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The church is growing fast right now. They're not doing more. Hey, it's Rich Burch here from Unseminary and I have spent 20 plus years in the front row seat to what's actually working inside growing churches. And here's what I just keep seeing. They've made invite normal every day expected, not a special sermon series, a culture. If your big days spike and then everything settles back to where it is, that's the gap. And I want to help you close it. So on Tuesday, May 12, I'm hosting a free workshop called the Invite Culture Audit. You'll leave with a scorecard, a 90 day blueprint of your next step, actions and answers to your specific situation in a live Q and A. The link's in the show notes or go to unseminary.com friends. I want to help you build your invite culture. That's on Tuesday, May 12th. Look for the links in the show notes or go to unseminary.com why people don't invite anymore and what still works. It's Rich Burch here from Unseminary. Your people aren't broken. Here's what's really going on. Three weeks after I got my driver's license, I put it in a ditch. This was back when you could walk into the licensing office on your 16th birthday, get a learner's permit, and within a few weeks before, fully licensed. No restrictions, no supervision. And that was me, 16 years old, license in my wallet, and a car I was allowed to drive anywhere at any time. It was a Christmas party winter night. I was driving home with a few friends and a paved road was transitioning to gravel. And I hit that washboard effect, the tires skidding sideways in a way I had never felt before. My car did something I wasn't expecting. So what did I do? I overcorrected and we ended up nose down in the ditch on the wrong side of the road. Here's the thing. I was fully licensed. I'd passed the test on paper, I knew how to drive. I just hadn't been trained for that specific moment. Nobody had taken me out to a gravel road and said, this is what washboard feels like. This is what your car will do. This is how you respond. The gap between licensed and actually prepared. Put me in the ditch that night. And I think about that almost every time a pastor tells me their people won't invite. Listen, your people are not the problem. Let me say it again. Stop the quiet Monday morning verdict that your people just don't care enough. Are aren't committed enough, aren't bold enough in their faith. That story is wrong. And worse, it's leading you to the wrong solutions. Spiritual guilt campaigns don't build invite culture. They built a two week bump and a long guilt hangover. Here's what the data actually says about your people. Roughly a third of unchurch Americans say they'd attend a worship service if a friend invited them. Number climbs for low barrier community events as well. Meanwhile, three and four regular churchgoers say the sermon content is the primary reason they show up. Scripture connected to life, Actual teaching. Here's the translation for you. The receptivity is already sitting in your people's friend's group. Let me say that again. The receptivity is already sitting in your people's friends friends group. The weekend experience is already a word of mouth asset. Your people care. Their friends are open. The raw materials for growth are there. So why is your invite rate the way it is? Because licensed isn't the same as trained. Your people are fully credentialed followers who've never been taken out on a gravel road. And when the invite moment shows up, friend at work mentions a hard week or a neighbor asks them what they did this weekend, they hit the washboard and over correct. They mumble something vague. They change the subject. They go quiet. You read that as a motivation problem. It isn't. It's a training problem. Those are very different things. Because one of them you can fix what your people actually need. And it's not another guilt sermon. Three things. Not not one of these, not two of these. All three is what your people need. First, train their heads. Most of your congregation thinks they're passengers. Your people need to understand what role they actually play in reaching the community. Not abstractly. Not just a sermon illustration. It's a job description. Most people in the seats on Sunday don't believe they have a meaningful role in the impact your church will have in your community. They think it's the pastor's job, the staff's job, the outreach team's job. When an invitation comes up, they nod along. But in their head, they're a passenger. You're the one driving the bus, not them. Training challenges that mental model. It teaches your people that they are the most persuasive communication channel your church have more than your Instagram, more than your website, more than any ad you can run. The the research backs this up repeatedly. People don't get invited by buildings, they get invited by friends. When a congregation genuinely understands this at the head level, like it's fully comprehended. Their posture begins to shift. They stop waiting for the church to simply grow itself. Okay, number two, equip their hands. Your people freeze because nobody gave them a script. Now give them the tools. What are the actual words they say when a friend asks them what they did this weekend? Or what do you text someone after they mention that their marriage is struggling? Or what's the language for inviting a coworker to Easter or to any other day without sounding like a pitch? Or what do you share on social media and when and how often? This is where most churches frankly fall off the cliff. We train people at a conceptual level, then send them into real conversations with no scripts, no prompts, no practice reps. And they freeze. Of course they freeze. We freeze too. The first time we tried to explain what grace is to a skeptical relative on Thanksgiving, we froze. Of course our people are going to freeze. Equipping means giving your people specific language, specific triggers, specific training, specific tools. Shareable social posts, invite cards that don't feel weird. Text templates. They reduce the friction of the actual moment. Language without the tool is just theory. The tool without the language is track left on a diner table. All right, number three. Motivate their hearts. Guilt is not vision. And finally there's the why not? Guilt not? You should be doing this not barely veiled implication that better Christians invite more people. Real motivation is about vision at its core. At their heart. It's the moment your people see that this inviting their co worker, their sister in law, the single mom down the street is how their community actually changes. This is how the marriage that's quietly falling apart gets a Tuesday night small group. This is how a lonely senior gets a ride to church and a coffee after. This is how the teenager who parents just got divorced from finds one adult who just keeps showing up. This is how we change the world. Not from the stage, but from the seats. Motivation isn't about making your people feel bad. It's about letting them feel the weight of what their life is worth when they spend it in this way. All right, here's why this matters specifically for you. The pastor who thinks our people just invite builds a culture around guilt and just shallow inspiration. Neither of these compound. You'll see the same spike in September and wonder why the baseline never moves. The pastor who thinks our people need to be trained, they need to be equipped and they need to be motivated builds systems. And you know what systems compound. Year one looks modest. Year three looks like a different church. One of these leaders is still running the Same spike and drop cycle into 2031. The other isn't. The question isn't whether your people care. They do. The question is whether you ever built a gravel road for them to practice on or whether you keep handing out licenses and acting surprised when people get in the ditch. That's why we're running the Invite culture audit on May 12th. On Tuesday, May 12th at 12pm Eastern, I'm hosting a free workshop called the Invite Culture Audit Workshop. It's not a pep talk, it's. It's a diagnostic. For 20 years, I've had a front. For over 20 years, I wish it was just 20. I've had a front row seat to what's actually working inside growing churches all across North America. And here's what I'm seeing. The churches that are growing aren't doing more. They've just made invite normal. In 60 minutes, you're gonna walk away with three things. You're gonna understand why healthy churches get stuck. The hidden reason your church is doing all the right things. Yet guest flow stays inconsistent and big days spike and then return back to nor. We're going to talk about the five gears of invite culture. The specific systems that growing churches use to move people from hoping people invite to actually expecting they will and seeing that they do. And then finally, you're going to walk away with a 90 day invite culture blueprint, a practical plan to mobilize your people, multiply invitations and build real momentum. Heading into the fall of 2026, you'll walk out with the Invite Culture scorecard, a clear picture of where your Invite culture is strong, where it is leaking, and which of these three train, equip and motivate is a dominant blocker for your church right now. Not a generic answer. It's really we're trying to focus on for you, to help you to be as helpful as you possibly can. Check the link below. There's not going to be a hard pitch here. There's no, you know, giant sales pitch. We are going to talk about a way that we could continue to work together at the end of the conversation. But click the link below. Register for the free Invite Culture Audit workshop. One last thing about that ditch. When the police pulled me out of the snow that night, they asked me where I wanted to go. My parents were out for the night. It was Christmas. I knew enough that I shouldn't go home to an empty house. So they drove me to Pastor Dave Lewis's house. My senior pastor, a really good man. Plus, if I'm honest, I figured they'd come when they came and pick me up at Pastor Dave's house. That would soften any initial parental pressure. Well, he opened the door in whatever a pastor wears at 10pm on a winter night. And he wasn't angry, he wasn't disappointed. He was just kind. He let me sit on his couch, shake a little, and eventually called my folks and tell them what happened. My parents expressed concern, but honestly, they didn't freak out. They were incredibly loving. They just were grateful I was alive. Then the police showed up at the front door the next day with the real consequence a one month license suspension. No driving. Here's the truth. I didn't want to drive. I was 16. I'd scared myself badly. And that month off did something that the license test never did. I came back to the road. Different. Slower. More careful. More aware of what I didn't know. To this day, I drive slower than my wife. You can ask her. She'll tell you that. I drive slower than her. She'll cheerfully tell you that. I think about this sometimes when I talk. When I'm talking to a pastor who invite numbers are flat because your people aren't reckless. They're not uncommitted. Most of them are quietly in the ditch. They tried. They tried it once. It went sideways, they stopped trying. And now they're just driving to work and back. The audit isn't a lecture. It's closer to Pastor Dave's couch. We'll figure out what actually is going on at your church. We'll name the specific thing that's going wrong. And then together we'll build training that your people should have had all along. And that's how we'll get them back on the road. We'll see. You make 12.