on prayer.

How prayer leads to church invitations

Praying for the unchurched in your realm of influence helps you

observe and discern what God is doing in the life of that person.
develop a sensitivity to their openness to an invitation to church.
develop an awareness of the appropriateness of timing to give a church invitation.
see the connections that a current or new sermon series might make with their life situation.

Praying for the lost people in your spheres of influence leads naturally to the possibility of giving an invitation to church.

Even in my own life, I have observed that I’m giving less invitations if I am not praying along these lines on a regular basis.

Praying in secret

If you are the pastor, are you praying for those in your circles of influence who don’t know Jesus?

Are your church members regularly praying for their personal friends who don’t know the Lord?

What is the honest answer to that question if no one is looking?

Only you can judge the personal effort you put into praying for your friends who don’t know Jesus. As a congregational leader or member, you can’t measure the number of hours the people in your church pray.

But the fruit of prayer for the unchurched is seen in regular church invitations going out to friends. The fruit of this kind of regular prayer will be visitors coming to your church based on the invitation of their friends.

Effective Praying for More Church Invitations

John 15 gives us two keys to effective prayer in general.

Abide – an intimate relationship with Christ.
Ask – Jesus invites us to ask.

This key theological point has rattled my soul: What is something measurable can you ask for?

That your unchurched neighbor will accept your invitation and come to your church?
That your church would add 15 new believers this year and celebrate their baptism?
That 4 visitors would join the church over the course of the next 8 weeks?
That you could invite 5 people in the next 10 weeks who express a need for church?

What is something specific that you can ask the Lord for with regards to your church invitation efforts?

10 Specific Ways to Pray for more Invitations to Church

Recently, I listened to Church Talk Radio and they had a brief 5 minute segment on praying your work in inviting people to church. I added the last four.

Pray for your potential Guests (see How to Make a Prayer List of Friends)
Pray for the opportunity to arise to invite them to Church
Pray for awareness of their need (See What is Spiritual Thirst?)
Pray for awareness of the opportunity
Pray for the courage to invite them to church.
Pray for favor that they would accept the invitation.
Pray they would follow through and come.
Pray that your church would welcome them.
Pray that the message and worship would be awe-inspiring (See 2 Things Grow a Church)
Pray that they would hear the message and grow one step closer to God.

Calling the church to prayer

Maybe it’s time to call your church or team into an intentional season of prayer.

Right now, it is the back to school season in North America and church’s will be starting up all sorts of new programming that is worthy of a personal invitation.

Children are meeting new friends at their new schools and new families have moved into new neighborhoods.

Perhaps now is a great time to email a good reminder to your church to call them to a season of intentional prayer for the new residents in their communities.

Or perhaps you can think about a 30 day prayer campaign where you invite church members to simply pray for the names of people they know in their community, which leads to a kick off sermon series worthy of a church invitation.

Let me ask you this?

What steps do you make to call your church into a season of prayer for their unchurched friends? If you lead a campaign or program for that, feel free to share your ideas in the comment box.