Yesterday I spoke with our son and his wife about the church they visited in St. Louis that morning. Luke and Hannah moved to St. Louis a few weeks ago so that he can pursue an MD-PhD program and she do premed studies at Washington University. A priority for them is to find a church home.
We talked about the church they visited that morning, and Hannah said that she didn’t think that was the church for them. When I asked why, she said that she wouldn’t feel comfortable inviting friends to the church.
Hannah and Luke’s experience at church surfaces an essential question that church attenders ask and answer, even if they don’t voice the question. The question is this: Do I invite people to my church? If not, why not? If yes, why yes? And, when people are seeking for a church home, Hannah’s response reveals that this is a question that some seek to answer before they join a church.
If I was going to ask church attenders one line of questions to diagnose the health of their church, these are the questions I would ask. I would begin with the question, “Do you invite/bring friends and extended family to your church?” If they do, it reveals that they have some level of confidence that their friends will have a “good experience” at their church. This “good experience” includes everything from being welcomed and warmly received, to whether they will “enjoy” the worship experience, or, more importantly, whether they will have an opportunity to encounter God through His Word and through the worship of His people. If church attenders do not invite friends to church, it might reveal that they have less confidence that their friends will have a “good experience” at church. We would have to “dig down” to identify the reasons people do or don’t invite their friends to church. Thus, the follow-up questions of “why?” or “why not?” are essential because some are excited about their church for the wrong reasons (i.e. some cult-group members excitedly invite people to their cult).
So, here’s a question for church leaders: Do your people invite others to church, confident that they will hear from God and be led to Him through prayer and the ministry of the Word? Or, do the attenders of your church fail to invite others because they lack confidence that their friends will have a good experience, and, more importantly, experience God as they worship?
As helpful as it might be for leaders to ask that question, it would be more helpful to ask it of all those who attend the church. Growing churches have attenders who confidently invite others to their church.
For more help on building the confidence of your church to invite others, see Becoming a Welcoming Church by Thom Rainer. Also, the NWBC Pastor Cluster groups will focus on this topic beginning in September, 2018.