April 20, 2024
DULUTH — This Sunday, March 3, marks seven weeks until Easter. As such, it’s the perfect time for churches to take advantage of resources available through The Big Invite.
The campaign is designed to help churches maximize their efforts to reach their communities this Easter, says its creator, Scott Smith.
“The Big Invite is a seven-week proven blueprint to having more guests than ever for Easter,” said Smith, Georgia Baptist state missionary in Evangelism. “It is literally a step-by-step approach to saturating your community with multiple invitations, both online and offline, to Easter services in a way that will most effectively prompt a decision to attend.”
Now in its third year, materials for The Big Invite can be accessed after filling out an information page. Those materials – including a professionally-designed promotional video, pre-written social media posts and images, and a customized website landing page – would reach a promotional value of at least $5,000.
“As a bonus, it includes video tutorials on how to boost Facebook posts for your community how to film videos for maximum effectiveness,” added Smith.
Don Wilhite served as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Columbus for 40 years before retiring in 2014. Now as transitional pastor at First Baptist in Richland, he’s in a different ministry setting. Wilhite no longer has large-church resources on hand such as multiple staff members. That’s one reason he wanted to see what The Big Invite offered.
“I know the value of having that kind of support from people with experience and expertise,” he told The Index. “The folks who put this together know what they’re doing, and that helps me and my church.”
And while those materials, indeed, help small-church pastors like Wilhite, The Big Invite is capable of being molded to whatever ministry setting.
“Any size church can benefit from this, and the campaign is scalable,” Smith noted. “You can add or take away as needed based on budget.”
A testimonial page on The Big Invite website gives approval to the resources.
“How blessed we were at Ty Ty FBC on Easter!” wrote Pastor Rodney Owens. “We were blessed with 380 people on campus, with almost 40% of them being our guests! Our normal attendance is around 215. It’s amazing what an invitation will do when we extend it!”
“Awesome week for the Meadow Family in Comer, with a Community outreach event on Wednesday, followed by a crowd on Sunday,” wrote Meadow Baptist Church Pastor Mike Sarna. “Had almost double our regular worship attendance! Pray we continue to invite the broken to find a Savior.”
After filling out the information page, a video of Smith explains The Big Invite and answers questions. The seven-week layout of materials, testimonials, quick start guide, and other tabs are available at thebiginvite.org.
