Have you heard a stat like this before? Ninety percent of the people who visit a church for the first time go because a friend invited them. The number varies depending on who you’re talking to, but the implication is always the same: Personal invitations are the most effective way to get new people to try your church.
If invitations from a friend do the job best, why do so many of us send mailers or direct social media advertising to people who’ve never been to our church? When we want to reach new people, it seems like we should direct our outreach to new people, doesn’t it? But there’s not much evidence to suggest that really works.
Let’s add another layer of information to the question: the frequency of church attendance. In our experience and that of the churches we’ve talked to, average church attendance for many people is about once every three to four weeks.
In a September 2013 Pew Research report about church attendance, 37 percent of people surveyed said they attend weekly, and 33 percent answered that they attend monthly or yearly. The 33 percent who attend monthly or yearly likely still consider themselves regular churchgoers.
So, we’ve got two ideas working in tandem:
1. The most effective way to get people to try a new church is to be invited by someone they know.
2. People who do go to church attend infrequently.
If our most effective resource to get new people connected to our church is there only every few weeks, how will that affect their frequency of inviting others to church?
Outreach Through Inreach
Our LifeChurch.tv team looked at these two concepts and decided to experiment. What if we focused our promotional efforts on people who’ve already visited? It seemed contrary to our instincts as a church since we place such a high value on evangelism. It felt like inreach instead of outreach. But our hunch was this: The more frequently people come to church, the more likely they would be to invite others.
We began to change what we communicated and who we communicated to. Before, we’d try to reach people who’d never visited, introducing them to LifeChurch.tv and encouraging them to give us a try. Instead, we started concentrating on people who were already part of our database, letting them know this weekend is not only a great weekend to come to church, it’s a great weekend to bring someone you know.