Friday, January 23, 2009

Attractional Methods of Evangelism Part 3

While attractional methods of evangelism are less and less effective as we live in a world where everything else competes for our attention and time, one benefit to using attractional evangelism methods is that it can help facilitate invitational evangelism where people invite people to church.

It might go something like this: you send out a ten thousand piece postcard mailer or run some radio ads for two weekends in a row. Since you know that invitational evangelism is more effective than attractional evangelism you have been encouraging the people in your church to invite. Let's say one of your church members/ partners invites a co-worker to the church.

The co-worker might ask "what church is that?"

And your church member says "XYZ Church, we meet at the movie theater."

The co-worker might then say "Oh yeah, I think I got a postcard from you guys. I had put it up on my fridge and was thinking of going. Thanks for inviting me."

Now, this is what would happen in the best of all cases. The point is that attractional evangelism methods can help to reinforce an invite to a friend, relative, co-worker or neighbor.

When a church uses attractional evangelism it is always an opportunity to encourage invitational evangelism. For example, if you are sending out postcards you might put a postcard or two in each worshipper's worship program. At some point you might call their attention to it and say "We have sent ten thousand of these out to your friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors. As these postcards go before you they pave the way for you to invite. Will you pray about who God is calling you to invite this week?"

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