People belong to a group based on its actions, more than its words. They choose to belong to a group when that group does things that they want to get on board with. Every group that people belong to outside of church does stuff. Clubs, sports leagues, civic organizations… people join them to do, not… Read more »

Pilgrims are seeking a purpose. Tourists are seeking an experience. A tourist might love the experience, rave over it, document it, relive it. But they aren’t committed to it. Tourists share experiences but they don’t construct them. They’re in it temporarily, not for the long haul. Tourists are consumers at heart. Pilgrims are on a… Read more »

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine you have a friend who’s far from God, and they’re about to head out on a mission to Mars. You’ve got one hour with them before they take off, and that hour is on Sunday morning. If you’d rather have them hear the gospel by watching a great sermon by… Read more »

Having a strong social presence is too often the end goal (either by intent, by misstep, or by default) for churches and other organizations that remain unclear about how social engagement contributes to having more people attending church on Sundays or participating in midweek ministry.

First, this: I didn’t come up with this plan myself. It’s a combination of input from folks who spend a lot more time building social community than I do, at places like Gwinnett Church and Saddleback Church. But it is tailored to the less-resourced model that I work with. Our weekly plan looks like this:… Read more »

Before I got into church marketing, I spent time in several completely different industries: retail banking, enterprise software, and private education. All required different approaches to marketing, communication, and sales. But if there’s a common thread across all of them, it was this: the products and services I was helping sell were complicated. Communicating about… Read more »

Every time I meet with a leader who is looking for my help convincing other people to participate in their event, program, activity, or ministry, I reiterate a basic principle of marketing communication that I call The Three C’s. This is especially helpful for self-declared “non-marketers,” but anyone looking to clarity of their own communication… Read more »

  “Just because you said exactly what you wanted to say, doesn’t mean they heard exactly what you wanted them to hear.”   Anyone in the business of communicating needs to say this to themselves every day. No matter how strong of a communicator you are, how creative or experienced, it’s easy to slip into… Read more »

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker We’ve all heard this before. You know what else trumps strategy? Execution. If you’re in church communications or marketing, you’ve probably been asked “what’s your marketing/social media/advertising/outreach strategy?”  more times than you can count.  I work for a large church in New England, one of the most… Read more »

The War of Art, by author Steven Pressfield, begins with the idea that all of us have a barrier between the life we currently live, and the yet-to-be-lived life full of creative potential within us.  Creatives, whether artists/writers, entrepreneurs, or ad men (and it’s not a stretch to include preachers here), have deep within them… Read more »