The #1 Reason Your Friends Won’t Come to Church
This special Thanksgiving weekend and the kickoff of our Christmas season give us a wonderful opportunity to invite others to join us at Hope. It might surprise you that research done by various groups on the topic of church involvement consistently concludes that a personal invitation is the most effective way to get someone you know to come to church. That is more effective than billboards, signs, and other traditional forms of advertisement.
Here are some statistics to think about as you consider inviting someone to church.
63% of Americans say a personal invitation from a friend or neighbor would be effective in getting them to visit a church
8 out of 10 people will say “yes” to a personal invite to church
7 out of 10 unchurched people have never been invited
Only 2% of church members invite an unchurched person to church
While we are aware that fewer and fewer people in America are attending church these days, it is also significant to consider that 80% of people say that they would attend church when a Christian asks them to come. Those are some pretty good odds when you think about taking a step of faith and sharing an invitation.
There is a Biblical precedent for asking others to join you in encountering Jesus. In the first chapter of John, we see the power of an invitation to invite others to come and see Jesus. “He [Jesus] said to them, ‘Come and you will see.’ So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ He brought him to Jesus.” (John 1:39-42a ESV)
In this situation they were saying… Let's find Jesus together. That is the idea behind an intentional invitation to church. Of course, people might say no. In fact, statistically a percentage of them will say no, but I do not think that is a reason for us to avoid asking. I think there is wonderful power in the invitation to… Come and see with me; let’s go together, and I’ll take you to Him.
Of all these statistics, perhaps the saddest one to me is that 70% of unchurched people have never been invited to church. That means, of the people in your life that you know don’t go to church, most of them will never even be invited to attend church by a friend. We may assume they don’t want anything to do with God, but why not give them a chance by asking? Thankfully someone at some time in our life invited us.
So, as we anticipate the upcoming Christmas season, I wonder who God would like you to invite to join you at church? I encourage you to pray that God might open a door for you to invite them and that He might be preparing them to say yes. This takes some courage, but I guess that if we all commit to doing this more often, we just might find that the most effective billboard for Hope Church is the family of Hope Church, especially those who are humble enough to risk being rejected and invite their neighbors to join them. You will never know what God can do through the power of a simple invitation if you do not give it a try.
I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I also hope that you can join us tonight for our special Thanksgiving Eve service at 6:30 PM!
Expectantly,
Shawn Brennan