We know that about 90% of people come to church because they were personally invited. Recently, we learned that about 85% of congregation members have no intention of inviting anyone to church but they would like to. I’m not going to focus on the negative here, I’m going to say, “if they’d like to, let’s help them to do it”.
Here are 4 ways you can help your congregation invite people to church:
1. Cast vision, teach and model invitation regularly. It needs to be a regular occurrence for your congregation to hear “who are you going to invite?”. They should also be hearing stories about how you’ve invited people to church. You can teach and train on this in small groups, during Sunday services and at other times during the week.
2. Equip them with tools and sharable to invite. Be diligent to give your people cards, digital invites, posters and other things that they can use to invite people to. These tools make great conversation starters and will help your congregation to invite.
3. Define success as “one person inviting one person”. It doesn’t mean that success is that they accept, it just means that we are inviting. When you celebrate the act of obedience that comes with invitation, you’ll create an environment where people will do their part of inviting and leave the rest up to God.
4. Help people see God in this act of invitation. When we ask “why don’t people invite others to church?”, the common answer we hear is some variation of fear. The truth is, it takes faith to invite people and unless we drive through the fear towards the faith, we will stop short at inviting. The whole act of inviting takes faith and prayer and an understanding that “I am on mission”. Unless congregation members understand and approach it that way, they will tend towards not inviting.
You can apply this in any ministry (Kids, Youth, Women’s etc…) and focus on the 85% of people who would like to invite but, currently, have no intention of doing so. What would happen to your church if your whole congregation regularly invited people to church?
Jeremiah works as an Effectiveness Coach with the ABNWT District of the PAOC. He is a passionate and creative leader who believes that the church is the hope of the world. He uses collaboration, innovation, and inspiration to challenge churches and their leadership to engage in the only mission Jesus ever sent his church on: making disciples.