Why We Don't Have an Invitation at our Church

We don’t have an “invitation” at the end of our services, and there’s a very good reason why. To be honest, this is the first church I’ve been at with no invitation. Growing up, it’s just what you did as a good Baptist. You’d go to church and listen to the pastor drone on about something in the Old Testament. He’d throw in a two-minute gospel presentation at the end and you’d endure six verses of Just As I Am, secretly hoping that no one would walk down the aisle so that you could beat the Methodists to lunch.

Mt Vernon doesn’t have an invitation at the end of our services and it’s not because we’re heretical or anti-gospel. It’s not because we’re Calvinistic or we don’t consider ourselves Baptist anymore. It’s because we don’t think a traditional invitation is the most effective way to invite a response from the people.

There’s the obvious fear of walking down in front of complete strangers. That hinders many from even taking a step. Then you have the other extreme, those who love the attention and come down every other week for a prayer request or to rededicate, savoring the attention of the crowd. But perhaps the biggest knock against the invitation is the amount of time you’re allowed as a pastor to counsel for a decision. When someone walks down, you’ve got 30-45 seconds to accurately assess their spiritual state and determine the validity of their decision before you declare it to the entire congregation. Too many times I’ve rushed a counseling situation because the clock was ticking, only to find out later that they came down for something else or their decision wasn’t genuine. Some churches still do an invitation but take all of the people that come down back to a counseling room and don’t present them immediately. I think that’s a great step.

So, how do we invite response? We direct everyone at the end of each service to our Next Steps form (the backside of our Connection Card), where we ask them to fill out one of many decisions they might be considering making. They put it in the offering box on the way out, and from there a staff person contacts them one-on-one to follow up on their decision. What about people taking a public stand for Christ and not being ashamed of the gospel? That’s what baptism is for. We still baptize in front of the entire church, and we even make them video tape their testimony (that’s another blog post for another time).

Is it a perfect method? No. Has it cut down on the number of rushed or illegitimate decisions that can happen with a traditional invitation? Absolutely. Has it decreased the genuine decisions we’d get from a traditional invitation? We don’t think so. Call us anti-traditional (that label definitely fits), but don’t call us anti-biblical or anti-gospel. We’re calling for a response to the gospel at every service, and decisions are made at Mt Vernon every week. We thank God for that.

QUESTION: Does your church utilize a public invitation at the end of the service?