The problem is that personal invites don’t just naturally happen. As friendly as people are, it is still intimidating to invite friends to Church. Why? Because people have been burned by the Church or ministers in some way before or they have preconceived views of the Church that they hold on to. That is why the key to personal invites is that you have to train your church to be doing this. If you train people in the church how to meet new people at church, how to follow up with them relationally (not just a form letter) and how to personally invite their friends you can do it. Here are some ideas that you can try to train your church to think relationally:
- Practice during Church. Meet and greets or saying “hi” to your neighbor during the service is awkward at times. But, it still provides someone an opportunity to meet someone new and say “hey” to someone who may be coming for the first time. Maybe you can have everyone answer a question like, “how long have you been coming to ___ Church?” or “when did you first come to _____ Church?”. As weird as they can be, do these times from time to time. It provides practice for people in your church to do this outside of church as well.
- Do training in Life Groups. Maybe you can find a curriculum or develop one internally where all the Life Groups in your church go through it about how to think relationally
- Disciple others. The more people in discipleship relationships the more likely more people are going to be personally invited to come to Church. And guess what? It starts with the ministers themselves. If the ministry leaders are discipling others and challenging those they are discipling to disciple others, then more people, over time, will be coming to Church.
- All the Above. Maybe all of these above items you can be doing in some form or another. Mix and match and see what works best for your ministry.