Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

We all know we should invite our friends to church—here’s how

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Every Christian knows they should be sharing their faith. Or at least inviting our friends to church. For many a consistent murmur of guilt is ever-present in the back of your mind, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly.

We can’t escape it. We know the Great Commission wasn’t just written to pastors and missionaries, though we wish it were.

What to do?

A wonderful solution to this spiritual challenge is Back to Church Sunday (in the U.S. September 20, 2015). Though this particular Sunday is a day that has been made a national time to invite people to church with support by various denominations and Outreach.com, http://backtochurch.com/, the ideas and challenges presented aren’t confined to this one day on the calendar.

The summary idea is that this Sunday or any other you choose to emphasize inviting provides provides a focus and tools to motivate people to be obedient to Jesus and to share his love.

Following are a couple of very short motivational videos on Back to Church Sunday and Biblical Encouragements to inspire you to get involved. Following them are links to many more resources on this site that provide the tools to equip your church to participate.

Invitation Cards for Back to Church Sunday

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2014/09/invitation-cards-for-back-to-church-sunday/

The link above goes to the invitation cards pictured in the video.

Come back to church, two videos

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/08/come-back-to-church-two-videos/

PLEASE check this out, it has one of my very favorite videos here on inviting a stranger to church, plus an older video, but still an EXTREMELY important one about Invitation Cards and how essential they are for year-round inviting.

Give visitors at events an information/invitation card so they will return

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Generic Come back to church card
People won't automatically come back to your church if you don't invite them!

Life is busy, people are stressed, and no matter how much we might want to attend an event, if we don't have the details of time, location, directions, about it, it's not likely we'll show up.

Keep your crazy schedule in mind to motivate you to create information, invitation cards to give to people who come to special events at your church. No matter how much they an event you put on, they won't automatically know that you have Sunday School for kids, what time your Sunday service starts, or that you want them to return.

If your outreach was for unchurched people, they might not even know that your church does a regular service on Sundays. True story here: a few years ago I talked to a woman who always attended the outreach events at a local church. When I asked her if she also attended on Sunday, she was very surprised. "You mean they do things on Sunday too?" she said. She did not grow up in a church and she honestly thought that the church just put on nice community events for the holidays.

Don't expect people to return—invite them back!

That's where a card like this is helpful. It gives basic information and warmly invites people to return.

Though it's great if you can create follow-up cards for the specific events you host (and there are lots of examples of them on this website), realistically you don't always have time to do them up for each event. This is where a generic one can be useful.

At our church, we are hosting the simulcast of the Harvest Crusade, next weekend. My husband and I are on the prayer team and whenChurch come back card Church come back card, front we met last Sunday for training, our pastor said they only had booklets to give out afterwards.

I went home thinking about how helpful an information/invitation card would be. We are new at the church (and love it) and I didn't want to be pushy—but I thought if I drafted one up, even if it didn't work for the church to use it, it would be a great training tool to share with all of you.

Everyone can look at the card for ideas—it has all the basic information on one side and a note from the Pastor on the second side. Give one to everyone you can at events and your members can also use them anytime as an invitation for the church. It's one more way to encourage people along the path of coming to know Jesus as Savior.

Below is a ZIP File that has the MS Publisher file you can use as a template to create your own.

CLICK HERE to download the ZIP file. Save it and then click to open and use.

Invitation cards to invite people to come to church

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This invitation is free for everyone, just click to download a PDF of it.
This invitation is free for everyone, just click to download a PDF of it.

The creation of the cards below was inspired in part by these statistics:

  • "82% of the unchurched are at least somewhat likely to attend church if invited" –Dr. Thom Rainer, The Unchurched Next Door

  • Yet only 2% of Christians EVER invite someone to church!

In addition to the challenge of the quotes above, we know we should all be about inviting people to church as a step on their journey to a relationship with Jesus.

Effective Church Communications has a set of FREE invitation cards in PDF format. You can print your specific church information on the back.

The resources in the ZIP file below are:

  • A PDF file of all the cards, ready-to-print
  • The original MS Publisher file (2007, you can open it in later, but I know a lot of people still have this) so you can modify anyway you want and add your church information on the front or on the back.
  • Hi resolution images of the cards
  • Low resolution images of the cards

A link to download this file is at the end of the article.

Below is a gallery of all the cards from Effective Church Communications:

Back to Church Invitation Cards Card 2 hi res Card 3 hi res Card 4 hi res Card 5 hi res Card 6 hi res Card 7 hi res

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To download the ZIP file that contains all these cards in PDF and original MS Publisher format, click on the link below, download the zip file to your desktop, then click on it and use the files.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ZIP FILE for Back to Church Invitation Cards.

Don’t judge, INVITE! a great video and challenge

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I LOVE THIS! We can preach and preach to encourage our people to invite people to church, but sometimes nothing beats a motivational video. One little note . . . . the impact wouldn't have been nearly so powerful had it not ended with one person sharing a piece of paper with an invitation on it!

Check out the video and below it is a link to a resource that will help you create invitations.

Invitation Cards are great tools to have for times like this

Check out the video at this link that will illustrate and train you in how to use invitation cards effectively:

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2010/04/church-invitation-cards/

Use an invitation card to connect outreach guests with your church

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Summer Business Card Invitation vard
An invitation card can turn your outreach event from a nice time to a lasting connection to your church.

A church communicator told me about a church that held a large community outreach. They had free food and fun activities for children and families and they did it all to show the community that the church and Jesus loved them. They had a great turnout, but it didn't result in an increased response in church attendance.

The church communicator became frustrated when she talked to an unchurched friend about it because when she mentioned that her church sponsored it, the friend responded, "Your church did that? I thought the city Parks and Rec department put it on."

We put in a lot of work for events like that and I understood her frustration, but I had to gently ask her if the church gave out any kind of card or flyer to people know who sponsored it and to invite them to the church. She said, "No."

Your guests are not mind-readers

That is a typical response I hear from church leaders who put on outreach events and are disappointed in the long-term results. But, if you don't give people who attend your outreach events information about who is putting on the event and what else goes on at your church they won't know. Without clear communication and a clear invitation to return all your hard work may give people a great time—but will accomplish little in connecting them to the church or introducing them to Jesus. [Read more...]