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Evangelism

Feel Bad for the God who Wasn’t There

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In my ongoing documentary watching courtesy of my newfound Netflix subscription I watched “The God Who Wasn’t There.” I remember when this was hitting the release date and it had its natural pub and buzz as denying God can be a real sassy topic. It never interested me as I’ve seen the “Religulous” or “The Root of All Evil” (aka. God Delusion) and could pretty much script the whole documentary.

Well, if I’m already paying for my subscription and it is available, why not? So I watched the documentary and it was as predicted. It took on more so the modern theology of focusing on the resurrection as the only real part of the story. Took a whole bunch of Christian pop culture of the time (the Passion of the Christ gets a good reflection). This is all circles back around as the director/narrator shares that he grew up in a fundamental educational environment. He even takes on his private school principal/dean on some of these theological teachings.

As the movie went on and on I was less impressed by the case against a “God who wasn’t there” but felt bad for him because the God who he had been taught about actually wasn’t there. God wasn’t there because he had been taught a shallow part of the story of God’s workings with his people. There wasn’t anything of grace, dreams, loving others, caring for the poor & less fortunate, and more. There is a God who is there, in my belief, and I’m saddened by this case the many replicating cases out there where people were taught short of the full spectrum of a God who loves them.

Changes in Attitude, Changes in Latitude, Changes in Gay Marriage

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There is a interesting set up graphs from the Pew Research group on the peoples perception/view of gay marriage categorized by groupings.

Some quick thoughts:

  • Not surprising that an overall divide of opinion is about half & half (graph 1)
  • Not surprised to see that the youngest generations are more in favor of a gay marriage (graph 2). Percentages have exceeded a majority which is interesting and also lends to a huge divide in values between a church’s viewpoint (graph 3).
  • Not surprising is the breakdown of the Christian faith categories. Though I might say that such a high differential between the Catholic and Mainline Protestant views & the Religiously Unaffiliated. Again, a huge values divide there (graph 3)
  • Was kinda surprised a more moderate voice in the Republican party didn’t bring the political viewpoint a little bit closer to the Democratic / Independent view (which are almost identical). Though a difference is expected, it was a huge divide there and is probably that hill many republican conservatives are willing to die, or live/campaign on (graph 4).
  • Graph 5 is probably right where I’d expect our culture. Conservatives & Liberals are riding their lines and are quite set in those. The Moderates might be like me, you’d favor it, but you are not sure that it is in the whole country’s interest to force it so you’d opt for a conservative/cautious approach. Some then are probably just good either way.

One thing was plugging at my thoughts reading this. An institution, like my church tribe, cannot survive with one or two generations of people apathy towards it. There needs to be some reconciliation that would bring some relational & passionate connection towards the Gen X’ers & Millennials, not to mention the generation after Millennials who are probably going to be more affirming, within the church so that it can survive a values divide. Tough call there as a theology could be debated on either side and the long tradition of the church leans against. Changing just because culture is shifting isn’t the most divine way to change, but it has done so for less than divine reasons before.. Tough call, but a call that needs to be made sometime soon or continue a slow death

Attraction vs Influence

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Mitch Joel had some interesting thoughts the other day in regard to our obsessions with attracting the big crowd as a media & market solution. He threw out that Charlie Sheen has garnered over 1 million plus twitter followers within days of creating a profile. He even admitted that he is one of those followers (I’m hoping it was just for case study work). However, he notes, which is what I would feel is the norm, that few of those watching Charlie on tv or on twitter would actually take action based on him. If they did it would probably be more gimmick action (buying some #winning t-shirt). Somewhat like a circulating Justin Bieber t-shirt that goes around my Sunday school class’s ‘dirty santa’ Christmas party. You don’t really want one, but it is funny to force others to have one. Tangenting!

Mitch goes on to lift up Howard Stern. Howard has far fewer twitter followers as a social media platform. But Mitch is sure, and I’d agree, that if Howard asked his people to do something (other than a Retweet) they would move the proverbial market meters. Howard has influence. Heck, I went to watch his movie because he talked it up so much on his show.

This has me wondering about church membership. We often get pre-occupied with the attraction of numbers. “This is the biggest church of ….” “This was our highest attended ….” “How can we get more people to show up for ….” are phrases if you hang around church long enough you will hear quite frequently. Size is a measuring stick.. but is it the right measurement?

All the good church people are out there saying, “Oh no! It’s not about the size.” But if we are honest, we many times will feel inferior because we are not part of the big thing around the corner or the other side of town. I don’t see a problem being honest about that… something we need to work on.

We need to look at the people that we have and ask ourselves, how are we building our influencing with those with us? I am so much more impressed with churches that can inspire/influence their people (and not just the chosen 10% that do everything for the church operations) to get out and do & be church.

Those are places that I’d want to be a part of.

Should we ask ourselves as a marker of ministry, how have we positively influenced our communities? Or should the ‘size matters’ mantra continue to stick?

 

How Good is Your Church Facebook Presence?

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I get to call some really creative people all over the world my friend. I’m so blessed that way, but not so far away is a super group of creative types that I hang out with as our Hendersonville Geekbreakfast. Once a month we all meet up for breakfast, talk some shop, make fun of somebody and plan collaborative projects. The in between times we’ve become a real solid group of friends. One of my ‘geek’ friends is Jason Elkins. Jason has started doing some really cool things with his media company, Transparent {social} Media, on facebook. They are helping all kinds of businesses, and churches, leverage facebook for to reach their clients in an open and relational marketing.

I asked Jason a couple of questions

1. Where do you see most churches going wrong on facebook?
I see most churches going wrong with Facebook in the way they view communication. It’s not a one way street:

1) They are utilizing Facebook like a traditional media outlet. They think of it like a flier or pamphlet with information that they are getting in front of their congregation. In fact, it’s a platform for communication/interaction and engagement. For example, instead of posting your favorite bible verse, perhaps you should ask your Facebook audience what their favorite verse would be.

Instead of saying “we had a great time at the youth event”, you are better off asking “what did you think of our youth event?” or “How could we make it better next time” or “Tell us what you loved about the youth event”.

“Praying for our congregation” is good. “Click ‘Like’ if you need a prayer today or send us your prayer requests” is better.

“Listening to Skillet” is good… “What is playing on your iPod right now” is better.

Announcing service times/cancellations/upcoming events is a great use, but engage with your audience.

2)Two things you can do with Facebook now that are new/unique:

1) Incorporating a podcast of your sermons online is a revolutionary feature in Facebook. Using a custom tab combined with Soundcloud (a hosting application) you can serve up your sermons on Facebook and people can share them with their audience. Because of the way we are developing these pages, an administrator can upload the latest sermons to Soundcloud and they will appear on a custom tab.

2) Other things a church could do on a custom tab would be to incorporate an introductory or testimonial video, show pages of a sermon or a book, take donations for a mission/tithe and incorporate a form to build an e-mail list. The Lifebook page is a good example of utilizing all of these features. 

thanks Jason for taking the time!

Here is part of an example of Transparent {social} Media’s latest work on a church here in middle Tennessee.

They set up the standard fan page, but tweaked out the welcome to have a matching graphic layout to the ‘profile pic.’ It doesn’t show up, but my cursor is floating over the sermons active link page. I think that is pretty cool.. but it gets better..

At the bottom it has email / contact info capture capabilities. You don’t have to wait for the person to show up in the pew to fill out this form. They can do that over facebook. Not to mention, your parishioners can donate through this facebook portal. Pretty darn cool. They have the rest of the page tweaked out with those things that are pertinent to a church body.

So how are you using facebook for your church? You might want to contact my friend Jason and see what all is out there.

chris brogan on evangelism : being there before the sale

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chris brogan : be there before the sale : relationship in marketing & evangelism from Gavin Richardson on Vimeo.

so i took in that live web event last week with chris brogan and i've been pondering on some of what he said and i'm reading in "trust agents." he wasn't at all speaking to a church context, but as with most things (but is becoming much easier in todays business environment & language) i turn it around into some church framework.

one of the things chris brought out were some stories of 'trust agents' who were "there before the sale." it was one of those quotable moments as you could see heads dive into notepads and laptops typing.

it reminded me from a time last summer where i hosted a conversation with regular church going folk & those who are disenfranchised with the church and might call themselves non-religious or spiritual but not religious put together by my friend jim palmer. one of the stories that really stuck with me from a participant was how they were put off that the friends they made in their neighborhood, invited them to church, eventually helped them come into Christ, then left them hanging as they moved onto some other couple. this person then found out that this was a process of that church and they were to go befriend new people to bring them to the church as well.

so what makes up evangelism in when our common framework makes up some commodity sale & that conflicts with how people want to be treated & how we improperly fix some consumption to grace? is there a way in which one could just "be there" with people and not try and control the workings of God to force a sale of salvation, but allow God's mystery to work?… i don't know, maybe you have some ideas