Being outward-focused is one thing, but knowing how to get more people in your church is another.
That’s why today we’re going to look at the practical steps and strategies that hundreds of other churches have taken to get more people and grow their churches.
Along with some tools and resources you can use to take your church forward.
Right before we jump into the tried and tested ways to get more people through your church doors, please just indulge me for a second and let me share with you two quick, important caveats:
a) God Wants To Grow Your Church
You already know this right?
God’s heart for the lost burns bright.
God wants your church to grow, not just in attendance on a Sunday, but in influence in your local community, in lives being transformed and in the quality of disciples being raised.
He wants your church to grow in love and community, in worship and in the Word.
b) Identify Who You Want To Reach
Having a picture in your mind’s eye of who your target demographic is will help direct every decision you make about your outreach and evangelistic programs, preaching, worship, follow-up and everything else your church does.
Are you trying to reach young professionals?
Working class families?
Retired baby boomers?
You reach different people in different ways.
I believe that these 6 ideas I’m going to share with you today will help to inspire fresh vision in you and breathe new life into your congregation.
I hope the things mentioned in this article can help get your ministry unstuck and unlock the great plan that God has in store for you and your local church.
Let’s jump right in.
6 Ways To Get More People In Church
1. Take An Honest Look At Where You’re At
2. Plan Big Event Sundays Throughout The Year
3. Create An Outward-Focused Culture
4. Equip Your Church For Evangelism
5. Be Ready For When Guests Come
6. Follow A Proven Church Growth Blueprint
1. Take An Honest Look At Where You’re At
How outward-focused is your church right now?
Honestly evaluating your church congregation’s evangelistic temperature right now means that you know your starting point and can then begin to take solid steps in the right direction.
Ask yourself questions like:
- How on fire are the people in your church about reaching the unreached?
- How many people are accepting Jesus as their Saviour?
- How many of your people are bringing friends to church?
- How many first-time guests do you have?
- How many evangelistic outreaches do you have scheduled?
Take this free 20-question assessment to see how ready your church is for new people.
2. Plan Big Event Sundays Throughout The Year
A big event day is an all-out push toward a single Sunday for the purpose of breaking the next growth barrier and setting an attendance record in order to reach as many people as possible.”
Using a calendar you can pick dates throughout the year that you can take advantage of to organise an invite-a-friend Sunday.
Set a specific goal that reflects how many church guests you anticipate will come to your church and be ready for them.
Have your church cover the event in prayer.
Build up anticipation for the event by getting your members to pray for the people they will invite.
Here are just a few date ideas for your invite a friend to church Sunday events:
- Easter
- Christmas
- New Year
- Your church’s birthday
- Bonfire night (UK)
- Valentine’s day
- Father’s day
- Thanksgiving (US)
A recent Barna study found that 35% of unchurched people would attend church if they were invited by a friend.
Take Your Church To The Next Level 📈
3. Create An Outward-Focused Culture
As the pastor, you have a great opportunity to help your people become focused on reaching others for Christ.
Use sermons, challenges, announcements, and vision casting to raise the church’s spiritual temperature.
Regularly share stories about conversations you’re having with the lost during the week.
Ask members to share their stories about how they shared the gospel with someone or invited someone to church.
Have monthly sermon series that place an emphasis on evangelism.
You could even share personal stories (through speaking or video) of people whose lives have been transformed through the work of your church.
This will help raise excitement and momentum about the new direction you want your church to go in and it shows a clear picture of what the vision of the church is.
4. Equip Your Church For Evangelism
Your job as the church leader is not to do all of the work; it’s to equip the saints for ministry.
As soon as you’ve cast a vision for reaching the unreached, you need to equip your congregation with the skills and tools they need to share their faith and invite friends and family members to church effectively.
People come because other people bring them and friendship evangelism is by far the most effective way to get more new people into your church.
Here are some things you could teach:
- How to create a prayer list for their unsaved loved ones
- How to share their personal testimony
- How to share the gospel in a simple and easy way
Hand each person several cards printed with information about your church and ask them to use them to invite others to an upcoming worship service or event.
Whether it be for an invite-a-friend Sunday or for a new upcoming sermon series, hand to each of your member’s several invitation flyers about the upcoming event with your church details service times.
5. Be Ready For When Guests Come
You’ve created an outward-looking culture, you’ve cast a vision for reaching the lost and you’ve trained your members in friendship evangelism.
For sure, you are going to get new people visiting your church.
Now you just need to make church visitors feel welcome to increase the likelihood of them returning for a second week.
Before the big day, make sure you have everything in place.
Is your welcome team ready and expectant to meet first-time guests?
Do they have guest welcome packs ready to hand out at the door with a smile?
Have you appointed a church MC?
Is the worship team all set?
Do you have your church welcome speech ready?
Are your children’s workers ready to put new parents at ease who are slightly nervous to leave their children with you?
People come to church because other people bring them. Who will you invite?
Don’t underestimate the importance of your preaching. Make sure your sermon outline is free of jargon, relevant and engaging.
Growing yourself as a preacher could be one of the single most important ways to grow your church.
If you want to preach better sermons take a look at our list of top preaching courses.
The first time a new person walks through your church doors is the first step in the process of discipling them.
So have a good follow-up plan in place. It’s all about helping people take the next step.
Urge people who are attending worship services, small groups and membership classes but haven’t yet begun relationships with Jesus to make the decision to say “yes” to Him.
Help new believers grow in their faith through church home groups so they get assimilated into the life of your church.
6. Follow A Proven Church Growth Blueprint
When it comes to getting more people through your church doors, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel and go at it alone.
Church Fuel, the ultimate resource hub for church leaders, offers you a wealth of done-for-you resources, 15+ courses and personalised coaching to help you come up with a solid action plan for your church.
Join a community of 4,000+ like-minded pastors and church leaders, where you can ask questions, exchange ideas and start your church growth journey.
Get More People In Your Church: Bottom Line
In summary, here are the 6 ways you can get more people into your church:
- Take the free church assessment
- Plan a big event Sundays
- Build an outward-focused culture focused on reaching the unreached
- Equip your people with practical friendship evangelism skills
- Be ready when first-time guests come
- Join Church Fuel and learn insanely practical methods that work
And I can’t emphasise this enough:
If you’re not where you want to be as a church, if you don’t have what you want to have right now, you don’t need to stay in the same place.
If you’re not where you need to be at this particular moment, you need to be willing to make the necessary changes to make it happen.
Unless you attempt to do something beyond that which you have already mastered, you’ll never grow.
Can you imagine seeing new couples and families walking through your church doors in the next few weeks and becoming an integral part of your community?
Can you imagine if you applied these steps and you started to see your church growing in influence and being a catalyst for change in the place where you live?
Can you imagine the lives that will be changed as your church rises up to be all that it could be and should be?
I pray that your church is a church that gives hope to the hopeless, reaches the unreached and loves the unloved.
This is our destiny. 🙏🙏🙏
Over To You
What ideas do you have for getting new people into the church and growing a strong and healthy congregation?
Share your comments and experiences below! 🤗
Here are a few examples of how most all of us can “seed” the “Good News” of the Word of God in our communities. We do not need to be extroverts, trained evangelists, silver tongued or bible scholars or spend a lot of money to get the job done. Some methods just require hands and feet and a heart willing to do the work it takes to “plant the seed” for a coming harvest!
You can find them here: https://www.evangelism.group
Hello, I am a senior pastor of a new church in Tennessee. We have started churches 5 times now. But it seems we have always done things the hard way.
My wife and I have attended a few Church growth seminars and conferences. The last one was in Alabama at the Grow conference with Pastor Chris Hodges. We heard a lot of really good ideas. But unfortunately, we aren’t able to apply any of them.
All of these church growth resources seem to be geared towards helping small established churches to grow. None of them help the pioneer churches who are lucky to have anyone qualified for ministry leadership at all.
Many are new converts still learning and growing themselves. Some have unsaved spouses, are not faithful in attendance, or are unqualified for some other reason. So what is avail able to get past the pioneer stage and get people in who can help?
The people we presently have don’t have friends or family to invite. Most moved here from another state for the Army at some point and stayed here. They work an hour away, so can’t really invite co-workers. although i try to get them to invite, they really don’t seem to get a lot of opportunities since they are so busy.
I am praying, preaching the word, teaching, and all that i can. but nobody seems to have any advise at all that is reasonable for a baby church.
I would love to have been a church plant sent out with all of the workers! what a dream that would be! But that just isn’t the case. We started with just my wife and i and 2 of our adult kids. We now have around 25 people. we had around 40 and had some people problems and lost several. But we are in a prime location connected to the military base on a min street, with a nice lit up sign everyone can see clearly – and we still can’t get people through the doors of the building.
If i can get people inside, that could make a difference. We have gone out to the street with signs with a lion mascot; to the parks to share christ and hand out cards. still nothing. anything you can offer to help would be great. Everything we know can’t even be applied until we can get people to come.
Hi Lyndon,
I totally get where you’re coming from. We’re planting a church from scratch in Bangkok right now and in the beginning you do have to do everything yourself until the people you’re pouring into are willing and competent enough to step up and help.
I would say focus on your strengths as a small church to begin with. You don’t have the wow factor of a megachurch, no 50-person choir etc but what you do have is a small but strong community and close relationships. Use that to grow your church. I think before you can disciple people or raise leaders you have to create a sense of belonging. Why not ivite your existing families out for meals? Spent time with the socially to get those bonds even stronger?
Then I think starting church small groups is going to be key. Make them a time of connecting with each and God, have fun, feed on the Word and raise leaders up by giving them small repsonsibilitys – maybe they can lead the small group icebreaker or host at their home.
This has worked really for us and I’ve actually been surprised at how willing people to step up given the opportunity.
That way, you’re not waiting for people to you but you’re going out via small groups into the neighbourhoods and in people’s homes.
Let us know how you get on and I know it can be frustrating at times, but pioneering is also a great adventure. Invite people to join the adventure with you! 🙂
BE KIND AND WELCOMING TO ALL PEOPLE BUT REMEMBER WHO TO FOLLOW THE LORD ONLY NOT A FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMEBER OR AN CO WORKER. AMEN
Thanks and God bless you for this remarkable tips.
Regardes
really helpful now i can finally get some people in my church!