The good folks at Broadway Christian Church here in Columbia, MO, have hosted a series of eight Meet & Greets to welcome Jennie and me. They ought properly be called Meet & Greet & Eat & Eat, but what has filled and satisfied me even more than the food is the reminder of what I have always known to be true: the power of a personal invitation.

I’ve begun each session by asking everyone to introduce themselves and tell me why they first came to Broadway. The vast majority were invited by someone: friend, relative, neighbor. 

I can attest to the power of a personal invitation thanks to Jennie’s and my experience in starting the new church in Arizona. During our first year (July 2002 – August 2003), Jennie and I pounded the pavement and knocked on doors and joined every organization we could in an effort to introduce ourselves, build relationships, and, when appropriate, speak about and extend an invitation to our church (which was but a few dozen of us meeting in living rooms and back yards for study, prayer, and fellowship, somewhere in a ten mile radius for hands-on service projects, and, once a month, in an elementary school cafeteria for worship.        

We started with five Shireys and over the course of that first year averaged 63 people in monthly worship. I did a quick survey of the 100 people who attended at least one of those services. 44 came as the result of a Shirey’s invitation. 48 came as result of those 44 people's invitations. 8 came because they saw a newspaper ad or the 3’ x 4’ sign we put roadside on Sunday mornings pointing to the school. 

In preparation for what we hailed as our Grand Opening Launch into weekly worship services in September of 2003, we unleashed a full-scale invitation campaign. The plan was three-fold: 

1)    Everybody in our core group made a list of five people we knew who weren’t churchgoers, who knew and trusted us, and to whom we would extend a personal invitation to come on that first Sunday.  

2)    In addition to those personal invitations, we delved into our start-up money for several thousand dollars (gulp!) and sent two mailings of 10,000 direct mail postcards to neighborhoods within a 5-mile radius of the school where we met for worship. We were told back then direct mail had a response rate of between .25% and 1%. I’ll do the math for you: .25% of 10,000 cards = 25 visitors. 1% = 100 people!  

3)    Jennie and I arrived in Arizona having personally recruited 40 “Prayer Partners,” people from seven states and seventeen congregations who covenanted to pray for our new church start. We asked them to pray for our invitations to be fruitful, the personal ones as well as the paper ones, so we might reach our goal of 100+ at our opening worship service.

Here's what happened: We had 101 worshippers. 50 were our four dozen core folks. 48 were there because they were invited by our 50 core folks. 3 people came because they received a postcard (and they never came back). Addendum: one couple came the following Sunday with a postcard in hand. Bob and Marilyn became rock solid, beloved members who repaid that multiple-thousand-dollar investment in postcards many times over in the next eleven years by the gifts of their time, talent, and treasure.  Bottom line: 98 out of 101 people came because of free personal invitations.

Gallup did a survey years ago and discovered 65 million Americans had no church home. 34 million of them said they'd attend if somebody invited them—34 million people just waiting for an invitation! (That number is millions more now). Martin Marty, Church History Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, said years ago, “People inviting other people to church is key.” He added Southern Baptists are taught to invite others to church on a regular basis, but the average Episcopalian invites someone to church every twenty-eight years and Americans don’t come unless invited.”  

I hope the good folks here in Columbia don’t wait 28 years to invite someone to Broadway!

You say, “But I don’t want to come on too strong.”  “I don’t want people to think I'm some religious fanatic.”  “I don’t know what to say."  Let me say that in order to extend a sincere, effective invitation to another there are any number of things you don’t have to be able to do and only one that you do:

·      You don’t have to have the Bible memorized.

·      You don’t have to be able to answer every question about the Christian faith with eloquent persuasiveness.

·      You don’t have to have seen visions, dreamed dreams, walked on water, raised the dead or been turned from a frog into a Prince overnight. 

·      You do have to know you’ve found Someone/something that has changed your life for the good: a place, a people, a power that empowers and transforms. Having found that, all you need to be able to say to someone is, “Come and see.”

Several years after that first Sunday service in Arizona, one of our roadside signs was stolen. The gall! We got together. How do we get the word out about Coolwater Christian Church? We made a grocery list of every publicity-generating thing we could imagine. That’s when Russ Garrett, an eighty-year-old cowboy, raised his hand and said, “This is all well and good, but I’m the sign for Coolwater. You’re the sign for Coolwater. If the way we live our lives doesn’t point beyond ourselves to God and we don’t think enough of our church to invite others to be part of it then we’re wasting money on road signs and postcards.”   

Years ago, I did a funeral I'll never forget. Jack Bowman was a railroad man. The church was full for that modest, quiet, gentle man. I asked a question, "How many of you first came to First Christian because of an invitation from Jack and how many of you who you came for the first time were welcomed by Jack?" A sea of hands, smiles, and nods. 

This message sent by direct (e)mail: You’re the sign. Don’t wait 28 years to invite someone.