Church anniversaries are a special celebration of the great work that God has done through your ministry. As a part of that celebration, you want as many people to be there to celebrate with you. One great way of getting the word out about your church’s anniversary service is to send a letter of invitation. Sending church anniversary letters is the perfect way to reach out to people and invite them to your special service.
It can be daunting to create a church anniversary invitation letter from scratch. That is why, in this article, I created a free template for an effective church invitation letter for the anniversary. Many letter templates don’t fully cover the topics that are essential to a Church Invitation Letter, so I hope the letter of invitation that I propose is useful for your congregation.
Here is the sample followed by some recommended guidelines for crafting your own anniversary letter.
Sample Invitation Letter
Hey (Recipients Full Name),
It’s (Your name) from (Your Churches name)! On behalf of the entire pastoral staff, we want to invite you to our upcoming anniversary service.
On (date of the service), we will have a celebration service of the anniversary of our church. We will celebrate God’s faithfulness during this exceptional weekend. Join us and our active members as we reflect on the blessings of the past year and look ahead to what God is doing in the coming season.
We expect it to be a great Sunday service, and the good news is we saved you a seat. We request the pleasure of your company at this upcoming anniversary service.
Our services are at (times of services) and the service is taking place on (date of the services). The service will be taking place at (your church’s address). We are even hosting a guest speaker (name of speaker).
You are welcome to join us and bring any family or friends you would like. We’d be honored if you would attend our church anniversary service.
Thank you,
(Your name)
That’s the template for the letter, but let’s look at the specifics of how we created that letter. You can customize any portion of this letter to better suit your congregation.
Greet The Recipient with their full name
The first part of this formal letter is the greeting. For the greeting, you should choose a greeting that fits the culture of your church. If your church is more formal, greet them with salutations. If your church is less formal it is fine to greet them with a, “Hey,” or a, “Hi.”
The most important part of this section is choosing a greeting that goes with your church identity. For this, you might want to consider the age of your congregants. If your audience is older, they might appreciate a more formal greeting, but if your congregation is younger, a less formal approach is acceptable.
Following the greeting, place the recipient’s full name. People love their names, so you will honor them by using them. If you have a relationship with the person you are sending the letter to, you can use their first name. However, if you do not have a relationship with the recipient, you should either put a suffix or use their full name.
Whether you use the recipient’s full name also comes down to formality. If you’d like more formality use their full name, but if you want to be casual, use their first name only.
Introduce Yourself
Following greeting the recipient, you should introduce yourself. Many of these recipients will already know who you are, but it is a good practice to reaffirm who you are.
As you introduce yourself, put your position at the church and the church name. Today, many people move churches often, and they might not remember which pastor belonged to what church.
If you state your name, your position, and the church you serve, people will weigh your invitation more heavily. People place a high importance on clergy, so they will feel honored that you are sending them a letter.
Invite Your Special Guest
After you tell them who you are, you can move on to the invitation portion. Here you will invite the recipient using the name of the church event. If the name of your anniversary service is “Anniversary Celebration,” then say, “I wanted to invite you to our church anniversary celebration.
Having consistent wording for your anniversary service will make it easier to understand, and it will lead to more people coming to your service. If people are confused by the name of the event, they might be less likely to attend.
In this section, you make sure that your wording communicates that you would be honored for them to attend. People might receive this letter and recognize that it was written for many different people. To combat that, you should make it personal, so they feel like you genuinely care.
Additional information
After the invitation, you want to make the details of the event clear. Place the time of the event, date of the event, and any more important information in this section.
The recipient should not have to follow up for more details of the event or any other further information. If they feel like they need to have more questions answered, it is more likely that they won’t attend at all.
In this section, you can even put specific details about the service. If you have a guest speaker, tell them about it. If there will be free food, let them know. This is a great place to pitch to them the service. If you do this part well, people are sure to come.
Encourage them to invite people
Once they have all the important details, ask them to invite friends or family. Asking them to invite a family member is a small responsibility that might hold them accountable to going.
If the recipient asks a friend to go with them, it is less likely that both of them won’t come. There will be a level of buy-in. This also helped to fill the room better for the service. If each recipient brings one person, the letter’s effectiveness doubles.
Sign off with Your Name
To close the letter out, you’ll want to sign off. A “thank you” followed by a handwritten signature is a great addition to this letter. Again, it shows that the letter, although written for a group of people, has some personal touch.
Use your own name in the signature, and try to make the signature as professional as possible. The recipients will appreciate the attention to detail that you put into the letter.
Some More Thoughts about the Church Invitation Letter for Anniversary
Consider sending it to a small group of people
Many churches might want to send these invitation letters to everyone who lives in the nearby area, but I think these personal letters are best served to specific people.
These people can be ex-staff members, people who used to come to church but moved away, or other spirit-inspired people. The more people you send the letter to, the less personal it will feel.
So, for your annual church homecoming service, don’t send the letter to all of your church members. Try to keep it to a smaller group. Former pastors and staff are always great people to send these kinds of letters to.
Consider sending the Church Invitation letter through e-mail
If you do want to send this to everyone in your congregation, consider sending it through e-mail. Sending this letter through e-mail can save precious time and money for your church. Stamps can be expensive.
Everyone is using their mobile device now, so you can capitalize on that by sending this letter through e-mail.
Consider Sending the Church Invitation letter through text
Even e-mail might be too formal, depending on the culture of your church. Using a phone number, you can send the letter to someone’s phone. If you condense the message down, this might be a better alternative.
Again, people are always checking their phones, so it might be the perfect opportunity to send this message through text.
Ultimately, do what best fits your congregation. I hope that the template and tips have helped you craft your own church invitation letter for your church anniversary. If you do it effectively you should get an overwhelmingly positive response and see a great return during your anniversary service.
