Friendly Contract. Oxymoron?

Visit 2 Church is planning a “Friend Day” event as part of their fall kick off.  Apparently this is an annual event, and the pastor spent a good bit of time promoting the Friend Day during the service.  During the promotion, he explained that this year’s event would have a new feature – a Friend “Contract”.  The church was going to provide all of the members/regular attenders with copies of this contract that were to be used to sign people up to attend the Friend Day service.  It was described as a tool you could use to get commitments from friends, co-workers, family members, etc.  that they will promise to attend Friend Day at Visit 2 church. 

Our initial reaction was that we must have misunderstood what the “contract” was for.  The explanation continued and left no doubt – the signed contracts would be posted at the church prior to, and in preparation for, Friend Day.  We found this really troubling; especially in light of the comment made to us that visit 2 church really wants to reach “unchurched” people. 

Friend Day is certainly not a new idea, the origins can be traced to the ministry of Jesus, as people he encountered enthusiastically wanted to introduce their friends to Him.  In the 1980’s an author named Elmer Towns created a Friend Day program and offered the idea, complete with resource kit, for local churches to use.  A quick visit to Church Growth Institute’s website (www.churchgrowth.org) provided a sample of a “Friendly Contract”.   (To illustrate the “cutting edge” nature of this program - the material was last updated in 1994, to provide it on CD’s instead of audio cassette tapes and printed documents). 

The basic problem here is the word “contract” does not seem friendly, or imply friendship.  In John 1, there is no mention of Andrew or Philip utilizing a friend contract to get Simon or Nathaniel introduced to Jesus.  The contract appears to be a tool, in this setting, to provide accountability for church members to participate - a way to quantify buy-in on the evangelistic premise of Friend Day.  More Friend Contracts on display equals more people who take the growth of the church and the kingdom seriously.   It seems that we could find a better way to measure “buy-in”. 

At Discovery, we have historically attempted to accomplish this through the use of stories, as opposed to over-reliance on statistical measures. Providing opportunities for people to share the stories of friends invited, even the ones that do not come (who would never sign a contract).  Part of the reason for evangelistic initiatives is for the growth of the inviters – not just the assimilation of the invitees.  I am sure that Philip shared the story of Nathanial’s first encounter with Jesus many times over – we know that John did.