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Lyle R. Schaller’s eighteen years of research into growing and nongrowing congregations across America provides the most extensive date base of any American church growth researcher. Several of his conclusions should be taught by every local church leader across the United States:

Schaller, for many years, has asked church members questions such as, “Why are you a member of this parish rather than some other church in this community?” He reports that “between two-thirds and three-fourths of the people give responses which can be classified as friendship or kinship ties.”
Significantly, Schaller reports that “in most rapidly growing congregations, two-thirds to seven-eights of the recent adult new members first attended at the invitations of a friend or relative.”
Even more significant, in rapidly growing congregations, friendship ties are mentioned far more often than kinship ties. By contrast, in the declining parish, kinship ties account for a substantial number of all members, while friendship ties are rarely mentioned. The moral: the parish that seeks to grow should look at how friendship ties can be increased between individual members and persons who are not active members of any worshiping congregation.”
I would add another moral. The church must also teach its members to reach out through their already existing friendship ties. What presently happens spontaneously, to produce some church growth will produce much more when the principle is used as a conscious strategy of the congregation.

Creative Leadership Series, Lyle E. Schaller, Editor page 34