Our church lives out a strong core value of inviting people to church.
We know that lives are changed when people experience the love of God and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus, we are driven to invite others.
We know that the simple act of inviting people to church can be one of the most influential steps in a person’s journey to faith in Jesus Christ.
From small beginnings in the living room of the home of our founding pastors, the church has grown because of those personal invitations.
When lives get impacted, families get changed, and the broken find healing, redemption stories are abundant. That drives an excitement and momentum that fuels people to invite others to church.
The growth of this church has not always been easy. There have been cycles of plateaus, downsizing, and upsizing.
The church has worked through adding services, adding buildings, growing leaders, raising volunteers, building systems, and building a leadership culture that supports the growth. They have stayed focused on the core vision, saying no to several good ideas along the way.
The church’s growth has been covered by intercessory prayer behind the scenes. Intercessors pray for the church, its services, and its people.
The church has developed a culture that fosters the habit of inviting people to church. I see that in a couple of different ways and I’ll explain below.
- Practical tools that help generate church invitations.
- Built a culture of welcome.
- Awareness of when are good times to invite people to church.
Church invitations are easy to make when there are good tools, great reasons, and cultural support behind it all.
Tools to Help Members Invite Guests to Church
Our church generates these tools to support the opportunities and to seize the moments for those invitations to be given.
Here are different practical tools our church members have to invite people to church.
- Invitation cards
- Series based preaching
- Social media celebration
- Regular reminders via email, text, announcements
- Special events for men, women, children, families
- Different life stage groups
- A great culture of welcome
I am sure there are other ways the church is promoted that generate awareness to the general public that we exist. This is general brand awareness vs. driving the habit of inviting people to church.
But the list above shows ways the church’s leadership has created and supported the core value that helps church participants like me find easy ways to extend an invitation. These are all internal tools to help create the moments for invitation.
Invitation Cards
Printed invitation cards, the size of a typical business card, are printed up for special services like Christmas and Easter.
These are often tied into a sermon message to remind us to use them and how to use them.
Sermons or announcements will often celebrate stories of people who came because of an invitation card.
Series Based Preaching
A new sermon series gives an opportunity to invite a friend to church. Most of our series are 3-5 weeks long. This gives plenty of different opportunities to invite someone to the next series.
Our preachers are skilled in talking to a congregation made up of people at different stages of their faith in Christ. Through the preaching of God’s word, our pastors bring the truth of God’s word to life situations. The Holy Spirit empowers the Word to speak to the heart.
We have non-believers attending our church and learning from the Word of God even before they place their faith and trust in Christ. Our preachers speak to them as well, not only the Christians.
Social Media Tools
Church volunteers put out a lot of social media. They are on a team that filters and controls what gets posted. It is easy for our people to reshare and reuse these as invitations sent personally to their friends.
There are celebrations of Sunday services and reminders of special services. During the week, short video snippets from the sermon are posted. These are some of the tools that the church provides for use.
Our church lobby has a few areas for picture booths. Every Sunday, families take group pictures in these places and share them on their social media with church-related hashtags. Special events and sermon series get related photo booths or selfie zones. This kind of buzz leads to personal invitations in each family’s sphere.
For the month before Christmas, I see lots of family photos from the different stations in our lobby – each social share is a potential invitation to church. Our leaders encourage these booths.
Regular reminders via email, text, announcements
I receive a weekly newsletter that reminds me of upcoming series.
Because I also volunteer for our church, I get a volunteer newsletter as well. In the volunteer newsletter, we sometimes read stories of redemption and impact that remind us of our purpose.
Occasionally, I‘ll receive a text message to a video from our pastor about what’s coming. These things serve as a reminder to invite.
Special events for men, women, children, families
Yearly special events for men, women, children, and families allow us to invite someone to the church facility without committing to come to a Sunday service.
Because these events are so well done and the volunteers give shape to a fun time, it’s easy to invite our friends to come back for a Sunday service.
Creating fun events is another one of the church’s core values that drives invitations. Church members know their guests will have a great time.
Different life stage groups
We have groups focused on particular life stages: Preparing for Marriage, Divorce Care, Reignite your Marriage, Grief Share, and Celebrate Recovery.
These provide a great place to invite people based on this life stage. They might come to this first, rather than a Sunday morning.
Word of Mouth
Our church people talk about their church. There is a buzz, excitement, and momentum about the work of God happening in our church. We want to tell others what’s happening and invite them to “come and see.”
Stories of life change are celebrated. We see redemption and healing getting lived out in our midst.
That drives the excitement to invite others to come and see.
A Great Culture of Welcome
When I invite my connections to church, I know they will be welcomed well. Our door greeters do a great job of greeting people walking through our doors.
We have friendly hosts with “New Here?” Signs to allow people to approach them with questions.
We have new family visitor parking spaces, and a member of the parking lot team will often walk an arriving family from their car to the door.
Once inside the doors, our friendly ushers are available to guide our guests to their seats.
I serve on our church’s translation team. Those who want to hear the church in the Spanish language can receive a receiver pack for simultaneous translation. I know the volunteers who handle that process do a great job at helping our Spanish-speaking guests find joy in attending.
Growing a Core value: What drives it?
Inviting people to church is the result of a clear vision from church leadership.
This goes beyond the printed mission statement. Inviting people to church has been worked into the deep fabric of the church culture.
Other core values of the church culture drive invitations. Whether that is from planning fun experiences, volunteers who set the atmosphere with joy and enthusiasm, quality ministry in the kid’s area, pursuing excellence in music, preaching, and hospitality – all these things in the church culture help drive invitations.
This is intentional, by design, and has been built over time. It did not happen overnight.
Most recently, I co-led a 3-week study for some of our volunteer teams. This was meant to grow them as leaders and challenge them to grow. Throughout the 3 week study, we celebrated what they did well. Volunteer affirmation and training go a long way.
My First Evangelism Experience
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