Just One Postcard

As many of you already know, this weekend we are going to be receiving our special Advance Offering.  With this offering in hand, we are planning on reaching out to our community like never before.  We are going to consistently and repeatedly reach out through various marketing efforts to get people to attend Fusion so that God can change their lives FOREVER.

I know that some might not understand why marketing is so important.  It can seem very unspiritual.  There is a mentality out there that says that if you build the right church then people will just sort of show up.  That’s not true.   Some might find out about the church but most will never hear and never come.  The truth is that people have to be invited to come to church.

The principle of invitation is seen throughout the Bible.  Jesus himself invited people to follow Him so we know that God uses invitations to bring people into the Kingdom.  Andrew invited his brother Simon to come meet Jesus too.  That’s why reaching out to our community and inviting them to church (and into a relationship with Jesus) via every method available to us is so vitally important.

Now, obviously, personal invitations are the best way to impact someone’s life but what about the scores of people in the community that none of us knows?  What about the folks that live in gated communities with gated lives?  How to you connect with those folks?  There’s no perfect way but one thing we’ve seen God use is advertising.

Does God really use advertising?  Does God actually use stuff like direct mail to reach people?  Yes, He does.

After the service a couple of weeks ago, a young lady approached me and told me, “I’m here because of just one postcard.”  I know that this lady’s life has been changed dramatically because God spoke to her in a real way as she visited Fusion.  That all happened because God used a postcard to prick her heart.  And, she’s not the only one.  Whenever I mention postcards at our church, people email me or call me or write things on their response cards telling me that they came because of a postcard.  I hear it over and over again.  Things like…

• I came here and ended up giving my life to Jesus because of a postcard.
• I came back to church after being away for 20 years after receiving your postcard.
• I decided to stay in my marriage after attending the church because of a postcard.
• I decided to give God one more try because of your postcard.
• On and  on it goes.

Obviously, there isn’t anything all that special about a random postcard but there is something special about God’s people, prompted by His love, sending out thousands and thousands of invitations into the community.  God uses that sort of thing to reach people at just the right time and He prompts them to come to church.  Then, He speaks to them in powerful ways and changes their lives.

Please be praying for the Advance Offering.  Pray that it’s everything that Jesus wants it to be so that we can do everything He wants us to do to reach our community.