My Friendship Connection
I am fired up. I had a great conversation yesterday with a guy named Vernon Brady who used to be the Vice President of the Church Growth Institute. He’s spearheading an evangelism initiative called My Friendship Connection. And here’s the awesome part for us: He wants eleven72 to help produce a series of videos for this oh so cool event (more on the event itself in a second). First a little background: Did you know that according to research done by the Church Growth Institute a full 86% of the people who trust Christ as their Savior do so because of the simple invitation of a friend. By way of contrast, only 2% come to Christ through the use of advertising. Wow. That is an amazing stat. The single most effective way to evangelize the people you know is to simply invite them to church. We didn’t realize that the idea behind our video Just Ask was such a powerful one! But it makes sense when you think about it, because God is all about relationship.
Twenty years ago, Vernon was part of a program called Friend Day. The program, asking people to invite a friend to church, was used successfully by 47,000 churches. Since then, God has been growing up in Vernon a desire to see millions of people’s lives forever changed through nothing more than being invited to church (and, of course, being reached by the Spirit and prompted to turn their lives over to Jesus). And the time is now. The seed that God planted with Vernon is poised to start a flood with My Friendship Connection.
What is My Friendship Connection?
My Friendship Connection is a strategy designed to mobilize your church for a great day of outreach. Synergy comes by connecting churches across North America on the same day with a single focus. Therefore, we seek to engage the masses into the largest army ever assembled for the purpose of reaching, evangelizing and winning friends to Jesus Christ through the local church.
Go to their website and check it out. Tell your church about it. Right now about 500 churches in Virginia are on board, but that number is quickly growing. They’ve had inquiries from other countries and big groups like the Southern Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board are expressing interest. Just hearing about it, I could tell that God is in this. Imagine what might happen if tens of thousands of churches get involved with this in the next few months. Imagine all the people who will walk through the door of a church on November 4th (that’s the day when all of this culminates). My friends. Your friends. Tens of thousands of people. Imagine all the people who will come face to face with the life changing reality of Jesus Christ. What a great day for rejoicing that will be! All because friends simply asked their friends, “would you come to church with me?
I’m so excited that God brought this to Lee and I. So humbled that we might be used to serve God’s Kingdom in such a powerful way. I have never met Vernon Brady face to face. We connected because of our media on the internet. He could have called anyone. He called us. God continues to amaze me daily. This life of following Christ is truly a great adventure.
I’ll have more to post on this as things progress. For now, check out myfriendshipconnection.com. And get ready friends!
Tags: evangelism, General, inspirational, internet links, making videos, passion