miletwo::network

I’m a little late in getting this out, but this installment in the series is probably one of the most important. Think for a moment with me if you will; if you plan to take a trip somewhere you’ve never been before and it’s far away… I mean FAR AWAY. How do you go about finding your way? Obviously a map comes in handy in these cases. Now after plotting your path and figuring out how you’re going to get there do you just jump in the car and go? Umm… hello, how about a change of clothes and a toothbrush?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we (the church) differentiate ourselves from the church of old and the world that has been pulled over our eyes, especially in this postmodern day and age. There’s quite a bit of interesting and controversial data on the topic that is certainly relevant to our church marketing efforts. As I always say, you have to know the audience before you can speak to them.

So what do Christians expect online?

The first thing I was mildly surprised to find was that more people use Christian media than attend church. According to my buddy George (okay, I don’t really know him, but his firm is brilliant):

The Internet is the only mass medium … whose audience share has grown during the past decade. The proportion of the population using the Internet for faith purposes has increased by two-thirds since 1998.

Today at my church (Grace Community Church in Gresham Oregon) our worship pastor Ben Sadler spoke on our identity as Christians and the concept of “living to die.” Gerry Breshears was teaching out at Hillsboro Community Church and Jay Messenger and his wife Jamie were sitting at the table next to me so apparently it was Ben’s time to share. He mentioned at one point the various components that make up the person: DNA, career, family, social environment, etc. and it got me thinking about how we market Jesus.

Much confusion exists in online marketing circles on the value of social networking tools, sites, blogs, yada, yada, yada… which begs the question, “How do you build community?” Seriously. So, the social scientist quadrant of my brain takes over and I begin to digg into this deli.icio.us question and see what the rest of the online community has to say. I’m sure if the information is out there, by now I must have reddit.

Where was this information yesterday?  I was in a meeting yesterday with a local church pastor discussing attendance trends related to a new web project and he commented on the cultural trends of church attendance and how many postmoderns are choosing no attendance, home study only, or other means than a traditional church experience.  The stats on the subject were old and outdated, UNTIL TODAY!

In the wake of the recent slide, no… avalanche of real estate price drops I’ve begun to wonder what effect the current economy might have on church vitality, growth, and attendance. The question: “To what degree does the failing economy affect church marketing, attendance and giving, and is there anything we should be doing in response?”

Let’s look at the various factors below and see if I’m just a nut job or if there’s something here we should be thinking about.

Attendance

This one has been hard to locate any statistical data for but I wonder, when hard times hit do more people go to church or find faith? If so, it’s reasonable to assume we should be gearing up for an onslaught! I know from personal experience that there are many factors that drive people to the savior. Many times a personal awakening is triggered by unfortunate circumstances so be ready with the gauze and bandages. If you read this article and are a pastor at a church, let me know if you’ve seen attendance numbers affected by economy.

In the last installment of Communicating (online) for a Change we looked at the relationship of planning a sermon (communicating the Gospel orally) to communicating the same church vision via the internet. This series, drawing wisdom from the book Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley, is meant to focus our efforts in the realm of online church marketing by giving us a methodology consistent with the same goals that drive our weekly sermons.

I love the guys at Church Marketing Sucks, but their recent nod to the concept of marketing Christianity using the terminology of other religions scares the bejeezus out of me. In a recent post focusing attention on the Dutch Catholic Church, they recognize a marketing attempt by the Dutch attempting to promote Lent as “the Christian Ramadan.”

A while back I read through Andy Stanley’s book Communicating for a Change and found it to be a profound look at the process of communicating truth from the pulpit. As a teaching pastor at miletwo::church I met regularly with the rest of the pastoral board discussing the thought processes presented in this book and how we could apply it in our messages; the goal being more effective communication of truth in a world where competition for the minds and thoughts of church members is so fierce. This has caused me to realize that there are many truths from Communicating for a Change to be applied to a church web project. After all, communicating online and communicating from a pulpit are both still communicating (forgive the gross oversimplification for a bit).

I read today in Seth Godin’s blog about a new site by the folks at Squidoo who just built a promotional tool that lets you become the central expert on all things in your area. Mayor of your zip code is a way to start a discussion group/info page about what’s happening in your slice of the world. You become the single relevant source of information on your community. That said, if you only spend a few minutes on it and then move on, it’ll fail. But, if you were to budget a significant portion of your time or those in your organization on working on your page, what do you think would show up in Google searches? What sort of interactions would you start having with people thinking about your little part of the world?