One of the most asked questions regarding  Christianity Explored is, “How do we get people to come to the course?” The most reliable answer is, “Inviting people to come with you to the course.”

But others have developed some good ideas to help with these invitations.

Tom Harr and Ethan Dunham at Faith Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, DE, have developed a postcard that can be given to church members to give to the people they invite, and that can also be sent to people in the community.

Tom writes, “We do give them to church members to hand out and then we typically mail about 15,000 into the area immediately surrounding our church (North Wilmington is a relatively densely populated suburb of Wilmington and Philadelphia).  It’s part of a broader mailing program that builds awareness in the community of our church.”

“We’ve averaged about 4-5 family units attend at least one session due to postcard response… probably 2-3 stick through the course.  That’s not a very good economic return on the face of it, but we’ve had several conversions and several people become regular church attenders as a result.”

“I still find it remarkable in our increasingly de-churched northeast suburb that anyone would get a postcard in the mail from a church they’ve never visited and then come.”

Tom also explains that they have rebranded the course as “Faith Explored” for using at their church to coordinate with the name of the church “Faith Presbyterian.”

Concerning the design of the card, Tom says, “The most quoted feature of the card from people who come because of the postcard with no prior connection to our church is “If you could ask God one question…” Hence that’s become more prominent over the years in the design.”

Another church recently told me about using social media to invite people to the course. That church asked about any design ideas for using with social media posts. Maybe this postcard used by Faith Presbyterian can give you design ideas not only for direct mail, but also for invitations, and for social media posts.