I have decided to make this a series of posts as I look back and reflect on the culture of inviting our group seems to have and look at how we have gotten to this point. Check out:

Creating An Inviting Culture: Take A Good, Hard Look At Your Service

We are gearing up for our student lead series called YOU OWN THE NIGHT next month. For 4 weeks in a row, we have no adults on stage. Everything is planned by and for students. Each a week a different high school takes over the night and gears the service to something they believe their school needs to hear. I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot of hard work to make this happen but it’s always one of my favorite series we do all year long.

You can check out a very detailed way to pull this off in the DYM store HERE.

I believe this has fast-tracked the initing culture of our ministry. Our motto for this series is, “Every student on campus gets an invite.” We know not all students will come through CCV Students but we will make sure they know what it is. I have given you some main reasons why a student lead series will help with an inviting culture below:

Students take ownership and pride in ministry. Schools have rallies and big rivalries for sports and students own it all. They make posters, sport their colors and logos and go nuts for school. Why? Because they own it. Allowing students to take over, does the same thing.

Students reach is far greater than yours (youth pastor). I can go around campus and interact with the students I know and meet a few of their friends in the process. When students take ownership of a service, they want to invite friends and have them be a part of the service in some way and their friends come to see. We have had students who would have never stepped foot on a church campus come, hear the Gospel, accepted Jesus and now are some of our core students. All because students owned the night.

It allows your leaders to connect with brand new students…. who don’t go to church. Nights like this, leaders get to be strictly relational and meet brand new students. They get to be cheerleaders to the students they know and are involved with the service. They get to have fun and support what the students have had planned for that night.

Students pay WAY more attention to their peers than you. The selfish side of me wishes this was not true.  What did your senior pastor teach 7 weeks ago? Students listen to students better. Students teach better to their peers. We have students write out their whole testimonies and they read it straight from the paper and it’s way more powerful and engaging than if I were to memorize and give to most epic sermon ever. When they see someone like them on stage, they are brought in and God can grab their attention in a way that you as an adult cannot. Students teach students better.

When students say “me too” it’s powerful – When students have the opportunity to share, they can hear the story of one of their own and have the opportunity to say “me too”, and that is powerful. When a student can hear another student’s story and hear about the sin, addictions, struggles of those students and say “me too” it’s memorable. Then they God hear what God does when lives are fully given to Him and then they can say, “I want that too”. It gives hope that God can move in their lives too.

Over the last year since we have been tracking it, we have not had one service where there was at least one student who was not invited and came for the first time. I know, crazy. Not saying this to brag but saying this because this is the culture in which we have been striving for the last 3 years.

How?

There are quite a few reasons, to be honest. But one of them has come from taking a good, hard look at our services and asking some very tough questions about them. Questions in which could hurt your heart if you do not come to these questions with a humble heart.

These questions are not to be mean, but to be honest with how your service operates if you really want an inviting culture with your group. These are questions we asked and worked through ourselves.

Ready?

• Is your service/gathering worth being invited to?
  • • • We went through a year-long re-do to make sure our service was the best thing we can do. Unapologetically, we just focused on our service and our service only to make sure it was something worth to be invited to. If your students are not excited about your service, they won’t be excited to invite friends. Ouch. I know, but it’s the truth. So what does that look like for you?
      • Trust is key. The first few events you throw will not be for the new student. It will be building trust with your current students. Once you begin creating a space where your students want to be, they will start to invite their friends. The first few events you throw is showing your own students you can put on something they can get excited about and once they feel that, then they will begin inviting friends to those events and services too. 
• Is the language that you use, new-person friendly?
  • • • Do you use Christian language and not explain it? Most of the time, we just talk and do not even realize that we can make new students feel uncomfortable. 
      • Do you explain worship, prayer, communion, baptism etc.? Or do you just go about all of those things assuming everyone knows what is happening. Think through a new student who has no church background… all of those things are weird. Let’s be honest. Do you explain to them so they understand?
      • An example: Every service before we go into our time of worship through music we do a “call to worship” every single week. Someone will get up and explain the next 15 minutes are about to go into assuming there is a new, un-churched person in the room every service. We want people to know why we are singing, to read the words, why worship is important, why people are raising their hands and jumping up and down. Make this a part of your service and new people will understand and your service will feel way more inviting.
• Is your service/gathering have the new person in mind when they do show up?
  • • • Do you have anything for new people? Do you make them stand up in front of everyone? Do you let them be anonymous? 
      • We have a new student area in our service, right before our music section, where we invite new students to make themselves known by filling out a card and giving them a full-size candy bar.
      • Leaders are the ones running this area, so whomever they meet will call/text them before the next week and I will call/text them as well. Two invites back before the next week makes for a really welcoming place.

These are just a few questions we have asked over the past few years in order to have an intentional inviting to new people service. I’m sure there are more so I would love love to hear some of the hard questions you have asked when creating an inviting culture for your group.

@justinknowles3