Putting church back into Sunday.

Churches grow by people. Money cannot grow a church. Programs can help, but often cannot maintain long-term growth of a church. Great facilities are a huge plus, but those alone will not grow your church (they tend to be the outcome of growth.) It is when God’s people invest into their churches thru sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the discipleship of new believers that a church will see exponential, lasting growth.

Sounds like a plan doesn’t it? That’s how it use to be, but today’s churches have fallen away from that plan. Church auditoriums now have more empty seats then people and less people following the Great Commission, rather following the Great Recession of personal evangelism. It will prove to be our own undoing as Christians. Keep in mind the disciples said to have turned the world upside down in just a short amount of time. They started with only 12, we have far more than that. Consider the following statements.

• Most Americans have been to church, and yet only 20 percent are regular attendees. – The American Church in Crisis
• 82 percent of the unchurched are likely to attend church if invited by a trusted friend or relative. – Dr. Thom Rainer
• Only 2 percent of church-going people invite someone to church in a given year. 98 percent of church-goers never extend an invitation in a given year. – Dr. Thom Rainer
• 50 percent of the current U.S. population would be candidates for a Back to Church Campaign.  - Gary L. McIntosh, D.Min., Ph.D.

Some folks have started a campaign called “Back to Church Sunday” in which they are encouraging Christians to give a personal invitation to those they know to come to church. It’s a practice that our Lord and Savior commanded us many years ago. I really like the idea of this campaign for several reasons. They are employing the use of technology to help get the word out. They are getting back to basics. They are encouraging folks to invite those they know. They ask pastors/churches to hold a special visitors Sunday meeting. All of this in hopes of getting folks back to church.

There are many churches that have similar outreach ministries like church visitation, bus visitation, etc. We just need more folks like-minded for personal evangelism. What good is a church without the people? I think we all have some work to do.

“More than one million people so far have been invited to attend a church service on Sunday, Sept. 12, as a result of this year’s national “Back to Church Sunday” campaign, and more than 3,000 churches have signed on to take part.

In 2009, the inaugural year of the campaign, over 700,000 invitations were sent out and over 1,500 churches had signed up.

“Seeing the number of invitations eclipse one million encourages me to believe that God is actively using Christians to impact their communities,” commented Philip Nation, the national spokesperson for “Back to Church Sunday.”

via U.S. ‘Back to Church Sunday’ Campaign Surpasses 1.2M Invites | Christianpost.com.