Lead Time
Lead Time
Holy FOMO: How to Build an Invitation Culture
We explore the theological and practical foundations for creating an invitation culture in your church and why it's essential for long-term growth and sustainability.
• Churches often resist growth because people fear change and want to maintain personal relationships with everyone
• The church uniquely transforms people from consumers to contributors, unlike any other organization
• Three ways to bring people to church: announcements, invitations, and hospitality systems
• "Easy evangelism" means anyone can participate by simply inviting friends without needing theological expertise
• Identify 9 invitational opportunities throughout the year, with Christmas and Easter being natural starting points
• Create attractional sermon series that balance solid theological content with themes that interest non-believers
• Set realistic guest goals based on your church size (aim for annual guests equaling your average weekly attendance)
• Equip 10% of your congregation annually through deeper evangelism training like Everyone His Witness or Alpha
• Authenticity matters - people respond when formation is about equipping them for mission, not checking boxes
• Remember growth is an "infinite game" - there's always more to do but each step forward matters
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Speaker 2:Welcome to Lead Time, tim Allman. Here with Jack Kalberg, we get the privilege today of walking alongside you as we grow an invitation culture. If you've not listened to our other two podcasts on branding, we've done a lot on Net Promoter website. There's a whole bunch of really, really tangible kind of next step brand awareness content that we've brought in the last two weeks. This is the third of a four part series and we're going to talk about growing an invitation culture. So, jack, just an overall starting point why should congregations it seems kind of duh, but maybe it's not so much because some churches actively and they'll verbalize this They'd rather not, they'd rather not grow. This is our church, I want it to remain comfortable, I want to know everyone who's here, and you're going to upset my sociological you know, foundational, relational framework If you start to leader move into an invitation culture. So why should we, it seems, double? Why should we care about invitation, jack?
Speaker 3:Well, there's theological reasons, there's practical reasons, there's cultural reasons why they're well, there's cultural reasons why it's resisted. I'm going to shout out to one of our former consultants that we hired a while back. Capital campaign consultant Glennon Smith told a story about serving in a church and they were trying to grow and expand, and this sweet old lady was very upset about it and he said, well, don't you want more people to know Jesus? And she said, well, yes, just not here, because she liked her small church.
Speaker 2:They can meet and follow Jesus somewhere else.
Speaker 3:Thank you, yes, thank you very much, and you and I can probably think of a story recently where we went and consulted at a church and somebody was really upset about the idea of the church growing to the point where they didn't know everybody. I want to know everybody in my church and they get uncomfortable the idea of being so big that I can't have a personal relationship with every single person in community.
Speaker 2:Well, growth equals change, Jack. Right, it does, and human beings generally would rather not change. The funny thing is, you are actively choosing long-term suffering and maybe even the death of your church by not growing an invitation culture. But human beings are remarkable at ruining, destroying, rebelling against God and his promises and experiencing short-term pleasure. It really goes back to the garden, doesn't it Jack?
Speaker 3:Addiction. Addiction is an example of that, right. I mean, it's a real thing, right example of that.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean that's well, it's a real thing, right? God wanted this is kind of wild. God wanted adam and eve to multiply, and this is obviously before the fall.
Speaker 2:Be fruitful and multiply disperse, multiply, yeah, yeah grow exactly um work, but yet we want when we continually choose with a bite short-term pleasure, we want to be god over long-term in exchange for long-term pain, right and churches that make this decision to say we like it the way it is right now. Well, maybe it's very evident right now in this generation like that strategy with less than we've got a lot of folks in the LCMS listening right, with less what 50% or so of our congregations worshiping less than 50 people in worship. Now is the time to change.
Speaker 2:It only requires, like a handful of people in the church, to say no, no, no, we're going to change the way this congregation is perceived in our community and we're going to be seen as a place where you can belong and meet Jesus here, and we're going to start to care for felt needs and all those types of things. What else to add, jack?
Speaker 3:So what happens is, in these sort of cultural contexts, we start to create these things. I call them false dichotomies. So a false dichotomy is creating a false choice between two things, right, and it's a way for us to stay comfortable in the thing that we like. So we can't be attractional. We have to be confessional in the discipling church, right? We don't want to be this. We want to be this instead, not thinking that you can actually be both of those things at the same time. So we actually agree, we want you to be discipling, we want you to be confessional. We support that. We want you to be discipling. We want you to be confessional. We support that.
Speaker 2:We want people to be in deep relationship.
Speaker 3:We're trying to fight the false dichotomy that you can't be two things at the same time or multiple things at the same time. Church is complex. There's a lot of things that go into building a healthy church and it means embracing things that a lot of times people don't allow you to embrace because they're creating these false dichotomies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people don't allow you to embrace because they're creating these false dichotomies. Yeah Well, it is complex. I was on a business. Our pastor, one of our pastors, jeff Sutherland, here at Christ Greenfield, is in real estate. He has the Jeff Sutherland show and I was the first religious leader that he invited me on and they made me reflect on the differences between leading in a church and leading in the marketplace, and the biggest difference that I can see I'll get your take on it is that we're moving, and this is a church engagement model.
Speaker 2:We're moving consumers into contributors In the marketplace. It's very evident that you're going to always remain a consumer. For instance, when I go to let's say I don't go to Target, I'm thinking of a place I actually like to shop at. It's very evident in my relationship to Amazon buying books on Amazon there that I'm always going to be a consumer. Maybe I become an author in the future that get my books on there, but the majority of people are only going to be a consumer in the church. Jesus draws us close to be consumed by his love, his mercy, his grace, to be forgiven of all of our sins, and then he sends us out by his spirit's power to contribute to the advancement of his kingdom. No other industry does that, and that is why the church is the most powerful engine for good when she is released and people move. Yes, to be a consumer, but yes, I'm now partnering, contributing to the mission of God. It's a wild move. Anything more to add to that, jack? Yeah.
Speaker 3:I would say adding to that is equipping hundreds and maybe even thousands of people in the local context to work for free, and not only to work for free, but work for free in a way that gives your life away right Rather than you said the word consumer rather than just seeking comfort, actually for free, going into uncomfortable environments and giving your life away.
Speaker 2:And I can give you countless stories of people that had done that. Jack have chosen, by the Spirit's power, a life of adventure, a calling out into the unknown, and they experience growth and joy, purpose and meaning. It's unbelievable, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It actually attracts people in many cases there's an attractional component to it.
Speaker 2:You look at Jeff Nedry, who leads on Thursday night at Arla Mesa. There in Tempe, jeff runs a full-time print shop. He and his wife, michelle are killing it. They print for us in many churches and other businesses, et cetera. And yet every Tuesday and Thursday definitely every Thursday you're going to find Jeff caring for and he's not ordained, he's learning, but he's pastoring a group of people, two thirds of whom are experiencing life out on the streets of Tempe that night and he is the most joy-filled on fire passionate follower of Jesus. Just about that I know here in our community. Why? Because he gives his life away consistently on behalf of the one it's like. The spirit of the crucified and risen sacrificial savior lives in him, jack, which he very evidently does. So all right, let's get into it. For local churches to survive and grow long-term, they need to be successful at attracting new members to the church. So a quick overview there are three ways that we can bring more people to the church Announcements, invitations and hospitality system. Let's start on announcements, jack.
Speaker 3:So yeah, announcements was just our previous episode. That was about marketing. So when we get out there and we have a billboard or a banner on the street or a sign on the front road or Google advertisements and a website, those are announcements. We are announcing to the community that there is an opportunity for you to connect with us here at the local church, and that's either for a worship service or some other type of fun thing or some other type of thing tied to a felt need that a person's going through. So we try to identify what that might be and we create a system to announce hey, here's an opportunity to do this here in this location or here in connection with our people, right? So it's all about marketing. I would say, if you haven't had a chance already, you know, before getting into this episode, it's really good to pause, go back and watch those two prior episodes, because we're building on that for this episode. But that would be all about announcements. Good, yeah, that's a summary.
Speaker 2:So invitations, building an invitation culture. Yeah, that's a summary. So invitations, building an invitation culture.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what we're getting into right now. So invitation culture, a really good I want you to think, a really good synonym for the word invitation is evangelism, right? So this is getting. This is kind of reframing our thoughts around evangelism and what we're going to be saying is there's kind of two ways, two approaches towards evangelism a very sort of low threshold way that people can get involved, and one is a more high threshold way. We actually support both ways. We want to see both ways thrive in the local church. And why is that necessary? You know, as we wrap, we'll talk more as we're wrapping up on it.
Speaker 3:But you know there's people that are in different stages of their faith journey, different levels of competence and confidence with sharing their faith. Can we have strategies that equip people, regardless of where they are on that journey, to have some type of participation in evangelism? So I call it easy evangelism. Easy evangelism is you don't have to have all the confessions memorized, you don't have to be a master of apologetics, you don't even necessarily have to know, like really, really good, the difference between things like law and gospel and all that kind of stuff. You just have to invite your friends to church.
Speaker 3:That's like the lowest hanging fruit in terms of evangelism. And why is that important? Because when you're being invited in right, you're being invited into an environment where they are receiving the word of God right, the gospel preached to them, and the sacraments we call it word and sacrament right. This is and they'll get to experience it. You might not be able to give that to them as a, let's say, a brand new believer, but through your passion and your invitation you can invite others into it. So it's the easiest way, the easiest threshold, to get people involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's pause there. I think there was a being a pastor almost now for two decades, jack, maybe a decade 12. Well, maybe when I first came to Christ Greenfield, I think the culture at large, maybe we weren't as forthright with setting people's expectations that anybody could and should invite their friends to church, because I think in the culture there was a slightly more agitation toward the local congregation. Right, we may have, and maybe in some regards, rightly so. You look back at books like UnChristian right, they're hypocritical, homophobic, they're known for all the things that they're against, blah, blah, blah. So you've got you. Better spend a long period of time getting to know the person, building trust and all those types of things before you would ever dare to say, hey, why don't you come to my church? Right, we were. Just the fear of being rejected stifled that voice.
Speaker 2:But I think today there is a shift, as as the world, and I think COVID, honestly, was a part of that shift. I'm going to die. I need to be in a place where people are talking about real things, real struggles, and for churches that embrace, hey, we're going to talk about grief and addiction and loneliness and depression and anxiety. Right, for churches, that which the Bible talks about all those things, so you don't have all the time all of the evidence of the law. This, I guess, to bring it into a Lutheran framework. It's very evident that the law is crushing people in our culture and they need to be in a place where they hear the gospel. So I think you use the word easy. Some people may take issue with that, but regardless, I think it's the because we want people to meet and follow Jesus. Right, and Jesus is a church. Let me finish, jack. I think it's the Samaritan woman. Like it was an easy invitation Go and tell everyone what I've done for you. And she did it and the world was changed. That's it. It's easy.
Speaker 3:Here we go. She didn't have to have a seminary degree to do that. She just shared what happened to her, and that was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I agree with that. Why, now, tim, you're a pastor here. You're like, really really well trained, you know how to preach really really well. And here's the reality is that there's a very limited number of unbelievers that you know. Oh, that's true. Yeah, a very limited number of unbelievers that you know. But the church, the community, knows tons of unbelievers, isn't?
Speaker 2:that interesting. I know unbelievers at the golf course Right and at the places I frequent Right, but my day in and day out is not golfing, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Right no.
Speaker 3:I'm actually very fortunate, I don't golf every day. That's miserable.
Speaker 2:So the community knows tons of unbelievers.
Speaker 3:That's right. God has put them into relationship with those people for a purpose right. The church is the priesthood of all believers, right? And what does that mean? Priesthood of all believers, this is Luther. Hey, you can share the gospel and you can pray for people, and especially doing that for the purpose of leading people into faith. That's been given to all priests. Now, you might be terrible at it, right, but the fact that you're terrible at it doesn't change that. That's your identity as a believer. So, if that's your identity as a believer, why, now, would not the church seek to be really, really good at equipping people to do this? We need to be thinking about that in terms of our job description as church staff, as pastors, as a church body, that this is a job description, that we have to equip people to be good at what they actually have been objectively called to do through being part of this priesthood of all believers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I'm seeing it. We're seeing it at Christ Greenfield. More people right now are inviting their friends to come and come and meet Jesus. You know it's so easy evangelism.
Speaker 3:Let's unpack this Um, go into it, let's, let's talk about um, the steps to do this Right. So, as we unpack it right, even with minimal theological training. But hey, you're still connected to word and sacrament, you're still coming. You can be, you're still connected to Word and Sacrament, you're still coming. You can be part of evangelism by inviting people. And we start there with.
Speaker 3:This gets us back full circle with brand right how eager are people to recommend your ministry to people? We talked about in the first episode, the net promoter score. The net promoter score measures how eager like in fact, how eager people are to recommend and you can use this as a product, but we're using, as a church, the ministry of Christ Greenfield to friends and families. And the people that are saying nine and 10, these are the people that are actually, statistically speaking, the people that are willing to do that, eager to do that. They might just need some equipping on how to do that, but they've already expressed a desire that they're eager to do that Right. So, again, go back to that first episode if you want to learn more about net promoter score. But if you don't have a really good brand right, your quote unquote easy evangelism strategy is going to be a lot more difficult, right. So there's an opportunity.
Speaker 3:Polish up your brand. Make sure that your ministry is the type of ministry that people are really enjoying, that people are in love with the ministry that you're doing, that they're excited about the mission that you're putting out and the vision that you're putting out and the hospitality that they experience when they come here and the quality of the worship, the quality of the discipleship programs. Make sure that that's great and then build on that. Create an easy invitation system. Now we'll unpack the steps to do that. So, like I said, first is the branding the net promoter score. Second is identify your most invitational events in the calendar year. What are the things that is the easiest to invite people to? So, right off the bat, we already know, culturally speaking, in America, christmas and Easter are very easy invitational events. A lot of people who still don't even call themselves Christians are willing to come and check out Christmas and Easter services and we see huge spikes in guests coming for those types of services. It's a great on-ramp to invite people to.
Speaker 2:It's remarkable, as I look back over the last 12 years here, how many of our key leaders first came to Christ Greenfield at Christmas and or Christmas Eve or Easter. It's remarkable.
Speaker 3:You might not like it, because you might be thinking to yourself well, christians should be coming to church all the time. Well, this is just the reality of it. This is just you know. So just deal with the reality of it and make the best out of it. It's an attractional time of the year to bring people on board. So you got to make sure that those services are phenomenal, that you've got great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and pause on that real quick, jack, because a lot of pastors can get kind of snarky that your worship attendance is doubling, you know, and you kind of come in with this kind of oh my God, well, we'll see if anybody comes back next week. No, like rejoice that one gets found right. There's a 99 in one kind of and there will be people.
Speaker 2:If it's a great experience on Christmas Eve and Easter, that will continue to check out your church. Rejoice over that rather than your worship declining by 100% or whatever the next week. So go on. What other invitations Mother's?
Speaker 3:Day is a big one. That's probably next to Christmas and Easter, the most easy service to invite people to. A lot of moms want their kids taking them to church on Mother's Day. They're dressed up in their finest and they're taking their photos and stuff and it's great. So let's feed on that. Let's keep inviting on that Attractional sermon series.
Speaker 3:Now, this might get people a little triggered here, especially in our confessional context here. But I just want to be very clear when we talk about a sermon series that the first purpose for preaching is always to have really good discipleship as part of that Really good solid law gospel, really good transformative preaching. But there's also a piece of it is how am I inviting people from outside the church to hear about this? We had a great conversation as we were talking about we got a series coming up about a year or so going through the Old Testament, some of the heroes of the Old Testament, the patriarchs of the Old Testament, some of the prophets and the kings and stuff, and it's like how do we go in really deep actually talking about this person and what we can learn from a law gospel perspective? But also what are some of the themes, the attractional themes that people might be interested in hearing about. That brings people into invitation to hear about it, right? So you got to kind of do both things at the same time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's good. Well, here's our. This will be released probably during Lent. Here's it. We're walking through Mark, finding refuge in Christ, and we're seasonally sensitive, so we're not always on the pericope, but we're definitely in the season of the church here and this is our Lenten journey. This is a piece our creative team Look at this awesome artistic piece If you're watching on YouTube. So so beautiful. Well done, god's presence with us through the inevitable storms of life as we journey through Mark.
Speaker 2:So we should publicize that series. People will be attracted to going on a Lenten journey and I think still within the wider community there is still a corporate consciousness of maybe Ash Wednesday and beginning the season of Lent Fat Tuesday is still kind of a thing you know down in New Orleans and as we go on this 40-day journey to the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus. So, yes, put together really, really compelling sermon series that are seasonally sensitive. And I think this is where the LCMS can really shine today, because we are a liturgical and calendared church body, right, so capitalize on those church seasons for sure. Anything else, jack?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so in addition to that, there are what I call attractional events, right. Sometimes the event is attractional because it's something fun to do, that lets your kids burn off some steam and you can go and just have fun. And other times the event's attractional because it's dealing with something that's a deep felt need that you have, like maybe issues with marriage or sometimes addiction or grief. But a good rule of thumb is for churches to host around nine attractional events in the year, and when I talk to our staff I'm like, hey, for me Christmas and Easter is in there, right.
Speaker 3:So there's other things Harvest Fest, dbs, what are those things that are like very easy, easy, low-hanging fruit attractional things that people feel comfortable inviting their friends to it. We get sometimes close to a couple thousand people coming to our Harvest Fest. It's very easy to invite people to that. There's no doctrinal requirement to come and, you know, check out our Harvest Fest and you know, and be in the petting zoo and check out the bounce houses and all that kind of stuff. It's just a chance to be in fellowship with the community.
Speaker 2:So let me let me. Yeah, people are going to come. They're coming. Yeah Well, let me. Sorry to interrupt, but there's a lot of leaders that are listening that are pastoring churches of 50 to maybe 200, jack. And they look at you you're getting 2000 people to come to your thing it didn't start that way, right Well, obviously, yeah, it didn't start that way.
Speaker 2:So what would you say to someone who right now has and I would say the devil, it's a lie saying there's no way I could do nine attractions, like I don't have the team to do it, blah, blah, blah. Like what would you say to that person?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean do three, do four, you know. Do a barbecue, do a community barbecue. You know you got somewhere between 150 people. Can your community of 50 people host a community barbecue and invite the community to it? No strings attached, right?
Speaker 2:And if you get 50 people or 25 people, you count that as a win, like we're growing. There's an opportunity for them to have a great experience with real people eating a steak.
Speaker 3:you know that's great, so let's be clear, like when you're setting goals for how many guests that you're trying to bring into church for a year. Those goals are set based on the size of your church. Generally speaking, your goal is to bring in as many guests as you have in worship. So in a year you want as many guests as you have on average weekly worship. If your average weekly worship is 50 people and you bring in 50 guests in a year, that is a huge win for a church your size. Other churches that goal is a lot bigger because it's a bigger church and it needs to have a bigger goal for it to still have continuous growth. So you know, other churches may have to bring in 500 people, 800 people. We need 850 at Christ Greenfield to be able to have that goal. So it's all scaled to your organization, yep.
Speaker 2:So we got Net Promoter. We have Knowing.
Speaker 3:Your Net Promoter.
Speaker 2:Events. And now just another strategy just asking people to invite, Ask people to invite.
Speaker 3:So this is like so you know people respond to a request and you can create an important narrative to people like, hey, you play a role in evangelism just by inviting people. Right, we're inviting people in the community. Some ministries say, hey, we want people to belong before they believe. I want people to believe. But hospitality does say you belong here and if you're struggling with faith, guess what that means? You're a sinner. Where do sinners belong? They belong in church. So let's create belonging for people and let's equip people to invite their friends by actually asking them to do that.
Speaker 3:Now we did a really successful campaign this last Christmas. We put a lot of intentionality into our invitation campaign. We, for several weeks leading up to Christmas, asked the community to invite your friends. We had people sign up with a text program, kind of sharing who it is that we called it an invitation challenge. They would get onto like a little chat bot and they would share who it is that they're planning to invite to church and the little chat bot would give them some tips on how to do that effectively. And they would be invited into a prayer campaign. They'd share some devotionals and we would do like a daily prayer, praying for invitation.
Speaker 3:So getting the whole church corporately behind this and we had a record number of guests come to Christmas. We beat prior years by three times by doing that. So equipping the congregation to do that and actually value doing that is a big deal. So this is again culture is being formed by what you actually invite people to do. Culture is behavioral. So being an invitational church means that your culture is invitation invitational, which is actually inviting people to do the invitation.
Speaker 2:Yeah Amen. So we talked about that. That's awesome. We talk about easy evangelism. Is there a hard? Is there a hard evangelism?
Speaker 3:Oh, okay, let's think you know, a little bit surface level. So a low threshold is the easy stuff. The higher threshold is actually going, you know, life on life and actually equipping people with intentionality to have faith conversations with people. So let's talk about an area where a lot of churches in the LCMS context do this really really, really well. It's called catechism, right? So a lot of Lutheran churches do a great job catechizing their kids through a one to two year process. Our process is two years Tim. When we do our catechism, our confirmation program, we require parents to attend.
Speaker 3:Isn't that interesting, our parents attend and they're learning the same things that the kids are learning. Because we want to teach the parents, to reinforce these things. We recognize that parents are disciple makers. That means the parents are sharing their faith with their kids, right.
Speaker 1:And giving them tools to articulate.
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you give them tools Exactly. And if you're thinking there's no way I could get my parents to do that, it probably means you have a low challenge culture. And uh, and we, I inherited actually inviting shout out to pastor Weisman from back in the day here at Christ Greenfield.
Speaker 3:We inherited wildly successful, in my opinion. What a, what a gift, what a gift.
Speaker 2:So that's one opportunity is to go through confirmation, equipping through catechesis and through Luther's small catechism and we get into the master narrative of scripture, you know, to help them be able to, in an elevator or a longer form, tell the whole story of the Bible. So that's great. Anything else.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So a really good goal that churches could take on for themselves if they're really serious about evangelism which they should be is that you would have an evangelism curriculum, right? So an actual process of teaching people to be confident enough about articulating their faith that they can share that with other people, either one-on-one or one in small group, and have a curriculum for that and then try to get 10% of your congregation through that curriculum every year, right? So if you're a church of 100 people, can you get 10 people to participate in that every year? That would be a win for you in your context, and there's a pre-existing curriculum that exists. I went through and I searched for things that are actually designed from an LCMS perspective. So the LCMS has its own evangelism curriculum called Everyone His Witness. You can check that out. There's another really good book called Joining Jesus on His Mission by Greg Finke, which you can create. I believe there's a companion small group curriculum that goes through that Very, very consistent with our Lutheran faith.
Speaker 2:Lutheran.
Speaker 3:Hour also produces great content, absolutely.
Speaker 3:What else? Absolutely, lutheran Hour has got great, great resources for that. And then another thing you can consider doing as a church this is less well it could be it depends on how you set it up but running an alpha course. Alpha courses are really designed for evangelism. It's used a lot in non-denom churches, but let's. I just want to be clear that the curriculum itself is designed to be generically Christian and so it is very adaptable to be led in a Lutheran context. You just want to make sure the person leading it really knows their theology really well when people have questions about stuff right. So either having somebody with pastoral formation or somebody who's got really really good theology, a lay leader, that's really solid. Running that class and you'll see it's got a good brand attached to it because it's designed to be marketed to people who are exploring faith, and a lot of churches have just given really great testimony in terms of reaching people outside the church through that program.
Speaker 2:So that's great, jack, thanks for putting this together. It's been a lot of fun. So let's build an invitational culture. It can be easy or it can be deep. Hopefully we're getting a larger percentage as time goes on. We're a growing community, we're always learning, and so hopefully we're offering. I'm seeing more like willingness for people to go into classes for deeper formation today, and that's a beautiful, beautiful invitation, right, and they want it not just for themselves. This is the heart that we're seeing, at least in our context. They want it not just for themselves, but they want it for their family and for their neighbors and becoming more articulate, telling the greatest story of all time God's love for us in Jesus Christ. Any closing comments?
Speaker 3:No, I think you're right, tim. It's like people might be resistant to a formation process if it's just I'm just checking a box so they can have permission to have a membership status in the church. But if it's for you, if it's about equipping you to participate in the Great Commission, all of a sudden I think you see the willingness to be a part of that radically change. We're forming you so that you can form others, that you can invite others, that you can care for others. This is about equipping you process, not something that we're trying to extract from you and make sure you're checking boxes Right.
Speaker 1:So that's the key thing Humans can sniff that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, humans can sniff inauthenticity.
Speaker 3:Yep, and when you think about what we're talking about easy evangelism or deep evangelism, embracing both what you're doing now is you're inviting the entire church to be part of this process, the entire church to be part of this culture, which I think is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Exactly Well, raising up the priesthood of all believers. This is part three of four on building an invitational culture. We pray. You found this helpful. If so, please like, subscribe, comment, and this helps get the word out. We want to have very, very practical I think these are being released mostly on Fridays Very, very practical, slightly shorter.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're going just across the city and you could just take that one next step, because really that's all leadership is. It's like I'm trying to find my way forward. And here's the thing, jack, it's an infinite game. There's never you're never done with this. So if you, as a leader, are thinking, wow, I can't wait until this is all set and then I'm going to be able to be done and rest, you should rest on the seventh day, god rested, but then we continue to work while it is day, and I think that's sort of a missional orientation, confessing group of people, leaders, in the whatever size context you're at, saying I know we have to grow. That's the humble heart from the Holy Spirit. I know we have to grow and we can't do everything, but we can certainly do something. And hopefully we gave you one or two things, the next steps that you could try to really help change the perception of your congregation in the community. It's a good day. Go make it a great day. Wonderful work, jack. Thanks.
Speaker 3:God bless Tim.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theuniteleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.