On September 1 we as a church family began our work toward the exciting goal of enthusiastically reaching out from all of our ministries and worshipping communities to invite and welcome more people to our church. We even put a measurement to it (as all good goal achievers do) and decided to commit to increasing our Fall attendance by 10% over 2018.

So, how are we doing so far? Some exciting stats to note are that, overall, after just one month of this intentional practice:

• We increased our churchwide attendance by 7.8% over 2018; that’s 432 more people attended First Church worship this September than they did last September
• We welcomed 124 guests to our church for the very first time (and these are just the ones who signed in!)
• We added 12 new positions for greeters on Sunday mornings, engaging 30 members of our First Church family to help welcome everyone to our church; many if not most of these are first-time greeters!

And yet, even as we congratulate one another and celebrate this early progress, we still have some work to do to get to that 10% by the end of the year. How will we get there?

First, keep inviting! Challenge yourself to think of new people every week to invite to our church — whether it is to worship, one of our studies, Sunday School classes or discussion groups, our Children’s Academy Sunday School, The Refuge for teens — or even to come and play Pickleball on Monday nights in the Justin Gym.

Volunteer about 15 – 30 minutes of your time on Sunday mornings to join our fun-loving force of greeters, both outside in the parking lots (and bask in the long-awaited Fall Texas weather), or inside in our busiest areas to help our guests find their way around. It’s the happiest job on Campus each and every Sunday morning!

Reach out to any people you don’t know on Sunday mornings with a smile, a warm handshake, and an introduction. You may not only be welcoming a first-time visitor; you may be getting to know another church member you haven’t had occasion to meet yet! What do you say beyond the hellos? Ask questions, take an interest in who they are and what they care about. Share something about yourself or your family — in other words, just be your friendliest self!

As we move toward both the end of 2019 and the meeting or exceeding of our 10% attendance goal, we hope you find new enthusiasm and sense of community around this deliberate intent to share what we have to offer to the Fort Worth community and increase both the size and engagement of our dynamic and life-giving faith community!