Marketing Tips from Christian Community Church

Dave Ferguson, the lead pastor at Community Christian Church, shares the three keys to creating a big weekend at his church.

1. Marketing - If mailing postcards, Dave recommends mailing to each household 1-3 pieces for awareness and 4-6 pieces for action. Recently, they tried something new and launched a web-based campaign and also used door hangers and yard signs.

2. Inviting - CCC challenges its people to commit to bring three people.

3. Wow! - Lastly, they make sure to create a “Wow!” experience for first time guests.

Marketing Tips from Fellowship Church

Some excerpts:

• Banners and signage outside the church are worth every penny. Many visitors have told us that they saw our signs and logged on to our Miami campus website for more information.
• We made sure the front page of [the website] is very easy to navigate with important information prominently displayed, and also included content that would give them a taste of the Fellowship Miami experience.
• Because of a press release we filed two weeks ago with national and local news agencies, the Miami Herald was on site covering our Kickoff Weekend.
• Nothing beats one-on-one dialogue. Whether we are in local stores, restaurants or just waiting in line somewhere, we strike up conversations with the people around us. Building relationships within the community is the most successful form of outreach available.
• Our staff personally calls each first time visitor. And we’re making a special effort to call in the evenings so we can actually talk to the visitors, answer questions and invite them back.
• We know that our overall vision for this environment will take time to achieve. But we are taking immediate, easy steps (and lots of volunteer elbow grease) to upgrade the campus by planting additional landscaping and applying fresh paint. We’ve brought in some more modern wood tables for hospitality areas. We’re adding music, Cuban coffee and local pastries to create a welcoming atmosphere. And we’re fanatical about keeping the facility sparkling clean!
• A positive attitude and huge smile are tremendous assets in attracting people to any church. We have a team of floaters (greeters) who circulate throughout the entrance and areas outside the worship center, so visitors usually are engaged in several conversations before they sit down. The parking lot entrance is flanked by greeters who wave at passing traffic and incoming cars. In fact, we just talked to some visitors recently who said they turned around and came back because we waved at them!

More on Church Marketing

Here are some more links I've found. Most are from Church Relevance.

10 Big Web Photography Mistakes

15 Questions for the Perfect Postcard

How to Get what your Postage Pays For

Online Children’s Ministry Check-In System

Three Lessons about Owning a Website

Some useful tips on domain names.

Influencing Culture - Gabe Lyons

Gabe Lyons is the co-founder of The Fermi Project, the organization that put on Q. This is a great read if you'd like to understand more about the Church's role in shaping culture.

Review of Cities of God

Here's a review of Rodney Stark's newest book, Cities of God. I just ordered it, and am looking forward to reading it.

Copyright Issues

Note: I haven't listened to this yet, so I'm not sure how good it is.

Free Creative Content from LifeChurch.tv

Church = a self-theologizing community?

I like what I've been reading by this guy! This is the second part of his review of Breaking the Missional Code. Stetzer and Putnam refer to three types of emergent churches: relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists. They appreciate and promote the first two types, but warn against the third type. You can read more here.

Bolger is not so sure that being a revisionist is so bad. (Actually, he doesn't like the term revisionist, so he uses a self-theologizing, which is pretty different). Here's what he writes:

In the nineteenth century, Rufus Anderson and Henry Venn contributed a new idea to missiology -- that of the three-self formula. They advocated that a new church work or mission, if it is to become indigenous, must be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. My colleague, Charles Van Engen, mission theologian (and former President of the Reformed Church of America), advocates a fourth 'self' -- self-theologizing. Why his addition to the formula?

A new community must be self-theologizing or it will become nominal. Self-theologizing, how? To become an indigenous expression of faith, a community must form its life around scripture, engaging their culture within a praxis-reflection orientation. In other words, the community goes deep into the word in order to answer the questions of their culture. They 'practice' those answers in the world, and then reflect biblically again. Instead of self-theologizing, however, what frequently happens is that new faith communities are given a theology that answers nineteenth-century questions, or sixteenth-century questions, or fifth-century questions. These historical works will undoubtedly be helpful, but they will inevitably leave some questions unanswered. Each context presents its own issues. If the deep questions of a culture go unanswered, then Christians will seek answers elsewhere, without reference to scripture, thus inviting in nominality.

What Stetzman and Putman call revisionist I see as self-theologizing: reading scripture in light of a culture's questions. These emerging "self-theologians" copy the example of historical theologians engaging their particular culture) but they do not necessarily copy their responses.

Bounded and Centered

This post is a review by Ryan Bolger on Breaking the Missional Code, by Ed Stetzer and David Putnam. In the review he critiques their use of Christian and non-Christian, believing that it implies "that that church is inherently good and unchurched is correspondingly bad." Instead, he believes that a better language might be in order. He prefers the terms "bounded and centered."

Tim Keller gives the following descriptions of bounded and centered sets...

In mathematics, there are two different ways to define a 'set'. One is a 'bounded set'. A point is in the set if it is related properly to (i.e. if it is inside) the boundary. Another is the 'centered set'. A point is in the set if it is related properly to (i.e. if it is in alignment with or moving toward) the center of the set. Organizations that are 'bounded sets' put great emphasis on the lines of demarcation 'around the circle' – at all points. 1) A person cannot work with or be part of the organization in any meaningful sense without the rite of initiation and the adoption of extensive standards which set the person apart. 2) Differences between members and the outside world are emphasized. 3) Membership is defined in terms of common beliefs and policies and folkways that are pretty extensive. Organizations that are centered-sets put more emphasis on central goals and commitments. 1) A person can work with the organization as long as it shares basic goals and is willing to work for them. 2) Differences between members and the outside world are not emphasized. 3) Membership is defined in terms of active participation toward common tasks and goals.

Bolger says it this way: "What matters is not whether we are in or out (churched or unchurched), but instead it is our direction that matters – are we moving closer to the King (or Kingdom) or moving further away?"

He goes on to say:

Why is that important? Well, given our knowledge of history, we see that some churches do not exhibit kingdom aspects -- they do not manifest the fruits of the spirit, nor do they stand for justice in the world. Using Hiebert’s rubric, these churches would be moving away from the center. Conversely, some unchurched people serve the poor (among many other good things) and are moving in God’s direction. Again, we measure what we value, and church, apart from kingdom activities, becomes a club, a lifestyle enclave, a meaningless endeavor. Indeed, the church is dependent on its mission for its very identity. So, kingdom and movement are better markers of faithfulness to the gospel than are churched and unchurched.

My friend Linda Bergquist first explained bounded and centered sets to me about four years ago. I have to admit that at first I really didn't understand what she was talking about. However, as I have been placed by God into cultures that were either apathetic or hostile to the gospel and to church, I have begun to see the importance of this.

Follow Me

Mark Batterson gives some thoughts on the simplicity of Jesus' message of discipleship.

Just wanted to share a thought. I've been reflecting on the simplicity of Jesus' invitation: follow me. That invitation is repeated twenty times in the gospels.

Find Your Own Calcutta

Can I share a goal? I never want NCC to feel like a church. I want us to feel like a movement. The church is way too static these days! The church is called to knock down the gates of hell. The church is the vehicle whereby heaven invades hell.

That is why the world resonated with Mother Teresa. She brought heaven to a hell hole. By the way, I love the advice Mother Teresa gave when someone asked them how they could make a difference with their life the way she'd made with hers. Mother Teresa said, "Find Your Own Calcutta."

Rethinking Discipleship

The National New Church Conference was taking place at the same time I was at Q. David Putnam, co-author of Breaking the Missional Code, taught a breakout session. Here are the notes. They're very good.

Missional Families - Bob Roberts

Each person has to determine how they are called to incarnationally live out the Gospel and the principles of the Kingdom in their own context of work, neighborhood, community, nation and world.

Tim Keller on How Churches Will Be Effective in City-Centers

This is from the current issue of Vineyard's Cutting Edge church planting publication.

1. Hold the historic Christian gospel-- orthodox and Biblical in doctrine and practice, but are neither legalistic nor liberal, neither doctrinalist nor pietist, neither individualistic nor collectivistic.

2. Have a positive regard for the city; recognize that it is the most strategic possible place for ministry.

3. Neither over or under adapt to the culture of those in their surrounding neighborhood and culture.

4. Are intensely, creatively evangelistic and effective in reaching not just people who are already traditional or conservative but who are very secular.

5. Relentlessly emphasize and seek to build strong, "thick" counter-cultural Christian community in cities, especially through cell groups.

6. Are holistic, ministering in both word and deed to their community and the poor in extremely creative and generous ways.

7. Have a bias toward being multi-ethnic-- seek to be at least as multi-ethnic as their neighborhood.

8. Are arts and culture friendly; both supportive of Christian witness in "secular work" and willing to train people for cultural leadership, not just church leadership.

9. See church planting as a ministry as natural and important as discipleship, music, education, and pastoral care.

Top 10 Ways a Core Group Can Kill a Church

1. Talk about how much you love your church because it's so small and personable.
2. If your church doesn't have a particular ministry, start attending it at another church, rather than starting one where you are.
3. Don't forgive anyone for hurting you or offending you.
4. Instead of telling the pastor about your frustrations, hold out in silence as long as you can, getting angrier and angrier until you can finally leave in one, unforseen blaze of flaming glory.
5. Go to church for what you get out of it.
6. Don't invite anyone.
7. Forget faith ~ that's the pastor's job. Sit back and wait to see what happens, rather than becoming personally invested.
8. Use "prayer" as a conversational piece rather than a spiritual discipline (as in: "I'll be praying for you," or "Let me pray about that.")
9. Do frequent "polling" in hallway conversations to see if other people have the same concerns about the church as you.
10. Meditate on how wonderful the church would be if it weren't for the pastor.

The New Discipleship: Converted to a Cause before Christ

I like the term "missional community" because I think it contains two very important elements for people. People want to belong, and as this guy says, they want to belong before they believe. The other key, though, is that people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. This is where mission comes in. The mission of God is the biggest thing that we could ever involve ourselves in. This writer believes that the mission, or, another way of stating it, the "getting involved", is more important to a lot of people than community (belonging).

"I would submit that it is mission that provides the motion from which community is created... In this scenario, community isn't the key for reaching the lost, but CAUSE is the key."

Church Marketing with Stock Photography

I just used iStockphoto.com for a mortgage ad, and really like it.

Lesa Snider King, the chief evangelist of iStockphoto.com, recently an excellent tip with MinistryCOM on how to create an engaging postcard with stock photography:

You have precious few moments to grab someone’s attention, and the simplest way to do it is by using strong, effective imagery.

The next time you create an event postcard, spend less time on the text or copy, and more time on choosing an image that communicates what the event is all about. Pick something eye-catching, something powerful, and colorful. After all, if you can’t grab the person’s attention with your image, it’s unlikely they’ll read your copy!

Of course, this principle applies to any church marketing you do. Effective communication requires that you can first get the individual’s attention.

Related Reading:
- 10 Big Web Photography Mistakes
- 15 Questions for the Perfect Postcard
- Direct Mail Technique :: Using a #12 Envelope
- How to Get What Your Postage Pays For

Howard Snyder on Missional Church

Howard Snyder in Decoding the Church writes of missional church in chapter 3. The missional church is genetically missional, an alternative community, a covenant community, and Trinitarian.

Genetically Missional

The church is genetically missional because it is the community of Jesus Christ, God’s great missionary. It is the body of Christ, the community called into existence by the mission of God. this is the starting point for all ecclesiology… Mission is the church’s DNA, even if mission often gets suppressed in practice.

An Alternative Community

A missional church is an alternative community called to build its own culture, economy, and lifestyle in the world and among all peoples. A faithful fchurch is a visible alternative to both neopagan society and to ecclesial models of Christendom that clash with the church’s basic DNA… The church is an alternative community when its mission is the kingdom of God. Its mission makes it countercultural. ANd it is an alternative reality when it exists as a covenant community.

A Covenant Community

A mssional church is covenantal. The church is the covenanted community of God’s reign. The covenant calls the church to ministry and mission, to “equip [God’s people] for the work of ministry (Eph 4:12) and to structure its life and mission accordingly.

A Trinitarian Community

A missional church is Trinitarian. The Trinity teaches us about ecclesiology and mission. Because the church is Trinitarian — based on what God the Father has done and will do through Christ by the power of the Spirit — the church is at the same time incarnational and eschatological.

Read the rest of this post here.