Matthew Fretwell
Not long after arriving at my revitalization position, I envisioned the church distributing invite cards within their neighborhoods, workplaces, and communities. This seemed to be an easy, low stress, and high impact approach to evangelism. In turn, the evangelism initiative would work as a cyclical driving force for outreach. The outcome was average, probably as good as expected. But I learned from it.
I’m not one of those people that believes that the church is either missional or attractional ‒ I believe it is both ‒ and always has been. So, when conceiving the invite card engagement, it was to be more effective than mailers ‒ a “no brainer.” But, there’s much more potential here ‒ stick with me.
The Workings
For 4–6 weeks, a deliberate church-wide initiative is set forth. The purpose is to garner support from every member to participate. The pastor expresses to the church the importance of total involvement in the new project.
The design is to invite as many people as possible (hopefully unchurched, unreached, nones and dones), with invitation cards. This event should be less stressful than walking door to door or street evangelism, seeking a high impact opportunity. The invitation cards should have the proper information regarding the church, website, address, times, and other essentials. Each member is expected to personally hand the cards out within their surroundings.
The Measurement
Now comes the fun part ‒ if you like validation, team building, and leadership development. An outreach for the sake of outreach is still good works, and an outreach for Christ’s sake is edifying and glorifying to God ‒ but what if we utilize and then measure the initiative for greater purposes?
I learned something in my doctoral work ‒ there should always be quantifiable or quantitative evidences. How do we know what we are doing is working? In this case, we could possibly count heads of new arrivals and/or, ask. But, for this article, we’d like to utilize the information from our initiative to create something greater within the church ‒ leadership development and gift recognizability. How do we do this?
Every time a member arrives at the church building, they log in to an easily created program, which asks several questions: (1) How many cards did you hand out this week? (2) Where did you distribute the cards: a. neighborhood, b. workplace, c. community; (3) Have any of your invitees responded: a. small group, b. home Bible study, c. church Bible study, d. worship service.
The questions are straightforward; they should take no less than two minutes to fill out. This also can be done by logging into a dedicated Facebook or website page. If your church has some tech savvy people, this initiative contains numerous possibilities.
The Key Results
Here’s the good stuff ‒ utilizing the data. People have begun logging in and posting their results. We now have real identifiable and measurable information. We can see where the cards are going, who is taking them, how many each person gives out, and perhaps, what we’d like, the giftings of members.
Example: Let’s say that our leadership is reading the church’s weekly data and notices that “Bob” has handed out a whopping 150 cards in one week! This sounds amazing ‒ as a leader, he’s someone that I want to keep my eye on. Let’s also say that “Mary” has handed out 15, but 10 of the 15 are attending a Bible study in her home. Next comes “Kirby, Logan, Kim, Shania, Deb, and Tracey.” They all live within the same neighborhood. The leaders notice that none of this group’s cards have been distributed within their neighborhood; some were distributed at workplaces, and in the city, but none in their collective neighborhood.
How may leaders use this information?
Building A Leadership Pipeline
Noticing Bob’s amazing ability to hand out the invites, I want to reach out to him. It is highly likely that Bob has a gift for evangelism ‒ at least we know that he’s not an introvert. Bob may be more comfortable in handing out cards than speaking, so it is vital that we encourage Bob and begin to edify his giftedness. We want to bring out what is already there. I would team Bob up with our evangelism and missions team, as well as, work one-on-one with Bob in disciple-making development.
For Mary, it seems that she has the gift of hospitality ‒ she enjoys being with others. She’s invited people that she knows, or at least that she feels comfortable being around. According to the data, Mary has begun a home Bible study. Leaders should target this information to help advance Mary into a home group leader. It’s time to get Mary connected with the Life Group leaders. While she may be intimidated by the idea at first, encouragement and cultivation will bring out her natural ability to facilitate, be hospitable, and organize.
Lastly, and these are only three examples, the last group of people may tell us that Kirby’s, et al., neighborhood may be an area of un-fallow ground (i.e. hard to reach). Leaders may gather these neighboring members to assist them in launching a church sponsored outreach (block parties, door to door, etc.). Bringing these members together and walking them through the stages of creation, organization, engagement, and implementation of neighborhood outreach will create future leaders when impacting other communities.
As you see, the church can utilize technology for the good and to help create a leadership pipeline. These are just a few examples; the ideas and implementations are almost endless.