Last week, I looked at what Rick Warren’s 1995 classic The Purpose Driven Church can teach the Left about recruitment in our atomized era. But getting people through the door is only half the battle. Seeker-sensitive evangelicalism didn’t buck America’s decades-long decline in membership organizations simply by attracting crowds. It couldn’t have grown without systematically turning newcomers into members, members into leaders, and leaders into recruiters.

As Warren puts it, “Our ultimate goal at Saddleback is to turn an audience into an army.” This is where the Left is weakest. Radical and progressive organizations generally lose most people we bring in and develop only a fraction of the rest into organizers able and willing to recruit those around them.

Survey data shows a dramatic difference between how today’s evangelicals and leftists recruit. Whereas 82 percent of megachurch attendees first heard of their church via a personal invitation from a coworker, friend, or family member, the same was true for only 21 percent of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members. This reliance on media rather than personal invitations is also the norm among progressives in the United States and abroad.