Why inviting people to church works.

As a church we're not flush with cash so any promotion of events we do tends to be low key, a few posters and some invitations for our folks to give to friends, neighbours and family.  Occasionally we'll leaflet drop the area we consider our parish, but that rarely seems to get results.  So much so that we didn't even do it for our Easter Service this year.

Yet for our Easter service we had over 60 visitors from the community we serve.  Visitors outnumbered regular church family which was a real answer to prayer.  Sunday School jumped from about 30 to 60+ and lots of families came to church for the first time and others returned having been at Christmas.

Why?  God works, first and foremost it was obviously God at work bringing people in.  But how did God work?  God worked through his people committed to, embedded in and caring for their community inviting people from that community to come to church.  The community see that the church is for them, both in terms of loving them well and welcoming them if they come along.  That melts away some of the barriers in terms of getting through the door.  The community have also experienced that the church loves their families, of all ages.

It wasn't a high glamour event, we don't really do those.  It was a simple Easter service followed by an Easter Egg hunt, followed by a BBQ.  Some families couldn't stay for the egg hunt and BBQ but came for the service anyway - which was a huge encouragement.  Others came and stayed for all of it.

Our prayer is that God is just beginning his work in the hearts and minds of these people.  But the lesson we've learnt is simple and in many ways not unexpected. God works through his people building relationships, caring for, and inviting others to come and see his goodness which they've glimpsed in his people.  A people not perfect but trying to relate to one another by grace as they live assured of God's love in Christ, praying for him to bring others to know that love and grace.

When is an invitation not an invitation?

I've been thinking about what it means to invite someone to church this week.  Partly because we've given out over 800 invites to our Christmas events and there have been some surprising responses.

Our default assumption is if I've given you an invite to something you are welcome at the event.  However, what we've been finding is that invites through a door aren't enough, in fact they don't seem to be taken as saying that at all.  Lots of people in the community have then messaged people in church to ask if they are "allowed to come".  Do you see the unspoken assumption in that question - general invites aren't for everyone even if you give them to everyone.  Whereas personally reassuring people that of course they are invited and not only are they allowed to come but that we'd love to see them works without question or confusion.

It makes me question again the value of flyering.  It proves the value of real face to face contact in our invitations so people can see the invitation and welcome in our actions and faces that you can't see in a flyer posted through a letter box.  A personal invite says I want you to come along.  Does that mean next year we need to knock on doors with the invitation, maybe, its certainly something we need to think about?

At the time when we celebrate God's incarnation, his coming to us personally with the greatest invite of all, I'm glad he didn't just post an invite through my door.  Perhaps its not so surprising that we need to invite people to celebrate the incarnation in the way God invited us, incarnate!

An evangelistic strategy that works

Here it is; invite your friends to come to church.  That's it you say, that's not new!  There's no revolution, no steps, no technique.  How does that help me?  That is exactly why it helps you and it works.

If you want proof of that you ask those visitors who come along to church why they are there and the vast majority will say that they were invited by a friend.  All our flyer-ing and advertising and so on does have an impact sometimes but by far the most successful thing is simply inviting your friends and colleagues to come along.

We've given out hundreds of invites to things over the years, promoted services at Toddlers or football or at all manner of other things.  But by far the most successful thing is personal invitations to friends to come along to church.  Most often it takes a person to bring a person to a personal God.

So who are you inviting this Sunday to come along and hear about Jesus?