I happen to catch a listen on the radio this week of how author and apologist Lee Strobel became a Christian. Part of his journey to faith was accepting an invitation to church. At church, he heard Christianity explained to him with such clarity that it started his thorough investigation into the Christian faith. I found myself thinking: . . .
Has this happened to you?
You invite a friend to church because you are excited about a new sermon series.
They are polite, but continue to dismiss your invitation with "Some day."
The timing of your church invitation just doesn't resonate with them.
How can you change that?
As Easter is not too far away, what are you doing to help your church visitors and invited guests to come back the following week? The following article is from a friend of this ministry, Gary Rohrmayer, who writes at YourJourneyBlog. Read on for what Gary shares. To read the development of each of the subpoints, visit …
I really like this church invitation video. I’ve used it several times in various conferences. Always gets a great laugh when the punch line is revealed. While it’s free on YouTube, you should really buy the rights to use it from SermonSpice, like I did. Honor the creators of this video with buying it. Feed …
Recently, I was asked via Ask EvangelismCoach about ways to increase the number of invitations to church that members give to their network of friends. Review these posts to get on board with some of the answers More church invitations: Friends and Family Get More Church Invitations: Prayer I want you to come to my …
Helping church members invite their friends is one of the side effects of an engaged church, as Albert Winesman wrote Growing an Engaged Church. The basic question of his book is addressed on the jacket: What would a church look like if members of its congregation were 13 times more likely to have invited someone to …
Recently, I’ve been asked via Ask EvangelismCoach about ways to increase the number of invitations to church that members give to their network of friends. Review these posts to get on board with some of the answers More church invitations: Friends and Family Get More Church Invitations: Prayer Today, I add number 3 3. Church …
LifeWay Research did a study and asked how many times they have personally, “invited an unchurched person to attend a church service or some other program at your church?” 48% of church attendees responded, “zero.” 33% percent of people say they’ve personally invited someone one or two times. 19% say they’ve done so on three or more …
In the previous article in the series of giving more invitations to church, I focused on prayer. As I continue to look at various ways to increase the number of personal invitations to church that your church members give, today’s article is focused on the number of personal friends who are unchurched. Again, the statistics show …
Check out this video on giving an invitation to church (Feed Readers may need to click through to see the video). Notice what the fellow does at the end. You can give your church members something similar to help them make that personal invitation to church Church Invitation Card that I used a few years …
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 …
During a recent coaching appointment, a pastor expressed a frustration that members are not inviting guests to church. The church had reached a plateau in attendance and had been stuck there for nearly 2 years. The pastor had tried various tactics to remind people about the importance of making personal invitations, such as regular announcements, …
The other day, I saw a question in my Twitter feed: How do we measure our hospitality? There are a couple of different ways to measure the success of your hospitality ministry. You could measure effective church hospitality program by Volunteers who are excited to serve because of they see impact or influence they have. …
This article on using Facebook events is reprinted with persmission from Christian Webtrends (blog.ourchurch.com) to edit for Christmas. It was originally aimed for Easter, but it’s just as true for Christmas. The images refer to an Easter service, but you get the idea. The original article appeared in 2011, and Facebook may have changed the …
Are you prepared for to receive new church visitors at Christmas time? I want to give you 5 areas to consider improving your church welcome for your first time visitors when the come this Christmas Season.
A regular question I get is "How do you grow a small church?" "How do I grow small church numbers?" We were a small church, made up primarily of immigrants from other countries. Here are 5 steps we are implementing to grow that total number to 70.
How effective are personal invitations to church? Here is what the research shows
A frequent question I receive is how do pastors regularly cast a vision for hospitality ministries for the church. Particularly when they are in charge of casting vision for everything. So I want to share with you another practice for growing your church’s hospitality. (Read Practice #1: Review your Church Hospitality Ministries) Practice #2: Regularly …
I’ve taken up a pattern of walking most mornings to help clear my head and gather my thoughts during this season of the year. I’ve subscribed to the podcast from Church Talk Radio, and most segments are about 45 minutes to one hour. I’ve got it on my MP3 Player and while walking, I consume …
Beyond Belief by Patrick McElroy is subtitled Live a Consistent, Spiritually Powerful life. From the back cover: “a book about breaking free from a spiritually weak life to achieve the consistently powerful one that is available to every believer. It’s a Bible Study 101 that guides reader to a greater revelation of God.”
Mother’s Day 2009 may be a time to conduct special weekend event outreaches. I know several pastors that will give a sermon related to motherhood. But it’s also an opportunity for churches to engage their neighborhood. Some links have since broken.
Leading your church to pray for their personal evangelism efforts may not be as easy as you think. I have found that people bring their own agendas to the prayer meeting and it becomes easy for the prayer meeting to be hi-jacked. Here, I want to offer to you a simple guideline for an evangelistic …
For youth pastors, young adult pastors, and others who work with this group, this research gives current insight based on survey data. Lifeway has published a podcast with it, found at Stetzer’s article. From Ed Stetzer’s research: In fact, 73 percent of unchurched twentysomethings consider themselves “spiritual” and would like to know more about “God …
The short answer: Personal Invitation from a Trusted friend. Charles Arn has surveyed thousands of people: (Source: 3 Questions for Charles Arn) In your research, have you found that there’s one specific reason that visitors come to church? The friendship factor. We’ve asked more than 50,000 people over the last 10 years why they came …
