March 11, 2025 • 33 mins
We explore the theological and practical foundations for creating an invitation culture in your church and why it's essential for long-term growth and sustainability.
• Churches often resist growth because people fear change and want to maintain personal relationships with everyone
• The church uniquely transforms people from consumers to contributors, unlike any other organization
• Three ways to bring people to church: announcements, invitations, and hospitality systems
• "Easy evangelism" means anyone can participate by simply inviting friends without needing theological expertise
• Identify 9 invitational opportunities throughout the year, with Christmas and Easter being natural starting points
• Create attractional sermon series that balance solid theological content with themes that interest non-believers
• Set realistic guest goals based on your church size (aim for annual guests equaling your average weekly attendance)
• Equip 10% of your congregation annually through deeper evangelism training like Everyone His Witness or Alpha
• Authenticity matters - people respond when formation is about equipping them for mission, not checking boxes
• Remember growth is an "infinite game" - there's always more to do but each step forward matters
Find peace, clarity, and companionship for your spiritual journey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman.
Here with Jack Kalberg, we getthe privilege today of walking
alongside you as we grow aninvitation culture.
If you've not listened to ourother two podcasts on branding,
we've done a lot on Net Promoterwebsite.
There's a whole bunch of really, really tangible kind of next
(00:25):
step brand awareness contentthat we've brought in the last
two weeks.
This is the third of a fourpart series and we're going to
talk about growing an invitationculture.
So, jack, just an overallstarting point why should
congregations it seems kind ofduh, but maybe it's not so much
because some churches activelyand they'll verbalize this
(00:47):
They'd rather not, they'd rathernot grow.
This is our church, I want itto remain comfortable, I want to
know everyone who's here, andyou're going to upset my
sociological you know,foundational, relational
framework If you start to leadermove into an invitation culture
.
So why should we, it seems,double?
Why should we care aboutinvitation, jack?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, there's theological reasons, there's
practical reasons, there'scultural reasons why they're
well, there's cultural reasonswhy it's resisted.
I'm going to shout out to oneof our former consultants that
we hired a while back.
Capital campaign consultantGlennon Smith told a story about
serving in a church and theywere trying to grow and expand,
(01:31):
and this sweet old lady was veryupset about it and he said,
well, don't you want more peopleto know Jesus?
And she said, well, yes, justnot here, because she liked her
small church.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
They can meet and follow Jesus somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thank you, yes, thank you very much, and you and I
can probably think of a storyrecently where we went and
consulted at a church andsomebody was really upset about
the idea of the church growingto the point where they didn't
know everybody.
I want to know everybody in mychurch and they get
uncomfortable the idea of beingso big that I can't have a
personal relationship with everysingle person in community.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, growth equals change, Jack.
Right, it does, and humanbeings generally would rather
not change.
The funny thing is, you areactively choosing long-term
suffering and maybe even thedeath of your church by not
growing an invitation culture.
But human beings are remarkableat ruining, destroying,
(02:29):
rebelling against God and hispromises and experiencing
short-term pleasure.
It really goes back to thegarden, doesn't it Jack?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Addiction.
Addiction is an example of that, right.
I mean, it's a real thing,right example of that.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Right, I mean that's well, it's a real thing, right?
God wanted this is kind of wild.
God wanted adam and eve tomultiply, and this is obviously
before the fall.
Be fruitful and multiplydisperse, multiply, yeah, yeah
grow exactly um work, but yet wewant when we continually choose
with a bite short-term pleasure, we want to be god over
(03:06):
long-term in exchange forlong-term pain, right and
churches that make this decisionto say we like it the way it is
right now.
Well, maybe it's very evidentright now in this generation
like that strategy with lessthan we've got a lot of folks in
the LCMS listening right, withless what 50% or so of our
(03:28):
congregations worshiping lessthan 50 people in worship.
Now is the time to change.
It only requires, like a handfulof people in the church, to say
no, no, no, we're going tochange the way this congregation
is perceived in our communityand we're going to be seen as a
place where you can belong andmeet Jesus here, and we're going
to start to care for felt needsand all those types of things.
(03:48):
What else to add, jack?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
So what happens is, in these sort of cultural
contexts, we start to createthese things.
I call them false dichotomies.
So a false dichotomy iscreating a false choice between
two things, right, and it's away for us to stay comfortable
in the thing that we like.
So we can't be attractional.
We have to be confessional inthe discipling church, right?
(04:12):
We don't want to be this.
We want to be this instead, notthinking that you can actually
be both of those things at thesame time.
So we actually agree, we wantyou to be discipling, we want
you to be confessional.
We support that.
We want you to be discipling.
We want you to be confessional.
We support that.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
We want people to be in deep relationship.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
We're trying to fight the false dichotomy that you
can't be two things at the sametime or multiple things at the
same time.
Church is complex.
There's a lot of things that gointo building a healthy church
and it means embracing thingsthat a lot of times people don't
allow you to embrace becausethey're creating these false
dichotomies.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, people don't allow you to embrace because
they're creating these falsedichotomies.
Yeah Well, it is complex.
I was on a business.
Our pastor, one of our pastors,jeff Sutherland, here at Christ
Greenfield, is in real estate.
He has the Jeff Sutherland showand I was the first religious
(05:08):
leader that he invited me on andthey made me reflect on the
differences between leading in achurch and leading in the
marketplace, and the biggestdifference that I can see I'll
get your take on it is thatwe're moving, and this is a
church engagement model.
We're moving consumers intocontributors In the marketplace.
It's very evident that you'regoing to always remain a
consumer.
For instance, when I go tolet's say I don't go to Target,
(05:29):
I'm thinking of a place Iactually like to shop at.
It's very evident in myrelationship to Amazon buying
books on Amazon there that I'malways going to be a consumer.
Maybe I become an author in thefuture that get my books on
there, but the majority ofpeople are only going to be a
consumer in the church.
Jesus draws us close to beconsumed by his love, his mercy,
(05:50):
his grace, to be forgiven ofall of our sins, and then he
sends us out by his spirit'spower to contribute to the
advancement of his kingdom.
No other industry does that,and that is why the church is
the most powerful engine forgood when she is released and
people move.
Yes, to be a consumer, but yes,I'm now partnering,
(06:10):
contributing to the mission ofGod.
It's a wild move.
Anything more to add to that,jack?
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I would say adding to that is equipping hundreds and
maybe even thousands of peoplein the local context to work for
free, and not only to work forfree, but work for free in a way
that gives your life away rightRather than you said the word
consumer rather than justseeking comfort, actually for
free, going into uncomfortableenvironments and giving your
(06:38):
life away.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I can give you countless stories of people that
had done that.
Jack have chosen, by theSpirit's power, a life of
adventure, a calling out intothe unknown, and they experience
growth and joy, purpose andmeaning.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It actually attracts people in many cases there's an
attractional component to it.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
You look at Jeff Nedry, who leads on Thursday
night at Arla Mesa.
There in Tempe, jeff runs afull-time print shop.
He and his wife, michelle arekilling it.
They print for us in manychurches and other businesses,
et cetera.
And yet every Tuesday andThursday definitely every
Thursday you're going to findJeff caring for and he's not
ordained, he's learning, buthe's pastoring a group of people
(07:24):
, two thirds of whom areexperiencing life out on the
streets of Tempe that night andhe is the most joy-filled on
fire passionate follower ofJesus.
Just about that I know here inour community.
Why?
Because he gives his life awayconsistently on behalf of the
one it's like.
The spirit of the crucified andrisen sacrificial savior lives
(07:45):
in him, jack, which he veryevidently does.
So all right, let's get into it.
For local churches to surviveand grow long-term, they need to
be successful at attracting newmembers to the church.
So a quick overview there arethree ways that we can bring
more people to the churchAnnouncements, invitations and
hospitality system.
Let's start on announcements,jack.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So yeah, announcements was just our
previous episode.
That was about marketing.
So when we get out there and wehave a billboard or a banner on
the street or a sign on thefront road or Google
advertisements and a website,those are announcements.
We are announcing to thecommunity that there is an
opportunity for you to connectwith us here at the local church
(08:27):
, and that's either for aworship service or some other
type of fun thing or some othertype of thing tied to a felt
need that a person's goingthrough.
So we try to identify what thatmight be and we create a system
to announce hey, here's anopportunity to do this here in
this location or here inconnection with our people,
right?
So it's all about marketing.
(08:48):
I would say, if you haven't hada chance already, you know,
before getting into this episode, it's really good to pause, go
back and watch those two priorepisodes, because we're building
on that for this episode.
But that would be all aboutannouncements.
Good, yeah, that's a summary.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So invitations, building an invitation culture.
Yeah, that's a summary.
So invitations, building aninvitation culture.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, that's what we're getting into right now.
So invitation culture, a reallygood I want you to think, a
really good synonym for the wordinvitation is evangelism, right
?
So this is getting.
This is kind of reframing ourthoughts around evangelism and
what we're going to be saying isthere's kind of two ways, two
approaches towards evangelism avery sort of low threshold way
(09:29):
that people can get involved,and one is a more high threshold
way.
We actually support both ways.
We want to see both ways thrivein the local church.
And why is that necessary?
You know, as we wrap, we'lltalk more as we're wrapping up
on it.
But you know there's people thatare in different stages of
their faith journey, differentlevels of competence and
(09:50):
confidence with sharing theirfaith.
Can we have strategies thatequip people, regardless of
where they are on that journey,to have some type of
participation in evangelism?
So I call it easy evangelism.
Easy evangelism is you don'thave to have all the confessions
memorized, you don't have to bea master of apologetics, you
(10:13):
don't even necessarily have toknow, like really, really good,
the difference between thingslike law and gospel and all that
kind of stuff.
You just have to invite yourfriends to church.
That's like the lowest hangingfruit in terms of evangelism.
And why is that important?
Because when you're beinginvited in right, you're being
invited into an environmentwhere they are receiving the
(10:38):
word of God right, the gospelpreached to them, and the
sacraments we call it word andsacrament right.
This is and they'll get toexperience it.
You might not be able to givethat to them as a, let's say, a
brand new believer, but throughyour passion and your invitation
you can invite others into it.
So it's the easiest way, theeasiest threshold, to get people
involved.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, let's pause there.
I think there was a being apastor almost now for two
decades, jack, maybe a decade 12.
Well, maybe when I first cameto Christ Greenfield, I think
the culture at large, maybe weweren't as forthright with
setting people's expectationsthat anybody could and should
(11:19):
invite their friends to church,because I think in the culture
there was a slightly moreagitation toward the local
congregation.
Right, we may have, and maybein some regards, rightly so.
You look back at books likeUnChristian right, they're
hypocritical, homophobic,they're known for all the things
that they're against, blah,blah, blah.
So you've got you.
(11:40):
Better spend a long period oftime getting to know the person,
building trust and all thosetypes of things before you would
ever dare to say, hey, whydon't you come to my church?
Right, we were.
Just the fear of being rejectedstifled that voice.
But I think today there is ashift, as as the world, and I
(12:00):
think COVID, honestly, was apart of that shift.
I'm going to die.
I need to be in a place wherepeople are talking about real
things, real struggles, and forchurches that embrace, hey,
we're going to talk about griefand addiction and loneliness and
depression and anxiety.
Right, for churches, that whichthe Bible talks about all those
(12:22):
things, so you don't have allthe time all of the evidence of
the law.
This, I guess, to bring it intoa Lutheran framework.
It's very evident that the lawis crushing people in our
culture and they need to be in aplace where they hear the
gospel.
So I think you use the wordeasy.
Some people may take issue withthat, but regardless, I think
(12:45):
it's the because we want peopleto meet and follow Jesus.
Right, and Jesus is a church.
Let me finish, jack.
I think it's the Samaritanwoman.
Like it was an easy invitationGo and tell everyone what I've
done for you.
And she did it and the worldwas changed.
That's it.
It's easy.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Here we go.
She didn't have to have aseminary degree to do that.
She just shared what happenedto her, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So I agree with that.
Why, now, tim, you're a pastorhere.
You're like, really really welltrained, you know how to preach
really really well.
And here's the reality is thatthere's a very limited number of
unbelievers that you know.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah, a very limited number ofunbelievers that you know.
But the church, the community,knows tons of unbelievers, isn't
(13:30):
?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
that interesting.
I know unbelievers at the golfcourse Right and at the places I
frequent Right, but my day inand day out is not golfing,
unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Right no.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I'm actually very fortunate, I don't golf every
day.
That's miserable.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So the community knows tons of unbelievers.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That's right.
God has put them intorelationship with those people
for a purpose right.
The church is the priesthood ofall believers, right?
And what does that mean?
Priesthood of all believers,this is Luther.
Hey, you can share the gospeland you can pray for people, and
especially doing that for thepurpose of leading people into
faith.
That's been given to allpriests.
(14:06):
Now, you might be terrible atit, right, but the fact that
you're terrible at it doesn'tchange that.
That's your identity as abeliever.
So, if that's your identity asa believer, why, now, would not
the church seek to be really,really good at equipping people
to do this?
We need to be thinking aboutthat in terms of our job
description as church staff, aspastors, as a church body, that
(14:31):
this is a job description, thatwe have to equip people to be
good at what they actually havebeen objectively called to do
through being part of thispriesthood of all believers.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, Well, I'm seeing it.
We're seeing it at ChristGreenfield.
More people right now areinviting their friends to come
and come and meet Jesus.
You know it's so easyevangelism.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Let's unpack this Um, go into it, let's, let's talk
about um, the steps to do thisRight.
So, as we unpack it right, evenwith minimal theological
training.
But hey, you're still connectedto word and sacrament, you're
still coming.
You can be, you're stillconnected to Word and Sacrament,
(15:11):
you're still coming.
You can be part of evangelismby inviting people.
And we start there with.
This gets us back full circlewith brand right how eager are
people to recommend yourministry to people?
We talked about in the firstepisode, the net promoter score.
The net promoter score measureshow eager like in fact, how
eager people are to recommendand you can use this as a
product, but we're using, as achurch, the ministry of Christ
(15:34):
Greenfield to friends andfamilies.
And the people that are sayingnine and 10, these are the
people that are actually,statistically speaking, the
people that are willing to dothat, eager to do that.
They might just need someequipping on how to do that, but
they've already expressed adesire that they're eager to do
that Right.
So, again, go back to thatfirst episode if you want to
(15:54):
learn more about net promoterscore.
But if you don't have a reallygood brand right, your quote
unquote easy evangelism strategyis going to be a lot more
difficult, right.
So there's an opportunity.
Polish up your brand.
Make sure that your ministry isthe type of ministry that
people are really enjoying, thatpeople are in love with the
(16:16):
ministry that you're doing, thatthey're excited about the
mission that you're putting outand the vision that you're
putting out and the hospitalitythat they experience when they
come here and the quality of theworship, the quality of the
discipleship programs.
Make sure that that's great andthen build on that.
Create an easy invitationsystem.
Now we'll unpack the steps todo that.
So, like I said, first is thebranding the net promoter score.
(16:37):
Second is identify your mostinvitational events in the
calendar year.
What are the things that is theeasiest to invite people to?
So, right off the bat, wealready know, culturally
speaking, in America, christmasand Easter are very easy
invitational events.
A lot of people who still don'teven call themselves Christians
(17:00):
are willing to come and checkout Christmas and Easter
services and we see huge spikesin guests coming for those types
of services.
It's a great on-ramp to invitepeople to.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's remarkable, as I look back over the last 12
years here, how many of our keyleaders first came to Christ
Greenfield at Christmas and orChristmas Eve or Easter.
It's remarkable.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
You might not like it , because you might be thinking
to yourself well, christiansshould be coming to church all
the time.
Well, this is just the realityof it.
This is just you know.
So just deal with the realityof it and make the best out of
it.
It's an attractional time ofthe year to bring people on
board.
So you got to make sure thatthose services are phenomenal,
that you've got great.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and pause on that real quick, jack, because a
lot of pastors can get kind ofsnarky that your worship
attendance is doubling, you know, and you kind of come in with
this kind of oh my God, well,we'll see if anybody comes back
next week.
No, like rejoice that one getsfound right.
There's a 99 in one kind of andthere will be people.
(18:03):
If it's a great experience onChristmas Eve and Easter, that
will continue to check out yourchurch.
Rejoice over that rather thanyour worship declining by 100%
or whatever the next week.
So go on.
What other invitations Mother's?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Day is a big one.
That's probably next toChristmas and Easter, the most
easy service to invite people to.
A lot of moms want their kidstaking them to church on
Mother's Day.
They're dressed up in theirfinest and they're taking their
photos and stuff and it's great.
So let's feed on that.
Let's keep inviting on thatAttractional sermon series.
(18:33):
Now, this might get people alittle triggered here,
especially in our confessionalcontext here.
But I just want to be veryclear when we talk about a
sermon series that the firstpurpose for preaching is always
to have really good discipleshipas part of that Really good
solid law gospel, really goodtransformative preaching.
But there's also a piece of itis how am I inviting people from
(18:54):
outside the church to hearabout this?
We had a great conversation aswe were talking about we got a
series coming up about a year orso going through the Old
Testament, some of the heroes ofthe Old Testament, the
patriarchs of the Old Testament,some of the prophets and the
kings and stuff, and it's likehow do we go in really deep
actually talking about thisperson and what we can learn
(19:16):
from a law gospel perspective?
But also what are some of thethemes, the attractional themes
that people might be interestedin hearing about.
That brings people intoinvitation to hear about it,
right?
So you got to kind of do boththings at the same time.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, no, that's good .
Well, here's our.
This will be released probablyduring Lent.
Here's it.
We're walking through Mark,finding refuge in Christ, and
we're seasonally sensitive, sowe're not always on the pericope
, but we're definitely in theseason of the church here and
this is our Lenten journey.
This is a piece our creativeteam Look at this awesome
artistic piece If you'rewatching on YouTube.
So so beautiful.
(19:51):
Well done, god's presence withus through the inevitable storms
of life as we journey throughMark.
So we should publicize thatseries.
People will be attracted togoing on a Lenten journey and I
think still within the widercommunity there is still a
corporate consciousness of maybeAsh Wednesday and beginning the
season of Lent Fat Tuesday isstill kind of a thing you know
(20:12):
down in New Orleans and as we goon this 40-day journey to the
cross and the empty tomb ofJesus.
So, yes, put together really,really compelling sermon series
that are seasonally sensitive.
And I think this is where theLCMS can really shine today,
because we are a liturgical andcalendared church body, right,
so capitalize on those churchseasons for sure.
(20:34):
Anything else, jack?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, so in addition to that, there are what I call
attractional events, right.
Sometimes the event isattractional because it's
something fun to do, that letsyour kids burn off some steam
and you can go and just have fun.
And other times the event'sattractional because it's
dealing with something that's adeep felt need that you have,
like maybe issues with marriageor sometimes addiction or grief.
(20:57):
But a good rule of thumb is forchurches to host around nine
attractional events in the year,and when I talk to our staff
I'm like, hey, for me Christmasand Easter is in there, right.
So there's other things HarvestFest, dbs, what are those things
that are like very easy, easy,low-hanging fruit attractional
things that people feelcomfortable inviting their
(21:20):
friends to it.
We get sometimes close to acouple thousand people coming to
our Harvest Fest.
It's very easy to invite peopleto that.
There's no doctrinalrequirement to come and, you
know, check out our Harvest Festand you know, and be in the
petting zoo and check out thebounce houses and all that kind
of stuff.
It's just a chance to be infellowship with the community.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So let me let me.
Yeah, people are going to come.
They're coming.
Yeah Well, let me.
Sorry to interrupt, but there'sa lot of leaders that are
listening that are pastoringchurches of 50 to maybe 200,
jack.
And they look at you you'regetting 2000 people to come to
your thing it didn't start thatway, right Well, obviously, yeah
, it didn't start that way.
So what would you say to someonewho right now has and I would
(22:00):
say the devil, it's a lie sayingthere's no way I could do nine
attractions, like I don't havethe team to do it, blah, blah,
blah.
Like what would you say to thatperson?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah, I mean do three , do four, you know.
Do a barbecue, do a communitybarbecue.
You know you got somewherebetween 150 people.
Can your community of 50 peoplehost a community barbecue and
invite the community to it?
No strings attached, right?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And if you get 50 people or 25 people, you count
that as a win, like we'regrowing.
There's an opportunity for themto have a great experience with
real people eating a steak.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
you know that's great , so let's be clear, like when
you're setting goals for howmany guests that you're trying
to bring into church for a year.
Those goals are set based onthe size of your church.
Generally speaking, your goalis to bring in as many guests as
you have in worship.
So in a year you want as manyguests as you have on average
weekly worship.
If your average weekly worshipis 50 people and you bring in 50
(22:59):
guests in a year, that is ahuge win for a church your size.
Other churches that goal is alot bigger because it's a bigger
church and it needs to have abigger goal for it to still have
continuous growth.
So you know, other churches mayhave to bring in 500 people,
800 people.
We need 850 at ChristGreenfield to be able to have
(23:20):
that goal.
So it's all scaled to yourorganization, yep.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we got Net Promoter.
We have Knowing.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Your Net Promoter.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Events.
And now just another strategyjust asking people to invite,
Ask people to invite.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So this is like so you know people respond to a
request and you can create animportant narrative to people
like, hey, you play a role inevangelism just by inviting
people.
Right, we're inviting people inthe community.
Some ministries say, hey, wewant people to belong before
(23:57):
they believe.
I want people to believe.
But hospitality does say youbelong here and if you're
struggling with faith, guesswhat that means?
You're a sinner.
Where do sinners belong?
They belong in church.
So let's create belonging forpeople and let's equip people to
invite their friends byactually asking them to do that.
(24:20):
Now we did a really successfulcampaign this last Christmas.
We put a lot of intentionalityinto our invitation campaign.
We, for several weeks leadingup to Christmas, asked the
community to invite your friends.
We had people sign up with atext program, kind of sharing
who it is that we called it aninvitation challenge.
(24:41):
They would get onto like alittle chat bot and they would
share who it is that they'replanning to invite to church and
the little chat bot would givethem some tips on how to do that
effectively.
And they would be invited intoa prayer campaign.
They'd share some devotionalsand we would do like a daily
prayer, praying for invitation.
So getting the whole churchcorporately behind this and we
(25:03):
had a record number of guestscome to Christmas.
We beat prior years by threetimes by doing that.
So equipping the congregationto do that and actually value
doing that is a big deal.
So this is again culture isbeing formed by what you
actually invite people to do.
Culture is behavioral.
So being an invitational churchmeans that your culture is
(25:24):
invitation invitational, whichis actually inviting people to
do the invitation.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah Amen.
So we talked about that.
That's awesome.
We talk about easy evangelism.
Is there a hard?
Is there a hard evangelism?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Oh, okay, let's think you know, a little bit surface
level.
So a low threshold is the easystuff.
The higher threshold isactually going, you know, life
on life and actually equippingpeople with intentionality to
have faith conversations withpeople.
So let's talk about an areawhere a lot of churches in the
(25:58):
LCMS context do this reallyreally, really well.
It's called catechism, right?
So a lot of Lutheran churchesdo a great job catechizing their
kids through a one to two yearprocess.
Our process is two years Tim.
When we do our catechism, ourconfirmation program, we require
parents to attend.
Isn't that interesting, ourparents attend and they're
(26:19):
learning the same things thatthe kids are learning.
Because we want to teach theparents, to reinforce these
things.
We recognize that parents aredisciple makers.
That means the parents aresharing their faith with their
kids, right.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And giving them tools to articulate.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, you give them tools Exactly.
And if you're thinking there'sno way I could get my parents to
do that, it probably means youhave a low challenge culture.
And uh, and we, I inheritedactually inviting shout out to
pastor Weisman from back in theday here at Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
We inherited wildly successful, in my opinion.
What a, what a gift, what agift.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So that's one opportunity is to go through
confirmation, equipping throughcatechesis and through Luther's
small catechism and we get intothe master narrative of
scripture, you know, to helpthem be able to, in an elevator
or a longer form, tell the wholestory of the Bible.
So that's great.
Anything else.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah.
So a really good goal thatchurches could take on for
themselves if they're reallyserious about evangelism which
they should be is that you wouldhave an evangelism curriculum,
right?
So an actual process ofteaching people to be confident
enough about articulating theirfaith that they can share that
(27:30):
with other people, eitherone-on-one or one in small group
, and have a curriculum for thatand then try to get 10% of your
congregation through thatcurriculum every year, right?
So if you're a church of 100people, can you get 10 people to
participate in that every year?
That would be a win for you inyour context, and there's a
(27:54):
pre-existing curriculum thatexists.
I went through and I searchedfor things that are actually
designed from an LCMSperspective.
So the LCMS has its ownevangelism curriculum called
Everyone His Witness.
You can check that out.
There's another really goodbook called Joining Jesus on His
Mission by Greg Finke, whichyou can create.
I believe there's a companionsmall group curriculum that goes
through that Very, veryconsistent with our Lutheran
(28:17):
faith.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Lutheran.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Hour also produces great content, absolutely.
What else?
Absolutely, lutheran Hour hasgot great, great resources for
that.
And then another thing you canconsider doing as a church this
is less well it could be itdepends on how you set it up but
running an alpha course.
Alpha courses are reallydesigned for evangelism.
(28:42):
It's used a lot in non-denomchurches, but let's.
I just want to be clear thatthe curriculum itself is
designed to be genericallyChristian and so it is very
adaptable to be led in aLutheran context.
You just want to make sure theperson leading it really knows
their theology really well whenpeople have questions about
stuff right.
So either having somebody withpastoral formation or somebody
(29:05):
who's got really really goodtheology, a lay leader, that's
really solid.
Running that class and you'llsee it's got a good brand
attached to it because it'sdesigned to be marketed to
people who are exploring faith,and a lot of churches have just
given really great testimony interms of reaching people outside
the church through that program.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
So that's great, jack , thanks for putting this
together.
It's been a lot of fun.
So let's build an invitationalculture.
It can be easy or it can bedeep.
Hopefully we're getting alarger percentage as time goes
on.
We're a growing community,we're always learning, and so
hopefully we're offering.
I'm seeing more likewillingness for people to go
into classes for deeperformation today, and that's a
(29:49):
beautiful, beautiful invitation,right, and they want it not
just for themselves.
This is the heart that we'reseeing, at least in our context.
They want it not just forthemselves, but they want it for
their family and for theirneighbors and becoming more
articulate, telling the greateststory of all time God's love
for us in Jesus Christ.
Any closing comments?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
No, I think you're right, tim.
It's like people might beresistant to a formation process
if it's just I'm just checkinga box so they can have
permission to have a membershipstatus in the church.
But if it's for you, if it'sabout equipping you to
participate in the GreatCommission, all of a sudden I
think you see the willingness tobe a part of that radically
(30:27):
change.
We're forming you so that youcan form others, that you can
invite others, that you can carefor others.
This is about equipping youprocess, not something that
we're trying to extract from youand make sure you're checking
boxes Right.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So that's the key thing Humans can sniff that.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, humans can sniff inauthenticity.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yep, and when you think about what we're talking
about easy evangelism or deepevangelism, embracing both what
you're doing now is you'reinviting the entire church to be
part of this process, theentire church to be part of this
culture, which I think is abeautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Exactly Well, raising up the priesthood of all
believers.
This is part three of four onbuilding an invitational culture
.
We pray.
You found this helpful.
If so, please like, subscribe,comment, and this helps get the
word out.
We want to have very, verypractical I think these are
being released mostly on FridaysVery, very practical, slightly
shorter.
(31:22):
Maybe you're going just acrossthe city and you could just take
that one next step, becausereally that's all leadership is.
It's like I'm trying to find myway forward.
And here's the thing, jack,it's an infinite game.
There's never you're never donewith this.
So if you, as a leader, arethinking, wow, I can't wait
until this is all set and thenI'm going to be able to be done
and rest, you should rest on theseventh day, god rested, but
then we continue to work whileit is day, and I think that's
(31:45):
sort of a missional orientation,confessing group of people,
leaders, in the whatever sizecontext you're at, saying I know
we have to grow.
That's the humble heart fromthe Holy Spirit.
I know we have to grow and wecan't do everything, but we can
certainly do something.
And hopefully we gave you oneor two things, the next steps
that you could try to reallyhelp change the perception of
(32:06):
your congregation in thecommunity.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Wonderful work, jack.
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
God bless Tim.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
Unite Leadership Collective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
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Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
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(32:35):
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.
Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
This is Lead Time.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman.
Here with Jack Kalberg, we getthe privilege today of walking
alongside you as we grow aninvitation culture.
If you've not listened to ourother two podcasts on branding,
we've done a lot on Net Promoterwebsite.
There's a whole bunch of really, really tangible kind of next
(00:25):
step brand awareness contentthat we've brought in the last
two weeks.
This is the third of a fourpart series and we're going to
talk about growing an invitationculture.
So, jack, just an overallstarting point why should
congregations it seems kind ofduh, but maybe it's not so much
because some churches activelyand they'll verbalize this
(00:47):
They'd rather not, they'd rathernot grow.
This is our church, I want itto remain comfortable, I want to
know everyone who's here, andyou're going to upset my
sociological you know,foundational, relational
framework If you start to leadermove into an invitation culture
.
So why should we, it seems,double?
Why should we care aboutinvitation, jack?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Well, there's theological reasons, there's
practical reasons, there'scultural reasons why they're
well, there's cultural reasonswhy it's resisted.
I'm going to shout out to oneof our former consultants that
we hired a while back.
Capital campaign consultantGlennon Smith told a story about
serving in a church and theywere trying to grow and expand,
(01:31):
and this sweet old lady was veryupset about it and he said,
well, don't you want more peopleto know Jesus?
And she said, well, yes, justnot here, because she liked her
small church.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
They can meet and follow Jesus somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Thank you, yes, thank you very much, and you and I
can probably think of a storyrecently where we went and
consulted at a church andsomebody was really upset about
the idea of the church growingto the point where they didn't
know everybody.
I want to know everybody in mychurch and they get
uncomfortable the idea of beingso big that I can't have a
personal relationship with everysingle person in community.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, growth equals change, Jack.
Right, it does, and humanbeings generally would rather
not change.
The funny thing is, you areactively choosing long-term
suffering and maybe even thedeath of your church by not
growing an invitation culture.
But human beings are remarkableat ruining, destroying,
(02:29):
rebelling against God and hispromises and experiencing
short-term pleasure.
It really goes back to thegarden, doesn't it Jack?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Addiction.
Addiction is an example of that, right.
I mean, it's a real thing,right example of that.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Right, I mean that's well, it's a real thing, right?
God wanted this is kind of wild.
God wanted adam and eve tomultiply, and this is obviously
before the fall.
Be fruitful and multiplydisperse, multiply, yeah, yeah
grow exactly um work, but yet wewant when we continually choose
with a bite short-term pleasure, we want to be god over
(03:06):
long-term in exchange forlong-term pain, right and
churches that make this decisionto say we like it the way it is
right now.
Well, maybe it's very evidentright now in this generation
like that strategy with lessthan we've got a lot of folks in
the LCMS listening right, withless what 50% or so of our
(03:28):
congregations worshiping lessthan 50 people in worship.
Now is the time to change.
It only requires, like a handfulof people in the church, to say
no, no, no, we're going tochange the way this congregation
is perceived in our communityand we're going to be seen as a
place where you can belong andmeet Jesus here, and we're going
to start to care for felt needsand all those types of things.
(03:48):
What else to add, jack?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
So what happens is, in these sort of cultural
contexts, we start to createthese things.
I call them false dichotomies.
So a false dichotomy iscreating a false choice between
two things, right, and it's away for us to stay comfortable
in the thing that we like.
So we can't be attractional.
We have to be confessional inthe discipling church, right?
(04:12):
We don't want to be this.
We want to be this instead, notthinking that you can actually
be both of those things at thesame time.
So we actually agree, we wantyou to be discipling, we want
you to be confessional.
We support that.
We want you to be discipling.
We want you to be confessional.
We support that.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
We want people to be in deep relationship.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
We're trying to fight the false dichotomy that you
can't be two things at the sametime or multiple things at the
same time.
Church is complex.
There's a lot of things that gointo building a healthy church
and it means embracing thingsthat a lot of times people don't
allow you to embrace becausethey're creating these false
dichotomies.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, people don't allow you to embrace because
they're creating these falsedichotomies.
Yeah Well, it is complex.
I was on a business.
Our pastor, one of our pastors,jeff Sutherland, here at Christ
Greenfield, is in real estate.
He has the Jeff Sutherland showand I was the first religious
(05:08):
leader that he invited me on andthey made me reflect on the
differences between leading in achurch and leading in the
marketplace, and the biggestdifference that I can see I'll
get your take on it is thatwe're moving, and this is a
church engagement model.
We're moving consumers intocontributors In the marketplace.
It's very evident that you'regoing to always remain a
consumer.
For instance, when I go tolet's say I don't go to Target,
(05:29):
I'm thinking of a place Iactually like to shop at.
It's very evident in myrelationship to Amazon buying
books on Amazon there that I'malways going to be a consumer.
Maybe I become an author in thefuture that get my books on
there, but the majority ofpeople are only going to be a
consumer in the church.
Jesus draws us close to beconsumed by his love, his mercy,
(05:50):
his grace, to be forgiven ofall of our sins, and then he
sends us out by his spirit'spower to contribute to the
advancement of his kingdom.
No other industry does that,and that is why the church is
the most powerful engine forgood when she is released and
people move.
Yes, to be a consumer, but yes,I'm now partnering,
(06:10):
contributing to the mission ofGod.
It's a wild move.
Anything more to add to that,jack?
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
I would say adding to that is equipping hundreds and
maybe even thousands of peoplein the local context to work for
free, and not only to work forfree, but work for free in a way
that gives your life away rightRather than you said the word
consumer rather than justseeking comfort, actually for
free, going into uncomfortableenvironments and giving your
(06:38):
life away.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
And I can give you countless stories of people that
had done that.
Jack have chosen, by theSpirit's power, a life of
adventure, a calling out intothe unknown, and they experience
growth and joy, purpose andmeaning.
It's unbelievable, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
It actually attracts people in many cases there's an
attractional component to it.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
You look at Jeff Nedry, who leads on Thursday
night at Arla Mesa.
There in Tempe, jeff runs afull-time print shop.
He and his wife, michelle arekilling it.
They print for us in manychurches and other businesses,
et cetera.
And yet every Tuesday andThursday definitely every
Thursday you're going to findJeff caring for and he's not
ordained, he's learning, buthe's pastoring a group of people
(07:24):
, two thirds of whom areexperiencing life out on the
streets of Tempe that night andhe is the most joy-filled on
fire passionate follower ofJesus.
Just about that I know here inour community.
Why?
Because he gives his life awayconsistently on behalf of the
one it's like.
The spirit of the crucified andrisen sacrificial savior lives
(07:45):
in him, jack, which he veryevidently does.
So all right, let's get into it.
For local churches to surviveand grow long-term, they need to
be successful at attracting newmembers to the church.
So a quick overview there arethree ways that we can bring
more people to the churchAnnouncements, invitations and
hospitality system.
Let's start on announcements,jack.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
So yeah, announcements was just our
previous episode.
That was about marketing.
So when we get out there and wehave a billboard or a banner on
the street or a sign on thefront road or Google
advertisements and a website,those are announcements.
We are announcing to thecommunity that there is an
opportunity for you to connectwith us here at the local church
(08:27):
, and that's either for aworship service or some other
type of fun thing or some othertype of thing tied to a felt
need that a person's goingthrough.
So we try to identify what thatmight be and we create a system
to announce hey, here's anopportunity to do this here in
this location or here inconnection with our people,
right?
So it's all about marketing.
(08:48):
I would say, if you haven't hada chance already, you know,
before getting into this episode, it's really good to pause, go
back and watch those two priorepisodes, because we're building
on that for this episode.
But that would be all aboutannouncements.
Good, yeah, that's a summary.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
So invitations, building an invitation culture.
Yeah, that's a summary.
So invitations, building aninvitation culture.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, that's what we're getting into right now.
So invitation culture, a reallygood I want you to think, a
really good synonym for the wordinvitation is evangelism, right
?
So this is getting.
This is kind of reframing ourthoughts around evangelism and
what we're going to be saying isthere's kind of two ways, two
approaches towards evangelism avery sort of low threshold way
(09:29):
that people can get involved,and one is a more high threshold
way.
We actually support both ways.
We want to see both ways thrivein the local church.
And why is that necessary?
You know, as we wrap, we'lltalk more as we're wrapping up
on it.
But you know there's people thatare in different stages of
their faith journey, differentlevels of competence and
(09:50):
confidence with sharing theirfaith.
Can we have strategies thatequip people, regardless of
where they are on that journey,to have some type of
participation in evangelism?
So I call it easy evangelism.
Easy evangelism is you don'thave to have all the confessions
memorized, you don't have to bea master of apologetics, you
(10:13):
don't even necessarily have toknow, like really, really good,
the difference between thingslike law and gospel and all that
kind of stuff.
You just have to invite yourfriends to church.
That's like the lowest hangingfruit in terms of evangelism.
And why is that important?
Because when you're beinginvited in right, you're being
invited into an environmentwhere they are receiving the
(10:38):
word of God right, the gospelpreached to them, and the
sacraments we call it word andsacrament right.
This is and they'll get toexperience it.
You might not be able to givethat to them as a, let's say, a
brand new believer, but throughyour passion and your invitation
you can invite others into it.
So it's the easiest way, theeasiest threshold, to get people
involved.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Yeah, let's pause there.
I think there was a being apastor almost now for two
decades, jack, maybe a decade 12.
Well, maybe when I first cameto Christ Greenfield, I think
the culture at large, maybe weweren't as forthright with
setting people's expectationsthat anybody could and should
(11:19):
invite their friends to church,because I think in the culture
there was a slightly moreagitation toward the local
congregation.
Right, we may have, and maybein some regards, rightly so.
You look back at books likeUnChristian right, they're
hypocritical, homophobic,they're known for all the things
that they're against, blah,blah, blah.
So you've got you.
(11:40):
Better spend a long period oftime getting to know the person,
building trust and all thosetypes of things before you would
ever dare to say, hey, whydon't you come to my church?
Right, we were.
Just the fear of being rejectedstifled that voice.
But I think today there is ashift, as as the world, and I
(12:00):
think COVID, honestly, was apart of that shift.
I'm going to die.
I need to be in a place wherepeople are talking about real
things, real struggles, and forchurches that embrace, hey,
we're going to talk about griefand addiction and loneliness and
depression and anxiety.
Right, for churches, that whichthe Bible talks about all those
(12:22):
things, so you don't have allthe time all of the evidence of
the law.
This, I guess, to bring it intoa Lutheran framework.
It's very evident that the lawis crushing people in our
culture and they need to be in aplace where they hear the
gospel.
So I think you use the wordeasy.
Some people may take issue withthat, but regardless, I think
(12:45):
it's the because we want peopleto meet and follow Jesus.
Right, and Jesus is a church.
Let me finish, jack.
I think it's the Samaritanwoman.
Like it was an easy invitationGo and tell everyone what I've
done for you.
And she did it and the worldwas changed.
That's it.
It's easy.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Here we go.
She didn't have to have aseminary degree to do that.
She just shared what happenedto her, and that was it.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So I agree with that.
Why, now, tim, you're a pastorhere.
You're like, really really welltrained, you know how to preach
really really well.
And here's the reality is thatthere's a very limited number of
unbelievers that you know.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah, a very limited number ofunbelievers that you know.
But the church, the community,knows tons of unbelievers, isn't
(13:30):
?
Speaker 2 (13:30):
that interesting.
I know unbelievers at the golfcourse Right and at the places I
frequent Right, but my day inand day out is not golfing,
unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Right no.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
I'm actually very fortunate, I don't golf every
day.
That's miserable.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
So the community knows tons of unbelievers.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
That's right.
God has put them intorelationship with those people
for a purpose right.
The church is the priesthood ofall believers, right?
And what does that mean?
Priesthood of all believers,this is Luther.
Hey, you can share the gospeland you can pray for people, and
especially doing that for thepurpose of leading people into
faith.
That's been given to allpriests.
(14:06):
Now, you might be terrible atit, right, but the fact that
you're terrible at it doesn'tchange that.
That's your identity as abeliever.
So, if that's your identity asa believer, why, now, would not
the church seek to be really,really good at equipping people
to do this?
We need to be thinking aboutthat in terms of our job
description as church staff, aspastors, as a church body, that
(14:31):
this is a job description, thatwe have to equip people to be
good at what they actually havebeen objectively called to do
through being part of thispriesthood of all believers.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Yeah, Well, I'm seeing it.
We're seeing it at ChristGreenfield.
More people right now areinviting their friends to come
and come and meet Jesus.
You know it's so easyevangelism.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Let's unpack this Um, go into it, let's, let's talk
about um, the steps to do thisRight.
So, as we unpack it right, evenwith minimal theological
training.
But hey, you're still connectedto word and sacrament, you're
still coming.
You can be, you're stillconnected to Word and Sacrament,
(15:11):
you're still coming.
You can be part of evangelismby inviting people.
And we start there with.
This gets us back full circlewith brand right how eager are
people to recommend yourministry to people?
We talked about in the firstepisode, the net promoter score.
The net promoter score measureshow eager like in fact, how
eager people are to recommendand you can use this as a
product, but we're using, as achurch, the ministry of Christ
(15:34):
Greenfield to friends andfamilies.
And the people that are sayingnine and 10, these are the
people that are actually,statistically speaking, the
people that are willing to dothat, eager to do that.
They might just need someequipping on how to do that, but
they've already expressed adesire that they're eager to do
that Right.
So, again, go back to thatfirst episode if you want to
(15:54):
learn more about net promoterscore.
But if you don't have a reallygood brand right, your quote
unquote easy evangelism strategyis going to be a lot more
difficult, right.
So there's an opportunity.
Polish up your brand.
Make sure that your ministry isthe type of ministry that
people are really enjoying, thatpeople are in love with the
(16:16):
ministry that you're doing, thatthey're excited about the
mission that you're putting outand the vision that you're
putting out and the hospitalitythat they experience when they
come here and the quality of theworship, the quality of the
discipleship programs.
Make sure that that's great andthen build on that.
Create an easy invitationsystem.
Now we'll unpack the steps todo that.
So, like I said, first is thebranding the net promoter score.
(16:37):
Second is identify your mostinvitational events in the
calendar year.
What are the things that is theeasiest to invite people to?
So, right off the bat, wealready know, culturally
speaking, in America, christmasand Easter are very easy
invitational events.
A lot of people who still don'teven call themselves Christians
(17:00):
are willing to come and checkout Christmas and Easter
services and we see huge spikesin guests coming for those types
of services.
It's a great on-ramp to invitepeople to.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It's remarkable, as I look back over the last 12
years here, how many of our keyleaders first came to Christ
Greenfield at Christmas and orChristmas Eve or Easter.
It's remarkable.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
You might not like it , because you might be thinking
to yourself well, christiansshould be coming to church all
the time.
Well, this is just the realityof it.
This is just you know.
So just deal with the realityof it and make the best out of
it.
It's an attractional time ofthe year to bring people on
board.
So you got to make sure thatthose services are phenomenal,
that you've got great.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, and pause on that real quick, jack, because a
lot of pastors can get kind ofsnarky that your worship
attendance is doubling, you know, and you kind of come in with
this kind of oh my God, well,we'll see if anybody comes back
next week.
No, like rejoice that one getsfound right.
There's a 99 in one kind of andthere will be people.
(18:03):
If it's a great experience onChristmas Eve and Easter, that
will continue to check out yourchurch.
Rejoice over that rather thanyour worship declining by 100%
or whatever the next week.
So go on.
What other invitations Mother's?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Day is a big one.
That's probably next toChristmas and Easter, the most
easy service to invite people to.
A lot of moms want their kidstaking them to church on
Mother's Day.
They're dressed up in theirfinest and they're taking their
photos and stuff and it's great.
So let's feed on that.
Let's keep inviting on thatAttractional sermon series.
(18:33):
Now, this might get people alittle triggered here,
especially in our confessionalcontext here.
But I just want to be veryclear when we talk about a
sermon series that the firstpurpose for preaching is always
to have really good discipleshipas part of that Really good
solid law gospel, really goodtransformative preaching.
But there's also a piece of itis how am I inviting people from
(18:54):
outside the church to hearabout this?
We had a great conversation aswe were talking about we got a
series coming up about a year orso going through the Old
Testament, some of the heroes ofthe Old Testament, the
patriarchs of the Old Testament,some of the prophets and the
kings and stuff, and it's likehow do we go in really deep
actually talking about thisperson and what we can learn
(19:16):
from a law gospel perspective?
But also what are some of thethemes, the attractional themes
that people might be interestedin hearing about.
That brings people intoinvitation to hear about it,
right?
So you got to kind of do boththings at the same time.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, no, that's good .
Well, here's our.
This will be released probablyduring Lent.
Here's it.
We're walking through Mark,finding refuge in Christ, and
we're seasonally sensitive, sowe're not always on the pericope
, but we're definitely in theseason of the church here and
this is our Lenten journey.
This is a piece our creativeteam Look at this awesome
artistic piece If you'rewatching on YouTube.
So so beautiful.
(19:51):
Well done, god's presence withus through the inevitable storms
of life as we journey throughMark.
So we should publicize thatseries.
People will be attracted togoing on a Lenten journey and I
think still within the widercommunity there is still a
corporate consciousness of maybeAsh Wednesday and beginning the
season of Lent Fat Tuesday isstill kind of a thing you know
(20:12):
down in New Orleans and as we goon this 40-day journey to the
cross and the empty tomb ofJesus.
So, yes, put together really,really compelling sermon series
that are seasonally sensitive.
And I think this is where theLCMS can really shine today,
because we are a liturgical andcalendared church body, right,
so capitalize on those churchseasons for sure.
(20:34):
Anything else, jack?
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, so in addition to that, there are what I call
attractional events, right.
Sometimes the event isattractional because it's
something fun to do, that letsyour kids burn off some steam
and you can go and just have fun.
And other times the event'sattractional because it's
dealing with something that's adeep felt need that you have,
like maybe issues with marriageor sometimes addiction or grief.
(20:57):
But a good rule of thumb is forchurches to host around nine
attractional events in the year,and when I talk to our staff
I'm like, hey, for me Christmasand Easter is in there, right.
So there's other things HarvestFest, dbs, what are those things
that are like very easy, easy,low-hanging fruit attractional
things that people feelcomfortable inviting their
(21:20):
friends to it.
We get sometimes close to acouple thousand people coming to
our Harvest Fest.
It's very easy to invite peopleto that.
There's no doctrinalrequirement to come and, you
know, check out our Harvest Festand you know, and be in the
petting zoo and check out thebounce houses and all that kind
of stuff.
It's just a chance to be infellowship with the community.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So let me let me.
Yeah, people are going to come.
They're coming.
Yeah Well, let me.
Sorry to interrupt, but there'sa lot of leaders that are
listening that are pastoringchurches of 50 to maybe 200,
jack.
And they look at you you'regetting 2000 people to come to
your thing it didn't start thatway, right Well, obviously, yeah
, it didn't start that way.
So what would you say to someonewho right now has and I would
(22:00):
say the devil, it's a lie sayingthere's no way I could do nine
attractions, like I don't havethe team to do it, blah, blah,
blah.
Like what would you say to thatperson?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Yeah, I mean do three , do four, you know.
Do a barbecue, do a communitybarbecue.
You know you got somewherebetween 150 people.
Can your community of 50 peoplehost a community barbecue and
invite the community to it?
No strings attached, right?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And if you get 50 people or 25 people, you count
that as a win, like we'regrowing.
There's an opportunity for themto have a great experience with
real people eating a steak.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
you know that's great , so let's be clear, like when
you're setting goals for howmany guests that you're trying
to bring into church for a year.
Those goals are set based onthe size of your church.
Generally speaking, your goalis to bring in as many guests as
you have in worship.
So in a year you want as manyguests as you have on average
weekly worship.
If your average weekly worshipis 50 people and you bring in 50
(22:59):
guests in a year, that is ahuge win for a church your size.
Other churches that goal is alot bigger because it's a bigger
church and it needs to have abigger goal for it to still have
continuous growth.
So you know, other churches mayhave to bring in 500 people,
800 people.
We need 850 at ChristGreenfield to be able to have
(23:20):
that goal.
So it's all scaled to yourorganization, yep.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So we got Net Promoter.
We have Knowing.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Your Net Promoter.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Events.
And now just another strategyjust asking people to invite,
Ask people to invite.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So this is like so you know people respond to a
request and you can create animportant narrative to people
like, hey, you play a role inevangelism just by inviting
people.
Right, we're inviting people inthe community.
Some ministries say, hey, wewant people to belong before
(23:57):
they believe.
I want people to believe.
But hospitality does say youbelong here and if you're
struggling with faith, guesswhat that means?
You're a sinner.
Where do sinners belong?
They belong in church.
So let's create belonging forpeople and let's equip people to
invite their friends byactually asking them to do that.
(24:20):
Now we did a really successfulcampaign this last Christmas.
We put a lot of intentionalityinto our invitation campaign.
We, for several weeks leadingup to Christmas, asked the
community to invite your friends.
We had people sign up with atext program, kind of sharing
who it is that we called it aninvitation challenge.
(24:41):
They would get onto like alittle chat bot and they would
share who it is that they'replanning to invite to church and
the little chat bot would givethem some tips on how to do that
effectively.
And they would be invited intoa prayer campaign.
They'd share some devotionalsand we would do like a daily
prayer, praying for invitation.
So getting the whole churchcorporately behind this and we
(25:03):
had a record number of guestscome to Christmas.
We beat prior years by threetimes by doing that.
So equipping the congregationto do that and actually value
doing that is a big deal.
So this is again culture isbeing formed by what you
actually invite people to do.
Culture is behavioral.
So being an invitational churchmeans that your culture is
(25:24):
invitation invitational, whichis actually inviting people to
do the invitation.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah Amen.
So we talked about that.
That's awesome.
We talk about easy evangelism.
Is there a hard?
Is there a hard evangelism?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Oh, okay, let's think you know, a little bit surface
level.
So a low threshold is the easystuff.
The higher threshold isactually going, you know, life
on life and actually equippingpeople with intentionality to
have faith conversations withpeople.
So let's talk about an areawhere a lot of churches in the
(25:58):
LCMS context do this reallyreally, really well.
It's called catechism, right?
So a lot of Lutheran churchesdo a great job catechizing their
kids through a one to two yearprocess.
Our process is two years Tim.
When we do our catechism, ourconfirmation program, we require
parents to attend.
Isn't that interesting, ourparents attend and they're
(26:19):
learning the same things thatthe kids are learning.
Because we want to teach theparents, to reinforce these
things.
We recognize that parents aredisciple makers.
That means the parents aresharing their faith with their
kids, right.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And giving them tools to articulate.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, you give them tools Exactly.
And if you're thinking there'sno way I could get my parents to
do that, it probably means youhave a low challenge culture.
And uh, and we, I inheritedactually inviting shout out to
pastor Weisman from back in theday here at Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
We inherited wildly successful, in my opinion.
What a, what a gift, what agift.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
So that's one opportunity is to go through
confirmation, equipping throughcatechesis and through Luther's
small catechism and we get intothe master narrative of
scripture, you know, to helpthem be able to, in an elevator
or a longer form, tell the wholestory of the Bible.
So that's great.
Anything else.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah.
So a really good goal thatchurches could take on for
themselves if they're reallyserious about evangelism which
they should be is that you wouldhave an evangelism curriculum,
right?
So an actual process ofteaching people to be confident
enough about articulating theirfaith that they can share that
(27:30):
with other people, eitherone-on-one or one in small group
, and have a curriculum for thatand then try to get 10% of your
congregation through thatcurriculum every year, right?
So if you're a church of 100people, can you get 10 people to
participate in that every year?
That would be a win for you inyour context, and there's a
(27:54):
pre-existing curriculum thatexists.
I went through and I searchedfor things that are actually
designed from an LCMSperspective.
So the LCMS has its ownevangelism curriculum called
Everyone His Witness.
You can check that out.
There's another really goodbook called Joining Jesus on His
Mission by Greg Finke, whichyou can create.
I believe there's a companionsmall group curriculum that goes
through that Very, veryconsistent with our Lutheran
(28:17):
faith.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Lutheran.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Hour also produces great content, absolutely.
What else?
Absolutely, lutheran Hour hasgot great, great resources for
that.
And then another thing you canconsider doing as a church this
is less well it could be itdepends on how you set it up but
running an alpha course.
Alpha courses are reallydesigned for evangelism.
(28:42):
It's used a lot in non-denomchurches, but let's.
I just want to be clear thatthe curriculum itself is
designed to be genericallyChristian and so it is very
adaptable to be led in aLutheran context.
You just want to make sure theperson leading it really knows
their theology really well whenpeople have questions about
stuff right.
So either having somebody withpastoral formation or somebody
(29:05):
who's got really really goodtheology, a lay leader, that's
really solid.
Running that class and you'llsee it's got a good brand
attached to it because it'sdesigned to be marketed to
people who are exploring faith,and a lot of churches have just
given really great testimony interms of reaching people outside
the church through that program.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
So that's great, jack , thanks for putting this
together.
It's been a lot of fun.
So let's build an invitationalculture.
It can be easy or it can bedeep.
Hopefully we're getting alarger percentage as time goes
on.
We're a growing community,we're always learning, and so
hopefully we're offering.
I'm seeing more likewillingness for people to go
into classes for deeperformation today, and that's a
(29:49):
beautiful, beautiful invitation,right, and they want it not
just for themselves.
This is the heart that we'reseeing, at least in our context.
They want it not just forthemselves, but they want it for
their family and for theirneighbors and becoming more
articulate, telling the greateststory of all time God's love
for us in Jesus Christ.
Any closing comments?
Speaker 3 (30:07):
No, I think you're right, tim.
It's like people might beresistant to a formation process
if it's just I'm just checkinga box so they can have
permission to have a membershipstatus in the church.
But if it's for you, if it'sabout equipping you to
participate in the GreatCommission, all of a sudden I
think you see the willingness tobe a part of that radically
(30:27):
change.
We're forming you so that youcan form others, that you can
invite others, that you can carefor others.
This is about equipping youprocess, not something that
we're trying to extract from youand make sure you're checking
boxes Right.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So that's the key thing Humans can sniff that.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Yeah, humans can sniff inauthenticity.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yep, and when you think about what we're talking
about easy evangelism or deepevangelism, embracing both what
you're doing now is you'reinviting the entire church to be
part of this process, theentire church to be part of this
culture, which I think is abeautiful thing.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Exactly Well, raising up the priesthood of all
believers.
This is part three of four onbuilding an invitational culture
.
We pray.
You found this helpful.
If so, please like, subscribe,comment, and this helps get the
word out.
We want to have very, verypractical I think these are
being released mostly on FridaysVery, very practical, slightly
shorter.
(31:22):
Maybe you're going just acrossthe city and you could just take
that one next step, becausereally that's all leadership is.
It's like I'm trying to find myway forward.
And here's the thing, jack,it's an infinite game.
There's never you're never donewith this.
So if you, as a leader, arethinking, wow, I can't wait
until this is all set and thenI'm going to be able to be done
and rest, you should rest on theseventh day, god rested, but
then we continue to work whileit is day, and I think that's
(31:45):
sort of a missional orientation,confessing group of people,
leaders, in the whatever sizecontext you're at, saying I know
we have to grow.
That's the humble heart fromthe Holy Spirit.
I know we have to grow and wecan't do everything, but we can
certainly do something.
And hopefully we gave you oneor two things, the next steps
that you could try to reallyhelp change the perception of
(32:06):
your congregation in thecommunity.
It's a good day.
Go make it a great day.
Wonderful work, jack.
Thanks.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
God bless Tim.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the
Unite Leadership Collective.
The ULC's mission is tocollaborate with the local
church to discover, develop anddeploy leaders through biblical
Lutheran doctrine and innovativemethods To partner with us in
this gospel message.
Subscribe to our channel, thengo to theuniteleadershiporg to
create your free login forexclusive material and resources
(32:35):
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.
Thanks for listening and staytuned for next week's episode.
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