I’ve been talking about the concept of becoming a goer with a friend lately and have decided to put a few concepts in line prior to taking this to a larger audience. You, the faithful few who follow my blog will get to see it first.
Church Marketing, Churchianity, Emerging Church, Leadership, Ministry, Reformission, The Environment, Web Development, community
I read The Resurgence… a lot. As well as catalystspace.com, Mark Driscoll’s blog, Scott Knight’s blog, and a host of others. This provides a lot of food for thought and some good ideas for how to minister hope and healing to the world around me. I often will blog a trackback to the stuff I think is cool, but I wonder… is it okay to blog the stuff I think is lame?
Our buddies over at Church Marketing Labs (aka Church Marketing Sucks) have dug up a super neat-o presentation on mixing business and ministry. The CEO of Kanakuk Kamps has posted an interesting presentation on achieving the proper balance between non-profit servitude and tough business moxy.
So, as many of you may have noticed lately I’ve been on somewhat of an environmentalist tear, ranting and raving about waste, consumerism, and green issues. The reason of course is because I love where I live, the earth. It’s awesome! God made it. It’s awesome. Did I mention it’s awesome? So anyway, when I read things that make sense from a “hey let’s use less and preserve God’s artwork for our kid’s kids to see” I like to point them out and if possible relate it to how we function as a church and how this makes use more relevant and credible to the rest of the world.
I’ve been chatting with numerous church leaders lately about consistent messaging and it has become apparent that many misunderstand the meaning of “brand” and the importance of having one. This is one area in the ongoing saga of attempting to impact the world around us with the message of the Gospel by increasing the skill of churches in communications and marketing.
The difference between a logo and a brand comes down to consistency and purpose. A logo is generally defined as a graphic mark representing your organization in a way that is unique, distinguished and hopefully, meaningful. A brand has the same purpose but consists of more than just your logo and carries over into all elements of your organization’s identity, be it naming, logos, phrases, etc. Remember Bruce Almighty’s catchy phrase “and that’s the way the cookie crumbles…”? That’s branding. He created a phrase that identified himself as unique, and used it consistently to place a mark on his news address. Apple uses “Think Different”, Nike says we should “Just do it” and so on. Everything they do is embrazened with a specific color palette that is consistent with their identity. Look at the Apple web site. It’s soft, white and has clean shadows and lines… a lot like their devices, huh?
Think of everything you create for your church. Weekly bulletins, postcards for men’s ministry, posters for Awana’s, and so on down the line. How can you tie all of these things together with a consistent message so that whenever your members and the community see them they say “hey, that’s from so-and-so church”? That’s branding.
So, for Earth Day 2008 I had decided to write a big long post about how the church should care more about the world God created for us and maybe even start a book about it! IT’S Been Done!!! I just found a book by Tri Robinson, a pastor who wrote the book Saving God’s Green Earth. The book is about why the church should care about the environment and includes examples of things his church has done to be more environmentally responsible. There is also a web site for the book which features some great resources and may give you some ideas for how your church can be more eco-friendly.
Barna group has release new statistics for 2007 tithing here. According to Barna, not much has changed in the last few years. Among the various sects that make up the term “Christian,” giving is down across the board. Evangelicals still give the most, but giving is down across the board as a percentage of mean income.
For more information on managing church marketing and how the church reacts during recession, see our post titled Tough Times? Market Compassion.
I never post goofy stuff, or email cheeky feel good powerpoints around. I’m about to break that rule because today, while looking for information about various bible translations I came across the story of Bill, the poor college student in a holey t-shirt with no shoes. He’s your target market folks. Get to work marketing to him. If I could say nothing else about “Vintage Jesus”, “Reformission” or sharing authentic faith with a real Jesus, if all you did was read the story below and be impacted by its message, that would be enough. I’ll shut up now so you can read it.
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