Tag: church marketing

  • Put up or shut up

    Growing up we played a lot of basketball. A core component of playing basketball, especially the driveway versions, is learning to talk a good game. There are people who can’t play but can talk a good game. And then there are the best players who don’t really talk much but just flat our put up numbers.

    Eventually, it comes down to this simple phrase in pick-up basketball: Put up or shut up.

    I think that phrase explains why so many people get fed up with church: They talk a good game about the poor, mercy, seeking justice, living out Acts 2, exemplifying Matthew 5, or preaching the truth. But at the end of the day they don’t “put up.”

    Church leaders, if your church talks game it doesn’t have… please stopped talking like you have game. At the end of the day, allow your game to speak for itself.

    That’s the best marketing advice I could ever give to a church: Put up or shut up.

    Wanna grow your church? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna have the best youth group in town? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna help people losing their houses? Put up or shut up.

    Wanna start a killer small group ministry? Put up or shut up.

    At the end of the day you need to allow your church game to speak for you. People are tired of the hype. They are tired of hearing what you want to do. They don’t want to know your vision statement.

    They want to see it.

    So stop talking smack and get to work!

  • Lies of Youth Ministry, Part One

    Boys and girls in youth ministry we’ve got some problems. We in youth ministry, as a tribe, believe some lies about who we are, what we’re about, and how we should be reaching students. Let’s address these and move forward to fix them, OK?

    #1 Your ministry is “successful” if you have 10% of Sunday morning attendance. My entire youth ministry career has been wrapped up in the local church so I can state this from experience. But let’s bear in mind historical perspective to understand this lie before we can look at a solution. The current version of Youth Ministry is really a reaction to the success of early parachurch ministries. Back in the late 1940s modern youth ministry was born when Youth for Christ hired Billy Graham to lead crusades to reach teenagers… and boy did that work! YFC’s crusades scratched a cultural itch since teens had been left out of the local church with the emergence of adolescence. (Adolescence is only about 120 years old!) As a strong middle class was born out of post-WWII days adolescent teen culture blossomed and the church was seen as irrelevant to teens. Gradually, in the early 1960s the American church responded in a big way to numerical victories of parachurch ministries. Churches were tired of seeing all of the students go to YoungLife and Youth for Christ… so they started hiring those organization’s staff to run programs in local churches.

    It was a great concept, but from the very beginning youth ministry was seen by church leadership as a way to hold onto church kids and maybe, just maybe, reach new families. This fixed a problem parachurches had without truly addressing the church issue that created the parachurch need in the first place… no place for non-believers to be ministered to.

    The truth is that local churches royally ruined what the parachurches were doing. To even call what most churches do “youth ministry” is demeaning to its evangelistic heritage. Instead of youth pastors being hired to reach a high school they were hired to grow/maintain a local church. (In fact, I’ve talked to countless youth pastors who were fired for trying to reach lost students!) The lie is that a good youth ministry is about growing a church. In most cases, a youth pastor’s job is so limited and focused on the church that it’s really not about reaching lost kids at all. (Appropriate lip service is always about evangelism!) I’ve actually sat in youth ministry networks and listened to youth pastors sound satisfied that they are reaching 50-60 students with their ministry. The target isn’t a percentage of butts in seats on Sunday morning! Reaching 50 students while 1950 have never heard the gospel is a gross failure.

    True success comes when you reach and disciple brand new people for Jesus Christ! The first lie points to the fact that church-based youth ministry largely lies to itself and calls itself a success when it reaches less than 1% of students in a community. Is it the individual youth pastor’s fault? Absolutely not. It’s a design flaw worth addressing. The truly successful youth ministries in this country focus on the lost in their schools and could care less what percentage of saved church kids come to their programs.

    Questions for youth workers: Do you agree with my use of the term “lie?” If so, what are some ideas for fixing this in your context? If you don’t agree, I still love you. But I’d like to hear your push back.

    Lie #2 It’s about discipleship

    Lie #3 You have to have a youth pastor

  • Finding a church home: The Prize

    Ladies and gentlemen, let’s look at the grand prize and see what churches in San Diego would get if they won the McLane lottery.

    The total package. This family of four churchgoers label themselves as “contributors.” They won’t just be bumps on a log at your church, they will give it everything they’ve got. Adam has a passion for student ministry and would love to be the best volunteer you’ve ever had. Besides helping with those crazy adolescents Adam is pretty handy with all technical areas of the church. He can create stuff, manage teams of volunteers, or just generally make all your tech stuff work. Kristen has served on church boards, lead small groups, and loves doing outreach to other moms like her. These bible college grads don’t just give their time, they give their money too. But wait, there’s more!

    Adam and Kristen don’t come alone, they bring kids. Their two children are the perfect addition to your kids ministry. Megan is entering 2nd grade, loves to make friends, and will make your children’s workers gush with pride. Paul is a fresh faced kindergartner who is 100% boy. When he’s not pretending to be Scooby Doo or a Power Ranger, Paul will amaze you with his intellect. 

    Could there be more? Why yes! Not only does this family come regularly and contribute positively, they bring people! This family is hard wired for outreach into your community. Whether you are looking for people to head up a major outreach event or just looking for someone to invite their neighbors, look no further.

  • 3 Lies of Church Growth Experts

    Right now there are a lot of people making a lot of money telling churches how they can grow. Along the same lines, there are a lot of church boards and pastors wasting a lot of time discussing church growth strategy.

    An observation. Have you noticed that churches that want to grow (100 to 1000 people) flock to churches that grew 10, 20, or 30 years ago but have since plateaued? It’s like asking Bill Gates, “How do you start a software company?” Bill wouldn’t have a clue! When he wants to start a software company he buys one! In the same way, asking a church of 10,000 how to grow is a waste of time because they knew how to do it in their town 10, 20, or 30 years ago but haven’t a clue how to do it today in your town!

    So let me save your church some time and money. Here are 3 guaranteed ways NOT to grow a church. There must be 20 conferences, 50 books, and 100 consultants based on these three lies. 

    #1 You have to have a great ____ ministry. This lie has been out there forever. A church with a great van ministry that’s really reaching people will one day go, “Hey… let’s start teaching people how to start a van ministry so they can copy us!” Same thing with student ministry, kids ministry, music ministry, puppet ministry, after school ministry, seniors ministry, etc. None of these programs will grow your church! It’s just a marketing lie to think that you can grow a church by having a great program. Having great programs is vitally important to the mission of any church (reaching and discipling people) but there isn’t a program out there that will grow a church from 300 to 1000 people! If you see a conference, book, or consultant who tells you “If you just have ____ you’ll see the growth you are looking for” just know that you’re being sold an idea that worked in one location and won’t work in yours. The best consultants will look deeply into your organization before recommending anything!

    #2 If You Build it They Will Come Building stuff and remodeling stuff is highly addictive. But buildings and environments don’t grow churches. I’ve been to some real dumps that were exploding in growth. And I’ve been to some beautiful buildings that were empty. Have you ever been to Europe? There you can visit some of the best looking church buildings in the world, they are mostly empty on Sunday mornings. As a 16 year old I toured the Cathedral in Strasbourg France. Completed in 1439 the cathedral is amazing in its beauty. It was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874. Talk about a city on a hill! Want to know how many people go there now? None.

    A ministry will endure when it focuses on its task at hand way more than its location. Location means squat. (Just ask the Chinese!)

    If someone is telling you that a new building or a new _____ will grow your church, they are either deceived or trying to sell you something. Take a tour of some of the fastest growing churches in the United States and you won’t be overly impressed with architecture, ornate decoration, or interior design. What’s on fire in those places is not the building!

    #3 “You have to be more focused on reaching people than keeping people.” This is just ignorant marketing! It’s even worse pastoring.

    The best thing you can do to grow a church is to lead, grow, and love the people in your church. If they are growing, being lead  to deeper expressions of their faith, and feeling loved by the people of the church, they will tell their friends. That makes sense along every front a church looking to grow. Marketing, strategy, leadership. 

    The only church growth advice that I’ve ever heard that is truly a guarantee is “All healthy organisms grow.” That is dead on. If only the folks looking to grow their churches would focus on getting the church they have today healthy, it would grow. But to take an unhealthy church and try to grow it with a new building or a new program or a new focus is just silly. 

    Q for Church leaders: What do you think? Do you think I’ve captured 3 lies in church growth? Or do you think those experts out there really have something that can help you grow your church?

  • Finding a church home: Pre-search thoughts

    Pre-search thoughtsThis week marks the beginning of a new era. For the first time in more than 10 years Kristen and I begin a search for a new church home. Sure, there were other searches before– but they were always tied to employment so that’s a little different. Now that I don’t have a church job we are looking for a new church from a whole new vantage point, and that’s kind of exciting!

    And so the search begins in earnest.

    What are we looking for? There’s no simple answer to that. I wish I were one of those people who could say, “I’m looking for a church of 350-500, a certain type of music, a certain program of discipleship, a certain set of theology, a certain demographic, and looking for families like ours.” But I’m not that kind of person and this isn’t that simple.

    So, here’s the deal. We’ll visit a church at least two weeks in a row before deciding if its worth more of our investment or not. It’s simply not fair to judge anything on one shot. (Well, unless the vibe is bad. Then we may not stay beyond the cup of coffee.) We’ll play the role of visitors. We’ll fill out the cards, chat with the people welcome team, etc.

    How will we chose the churches to visit? The old fashioned way. We’ll ask some friends. We’ll search the web. We’ll drive around where we live. Stuff like that. But we’d be open to a church marketing to us. Want us to check you out and play secret shopper? Leave a comment or send me an email. Here’s a family of four looking for a place to not only attend, but contribute… come and get us! San Diego, East San Diego County, bring it.

    The non-negotiables… because we do have some standards.

    – We’re looking for a church that teaches the Biblical truth.

    – We’re looking for a church where kids are important.

    – We’re looking for a church that expects us to jump in and get involved but will be patient enough to let us settle in.

    – We’re looking for a church that is practically passionate about reaching the community we live in.

    – We’re looking for a church that values its people, all of ’em.

    Other than that, we are open. It can be an old church or a church plant. A big church or a little one. One that has a pretty white steeple or meets in a store front. A church that is huggy… uh, better skip the huggy ones. Fast and loud music or soft and boring.

    Last Sunday during the service I looked at Kristen and said, “I’m ready for the next step.” She nodded in agreement. As much as we loved our time in Romeo, it is time.

  • Romeo Elves: Paint the rock teaser

    Since Patti told me I was being a tease about the next elf video, I thought I’d post a little taste test. The final video has a time-lapse premise.

    I wonder how the peeps over at the church marketing labs would like our elf videos? Probably not snobby enough for them.