Across the decades of working with churches, I have concluded that there is a direct correlation between how long a person has been attending church and the likelihood they might invite somebody to church. Essentially, the longer you hang around at church the less likely you are to invite - and life-time church attendees often treat their church life as if it were involvement in a secret society. They say they don't want to be pushy with religion, or that they don't know anybody who would be interested, or that religion is personal...
When I planted a new faith community several years ago, I
noticed that the people most-likely-to-invite-someone were brand new
visitors, the people who had just come in from the cold and who had a
Wow experience: the ones who say, "I didn't know that church
could be like this." They immediately ran out and told their network,
who would come and then invite others, and so on, and we grew by
hundreds. Actually, I first noticed this phenomenon back in the late
1980s when I served an open country church with half a dozen attendees.
Two different couples wandered in within a few weeks of each other in
early 1989, and from there, one person invited another who invited
another until we were at 30 attendees in about six months. As pastor I
did absolutely nothing to cause this - it was the impact of new people
walking in and having a Wow experience, relative to what they were
expecting. This caused me to recall an earlier experience:
When I was ten years old, living in Riverside, California,
my home church cooked up a campaign called Tell Riverside. They
produced a floppy recording disk in an attractive brochure. The
recording (old school) had to be played on a record player with a
needle. It was a mix of quick testimonials and music from our worship
choirs/groups, plus an invitation for folks to come and check out what
was happening at our church. We found creative ways to
distribute 50,000 of these things through our community. But it was driven by person -to -person sharing - no mail, certainly no billboards or radio.
Just person to person. That spring, Sunday attendance jumped from
about 400 to 700 a Sunday and forced us to go to two services. (The
energy of that blessed spring in the early 1970s put me on a path
toward the work I do today.) But the recordings simply jump started
things. Quite a few new people came from that outreach, but then they
had their particular Wow experiences. They, in turn, invited others
who invited others. Riverside was a majority unchurched community,
nearly half a century ago, like many American communities today.
Earlier this month, I convened leaders from several churches around the USA to a weekend at The Gathering St Louis,
a 12-year old multi-site and quite progressive congregation that has
grown like a weed. The Gathering does really good work. But so do a
lot of places that have not grown like this. There is one
thing, however, that they do better than almost any other place I have
seen recently. That thing is invitation and hospitality. In
fact, the theme of the service the first weekend of October was about
how to live a more transparent life with regards to faith and invite
people to church, as a gift to them. When we walked in, without the
greeters knowing anything about us that Sunday, we headed straight for
the Connections Table where a woman with excellent people skills
managed to share her first experience of The Gathering the day she
walked in a few years earlier. This alone, shared artfully and with
charm, raised our expectations of what was about to happen in the big
room.
Contrast this to an interview I had a few weeks
earlier with a planting pastor whose launch team of died-in-the-wool
church people seldom invite anybody to anything. That church plant is
at risk of infant death, before it turns three. I don't care how good
the music is, or the preaching. If people don't invite, a 21st century church will fail.
And the best way to get jump-started on inviting is to really work
the neighborhood to build enough relationships so that a handful of
non-church people get in the door to experience Wow. From there, the
flywheel starts turning, and 50 can turn into 150 in very short time.
To create an invitational culture: I believe the following things are key...
1.
Create a high-impact worship (and other gathering) experience that
makes sense in the wider cultural context, so that I would naturally
want to invite my neighbor/friend/spouse to experience it. Think
contextually. Think positive surprise for the person who finds
organized religion boring, stuffy, tedious, judgmental, etc.
2.
Create special events in partnership with your members (or launch team)
that are designed so that people cannot help but invite someone they
know. (Willow Creek started with this idea years ago when the question
was posed to a youth group in the Chicago suburbs: What would it take
for this to be so good you had to invite a friend? And they did what
the young people told them.)
3. Develop great hospitality
in the church lobby and coffee area. So that first time people who
enjoyed worship can also make relationship with others - this makes the
whole church affair more sticky. The church lobby should be the
happiest room on earth.
4. See that new people are
invited to a group or team or even just out to lunch with church
friends as quickly as possible. This seals the deal.
5.
Don't just count on the Wow to drive inviting all by itself. Gently
coach your people in good habits - such as praying for a list of friends
for whom they will be looking for inviting opportunities.
6.
Put some video testimonials on your church website, and rotate them
regularly. Let ordinary people talk about what their faith means to
them, how its helped them recently and what a blessing their church is.
I don't want to debate attractional church. Big planets do
have gravity (even today) and attract, but most churches are not big
enough to impact much of anything through the forces of size and
gravity. Invitation is the key in all cultures and with all sizes of church. Epicenter Group is starting work with 30 pastors in the UK, several of whom lead growing churches. In the UK.
I am not talking slight net gains. More like growing from 30 to 150
in three years! One of the churches is a multisite with several hundred
on Sunday, and they started with 23 folks just 20 years ago. In
the extreme post-Christendom context of Europe, these churches are
growing because they design their ministry for young adult culture,
they meet needs of people whom other churches neglect and they invite
folks naturally and joyfully!
It is not complicated.
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