I'm sitting in Church House - not a surprising place to find a Vicar, I hear you say, but it's for a conference that, on the face of it, has nothing whatsoever to with my day (and night) job...I've blogged a fair bit about it/him (i.e. about Seth Godin, the speaker/raconteur/guru) so I won't re-say it all (if you've forgotten, here's one for you), but since I'm literally sitting here listening, I thought I'd think out loud about what I'm hearing... and what it might have to say to All Souls, or any church for that matter.
The reason that there's any connection between 'his world' and mine is that he's a superb observer and analyist of human society and behaviour.
Here's a taster of what got talked about today - some big themes...
1. Permission Marketing - if you're trying to spread a message by simply flooding the market with posters, stickers, leaflets, then you're competing with millions of other messages that people are routinely filtering out of their lives everyday... there's little point, for example, All Souls simply adding to the flood of junk mail through people's doors by doing lots of leaflet drops. The key question to ask of a marketing call, leaflet, promotion is "will they miss it if I don't do it?"... if not, don't do it!
2. Story is everything - the alternative to mass marketing is to tell a story so compelling that people who hear it will tell other people in their turn. Isn't it a killer that despite the church of Jesus having (a) the most compelling [and true] story ever told and (b) millions of people in whose lives' the story is lived out every day - despite that, we think the only way the church can get "its message across" is mass advertising, huge stadium events and mailshots... rubbish - it's no more true now than it was in Acts.
3. Being the best is not enough - you may have a better product, but if people don't have a problem that they think needs solving by that better product, they're not going to seek you out. Are you spending the time trying to find customers for your products or products for your customers? For the church, this has to do with whether we've decided on our "product" - which is how we help people to hear, live out and spread the Good News of Jesus - or whether we start with our potential customers?
If that sounds verging on the heretical, let me make the age-old distinction - there's a fundamental difference between changing the Gospel (no point - it's true, because Jesus will always be who he always is and he's done what he's done) and changing how we live out the Good News in a way that connects with the real lives of people around us.
One good example is us looking at starting a second service - not just a duplicate morning one, but a mid-afternoon one for the many people for whom Sunday mornings just don't equal church and for whom it never will equal church.
4. ...but you need to be remarkable - that's the Purple Cow idea (his book of the same name) - no-one takes a second look at cows in a field, but if you saw an honest-to-goodness purple one, then you'd pull over and look, photograph and then call your friends. Church? I had an email just today from someone talking about how bowled over they were by their first experiences of All Souls - being by far the most friendly, child-welcoming church they'd come across and completlly beyond their expectation of church....some first thoughts.
Just looking at church from the other end, as it were, and wondering why they fail. Sparked off from an invitation to a Christian men's group meeting to eat, drink, gossip and have a relaxed time. Looked up and found 10 references to gossip in the Bible and they're all negative. This linked to an article by somebody at Francis Schaeffer's Institute of Church Leadership. It included 4 main reasons why churches fail (in 10 year study of 1,000 churches) 1. conflict and gossip. 2. hypocrisy and judgemental attitudes (hurt) 3. not knowing where I fit in 4. unwillingness to deal with sin (ie. the first of these). The author's personal observation was that Ephesians 4.1-5.2 was not sought/applied by the leadership. All of which made me feel much better, because all of these apply to my current situation and why I am looking elsewhere. The problem is that it is often impossible for ordinary church members to tackle poor leaders and, after prayer and agnosing, decide to leave. We're not quite there yet, but praying it through. It's hard to leave the community and all the good relationships and to let the folk down.
Where's the link with your morning's blog? The author starts his article by talking about pastors crying on his shoulders, because of the problems. Later he critiques the use of world and business community ideas brought into (US) churches outside biblical principles. He admits "ashamedly" that he was a consultant propagating such trends for years. He'd "rather have a church of 100 people ..growing in Christ, contagious with their faith, producing disciples with trust and obedience to Christ over a large church of 10,000 who just pew-sit .."
Do I think you are in danger of following the marketing lead of big US churches? No. I think you're just looking at "good practice out there".
Sorry I didn't produce a shorter response, I didn't have time to edit this down.
Specifically permission marketing sounds like people buy from people, but sound advice to me. Storytelling was indeed Jesus's favourite way of teaching it seems. Sunday afternoon services sounds interesting for the newspaper in bed types. The BBC is confusing product and distribution big time. They ought to be (in my humble opinion) great content makers and allow others to focus on the channels (others they appoint and who are accountable to them); instead they seem to be very focused on the channels and losing a grip (just a little) on the quality of content in some areas. Would like to think/talk more about product first or customer first; probably one reason why my business never took off.
And finally, yes, it was a very welcoming church we came into on Sunday; unusual in its warmth and goodbye to Emma, but very human; a crisp and on the cuff edited down sermon, but clearly thought-through; and good to see old friends again. But too early to make a decision. We will come again.
God bless you in all your efforts. This website is great as is your writing.