In Evangelism Relationship Matters More than Media

     Philip Nation has posted some results of a study regarding evangelism in America as a guest blogger over at Ed Stetzer's blog.  The study shows a correlation between personal outreach/invitation and other means such as mass mailings and other mass media outlets.  Here is a small portion of the post:

The study showed that communicating about your church through personal relationships is more effective than other mass communications means. We found that 63 percent are willing to receive information about a local congregation or faith community from a family member, and 56 percent are willing to receive such information from a friend or neighbor.

One issue that seems to come to us intuitively was validated through the statistics of the study. We found that the effectiveness of the invitation was often tied to its form: the more personal, the more effective.

Such a statement then raises a question: Are Christians regularly engaging people around them about their faith, their church, and, most importantly, their Lord?

To read the entire post go here (Outreach, Evangelism and the New Season).

I remember a few years ago when I was part of a church that planted another church we used mass mailings as a tool to build awareness of the church plant.  If my memory is correct, we had one family come, and stick around, as a result of the mailing.  Has anyone else had a similar experience?  Has anyone had any success from using mass media of different kinds to reach out to communities?  Please share it with us.

At least one important things arises as a take away from this:  Christians must be involved in the lives of those around them.  I know that many will read this and think that this is nothing new (myself included), and they're right.  But until we implement it we need to continue to hear about it.