28 March 2023

Most people attend a church for the first time because someone they know invites them. You can have the best signage, the best website, the best music, the best liturgy, the best preaching and teaching in the world, and all of these things will help attract newcomers and keep them, but if you want your parish to grow substantially then the most sure-fire way is to get you fellow-worshippers to invite their friends. And I don’t mean to a dinner or a concert – I mean to a service of worship where they are introduced to the God who draws them into relationship. The thing that makes this a big ask is that people will only feel comfortable inviting their friends to church if they genuinely believe that their friends are likely to have a positive experience. And many churchgoers understand just how boring and unattractive their church is.

We need, then, to ensure that parishioners are already so energised by what they are part of on a Sunday that they feel genuinely excited to invite others, rather than hiding their embarrassing Sunday Morning Secret even from their closest friends and family. We need to encourage a congregation to become invitational first by doing the groundwork to make their parish church a place where the existing worshippers feel they are part of something life-giving that is worth sharing with others. Learning to be an authentic, unembarrassed Christian community should be prior to becoming intentionally invitational, otherwise what happens is that new people turn up and are instantly put off both by the ephemeral things like lack of a smiling face and bad coffee, but also because they encounter a group of people who don’t even seem to know why they are there.

I will have much more to say in a future post about this question of a parish’s underlying culture, and whether it is Jesus-centred or self-centred. First however, following on from the issue of signage, I thought it would be helpful briefly to highlight a few more of the more ephemeral issues that can put off even the most tolerant of visitors.

In order to get from off-putting church to attractive church, a congregation (and their priest) must be prepared to have an honest critical look at what they do week by week, and be prepared to change those things most likely to send a visitor or invitee running. Some of these ephemeral things have been discussed on this blog already – consistency of service offering, music, etc. But there is more of the ephemeral to consider.

So, before we rush headlong into issuing invitations, it is good to do a bit of an inventory of what is on offer for the new arrival or visitor. In what follows I am not suggesting that we have to have made everything perfect before we can suggest inviting people, but there are some absolute basics that need to be considered first. It is always a very good idea to continue attending to the “long list” even as new people are beginning to turn up. Unfriendly churches do not instantly become welcoming places where an invitation has a good chance of leading on to a commitment. It is necessary to work at it in an ongoing way.

So, here are some questions to ask, and to answer candidly and address appropriately, as you prepare to encourage your fellow-worshippers to invite their friends to church:

-        Is the worship experience a) energising for all or at least most present, b) satisfactory at least to the point where it won’t send people running, or c) cringe-worthy? You need to be able to answer at least with b) and preferably with a). If the worship is something the regular congregation merely tolerates rather than enjoys, then this is a first order problem that needs to be addressed.

-        Is your service sheet/pew sheet user-friendly?

-        Does the preaching both meet people where they are in daily life and invite people into the mystery of Christ? If it doesn’t, what can you do to nudge it in this direction? If you are the preacher, record and listen to your sermons. Do they inspire you? Ask for honest feedback from people who are not necessarily your greatest fans. And then consider what you might be able to do in response.

-        Does your post-service hospitality consist of bad coffee and worse biscuits, or is it something you would be proud to serve up in your own home? Aim for the latter. Do people sit at tables (thanks Covid) in huddles with their friends, or do they mingle and talk to people they’ve not met before?

-        Does someone other than the vicar say “welcome”? Are the people on the door open, friendly, and engaging?

-        Is there demographic diversity visible across all public-facing roles, both in the sanctuary and elsewhere? Or does it appear to the outsider that everyone in your church looks the same?

-        Has there been some teaching and training for the congregation about how to be welcoming to visitors and newcomers without causing them to run away screaming?

-        Does everyone in a public-facing role have a name tag?

-        Do you have fully accessible toilet facilities, including disabled facilities and a baby change table?

-        If you are planning to invite people with children, do you have a children’s ministry programme, or at least resources to assist parents to help their children engage with the service?

-        If you’re planning on a specific “invite a friend” Sunday, do you have the follow-up event ready to advertise?

The bottom line is that we need to ensure that current parishioners are themselves both excited by what is on offer, and confident that they will not be embarrassed when their friends accept an invitation to come along. If they know that a first encounter will consist of meeting a tired, inward-focussed group of people going through the Sunday morning motions out of sheer force of habit, a 45 minute sermon on how all gay people are going to hell, a parishioner who tells the visitor off for where they’re sitting or what they’re wearing or how their child is behaving, followed by a cup of instant coffee and a dry biscuit….. Well, you get the idea. You might as well not have invited them in the first place.