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 when 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.