Is inviting people to church our evangelism strategy?

We have hundreds of evangelism strategies and plenty of outlines for sharing the gospel, but I am afraid our main evangelism tool has become inviting people to church (and by “church” we usually mean a Sunday morning worship service). The logic seems to be that if we could just get them in the doors of the “church” (forgetting that the church is not a building), then they could hear the gospel message. Tony Morgan in his book Killing Cockroaches shared a story about Ted. Tony felt that if Ted would just come to a worship service “he’d love the experience.” Tony wanted Ted to come to church because Tony “would really love for him to hear about how Jesus could transform his life” (102).

I don’t know Tony Morgan, and I’m sure he is often bold in his witness, but my first response to his statement was “why don’t you just tell him.” I think that, consciously or not, many of us have confused evangelism with inviting people to church. Sunday morning has become our open door to the church. Perhaps this happened for practical reasons; we have more visitors on Sunday morning than any other time. Perhaps it happened for convenience’s sake; it’s less threatening to invite people to church than to share the gospel with them. Whatever the cause, I see three problems with this approach.

It stretches our resources

• We have poured millions upon millions of dollars into our church buildings and our worship centers. We have to have the latest in audio-visual, flat screens all around the building to catch people’s eye, and the building has to maintain a certain standard. After all, if the building doesn’t wow them, then people won’t come back (well at least not people with money or status). Whenever we use Sunday morning as our main outreach, we run the risk of moving our efforts away from life-transforming, God-honoring worship toward doing whatever it takes to keep people in the seats.

It’s not working

• Tony also relayed a quote from George Barna, “Our research shows that transformation does not occur in the church” (152). Leaving aside yet another misuse of the word “church” (because I think the New Testament writers would argue that transformation always happens in the context of the church as a community of faith), if transformation occurs in the context of Christian community, this transformation will often happen outside the confines of our buildings or worship centers.

It’s not biblical

• I just don’t see the biblical mandate to go ye therefore and invite people to church. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t invite people to church, but I am suggesting that this should not be our primary method of evangelism. Should our worship services communicate truth in relevant and meaningful ways? Sure. But a relevant and meaningful (or entertaining or even gospel centered) worship service does not excuse us from the mandate to personally share the good news with others.