Every year I meet church leaders who want to reach their community and feel exhausted before they start. So let me offer the simplest version of what we've learned at Vision Church: not a programme, not a strategy document — five practical moves, in order.
Before you invite anyone, find out who you're inviting. The 2021 census knows how many families with young children live within a mile of your building, how many people over sixty-five, how many say they have no religion at all. Most churches guess. The free community report takes the guessing out in about two minutes, and it changes what you plan.
The biggest mistake I see is trying to invite people to “church.” Invite them to something: a family fun day, carols by candlelight, a barbecue, an Easter morning with an egg hunt. One event, with a date and a reason to come, that a family who has never set foot in a church could say yes to without feeling they were joining anything.
Your neighbours spend four and a half hours a day online, most of it on their phones, most of that on Facebook and Instagram. A warm invitation there — a real photo, plain words, aimed at the streets around your building — reaches more homes in a week than a year of leaflets, and it reaches them in their front rooms, where they can say yes without being put on the spot.
Give people somewhere to say yes: a simple sign-up page with their name, their email and how many children they're bringing. It does two things. It tells you how much food to buy — and it turns a vague intention into a small commitment. At Vision one Easter, 101 people clicked through to the sign-up page. Over two hundred came. At our summer fair this August, fifty said they were coming on Facebook; over a hundred turned up, and families signed their children up to our youth groups.
The invitation puts people in the room. What happens next is entirely about the welcome: someone at the door who is glad they came, food that's actually good, a way to stay in touch that doesn't feel like a trap. Five Easters on, the faces from those events are still in our building on Sundays. That isn't because of an advert. It's because of what they found when they arrived.
If you'd like, I'll talk any of these through with you — twenty minutes, no strings. Church leader to church leader.
Want to talk any of this through for your own church? Twenty minutes with me, no strings.