Free file for youth pastors:

How to Bring Your Friends to Church mp3 (Luke 16:1-9)

Our student ministry usually averages about 75 students on any given Sunday school or student worship service.  Over our revival: HarvestFEST, we had over 225 students on the Tuesday night.  Adding all nights together (Sunday – Wednesday), we had about 600 students in all.  That was by far the most I’ve ever seen our students bring in.  I’m so glad that God brought us an engaging and impacting speaker like Dr. Ronnie Hill to take care of them once they came!

I wanted to keep the ball rolling and the momentum moving forward, so I cancelled all regularly scheduled activities for Sunday school this morning (MACRO Theology), and I let the students hear from each other.  Instead of the normal “come up to the mic and give your testimony” time, I put two chairs up front and did an interview type setting.  The students didn’t know I was going to do it.  I only took volunteers.  I was amazed…they did an awesome job.  Again, the purpose of these student interviews was to be an encouragement to our whole student ministry to keep on investing in the lives of other students, inviting them to our church, and all that so that God can make a huge impact in their lives.  I wanted them to give our their own strategies, ideas, etc.

Here are the 4 questions I asked them:  1.  How many did you invite to come to HarvestFEST?  2.  How many actually ended up coming with you?  3.  Why do you think they came and not the others you invited…what made the difference?  4.  What did God do in the lives of the friends you brought?

Here are the top answers I received from question #3 that I think are very helpful for student ministries: 1. Be sincere!  2. Actually pick them up and bring them with you (or let them follow you…don’t just expect them to show up).  3. Usually only your closest friends will come with you.  4. They won’t come with you unless they know you care about them.  5. Be passionate and tell them how your life is changing from your church.  6. Give a cool-but-true reason to an unsaved/unchurched friend to come to church (meet friends, opposite sex, youth pastor, food, music, games, etc.).  If they are lost, we gotta come up with reasons they will want to be there.  7. Relationships (either with yourself of people they’d want to meet) are the most sure-fire way to get them to come and STAY.  8. Tell them how their life will be different if they come.

After the student interview time, I gave our whole student ministry a BRIEF challenge from Luke 16:1-9 on the need to invest in the lives of others so that we can sincerely invite them to church…so that God can make an impact on their lives through Christ.  Here’s the mp3 link: How to Bring Your Friends to Church (Luke 16:-19)