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Brad Abare
Brad Abare is the assistant vice president and director of communications for the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founder of the Center for Church Communication, and the president of Personality, a cause marketing agency that champions people causes. Brad started Church Marketing Sucks, a worldwide conversation to frustrate, educate and motivate the church communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.
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In A Whole New Mind Daniel Pink highlights the fact that we are moving into a contextual age. Where previous ages (agricultural, industrial, and informational) have involved ‘left brain thinking’, thinking that is linear and logical, this emerging ‘right brained’, contextual age is loosey-goosey, artsy-fartsy and is searching for spirituality and for meaning.
Left-brainers got us computers, standardization, and brought us our quality of life and well being. It’s also made us very rich. There are more homes than home owners and more cars than licensed drivers.
America spends more on trash bags than 90% of the rest of the world spends on everything!
Like Friedman points out, we have abundance, Asia (the world is flat… we can have everything) and automation. Abundance has lessened the significance of physical possession and has elevated the needs for spirituality, beauty and meaning.
The church needs to become the meaning maker in our communities in this conceptual age.
We want meaning in everything that we do. Products just aren’t products anymore… (i.e. Taget’s ‘design for all’; there is beauty in meaning).
We have a great opportunity to provide meaning in our culture!
It’s easy to compare ourselves (the church)… with ourselves (other churches), but the true competition that we have is for the attention of the world.
The church is no longer a place to come to, but a place to belong.
We need to design story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning…
Not just function, but design. Not just argument, but story. Not focus, but symphony. Not logic, but empathy. Not seriousness, but play. Not accumulation, but meaning.
These can be distinguishing factors in which can set the church apart from everything else in a world that is searching for meaning.
9 Lessons from ChurchMarketingSucks
1 – Be who you are, not what you’re not.
Don’t get caught up in what is big – not realizing that there is a point to it. Are we more focused on holy hype instead of Holy Spirit? Are we more focused on being the church on the cover, to be seen by men, or being the church on the corner, practically meeting people’s needs?
What are we saying? Are we saying what people want? Are we thinking about people think?
Be who you are. Don’t squelch it. Acknowledge who you are: broke people.
People connect people. Programs don’t.
2 – Consumer vs Commitment
Don’t’ feed the consumer mentality by downplaying the significance of commitment. Go against the non-confrontational… ‘not obligated to give’ mentality. Elevate a commitment culture, not a consumer culture. There is no room for consumers.
We’ll really be meeting people who need Christ and not church shoppers when we place value on commitment.
We’ve got to close the back door!
(example: Best Buy’s CARE Plan… Contact, Ask, Recommend, Encourage)
We need to develop retention plans. We need to quit confusing people. We need to minimize or marginalize barriers to entry (signage, how we communicate, etc).
3 – Value the 3Ms… Message. Method. Movement.
We need to figure out what message we are tying to say, skip the method and focus on what movement we want to happen as a result of the message. Once you know the message and the intended movement, focus on the method (or the medium) of how you will communicate it (i.e. web, podcast, bulletin insert, etc.). Find the right method to get the movement you want to happen as a result of the message.
You know what you are saying and who you are saying it to when you bypass the method and focus on the message and the movement.
There are methods people haven’t even thought of yet.
4 – Pay attention to how your message is being translated.
How does what we saying translate across the street?
Our website is the front door to our church. It needs to match the reality of the experience people will encounter in our church. Use consistency!
5 – The audience is always right.
The audience doesn’t have the problem if they don’t understand or don’t move because of the message we are communicating, we do. We haven’t communicated it well if they don’t understand. Prov 15:2
6 – Design matters
We need to create environment. Design and atmosphere really matters. Think of places you like to hang out (restaurants, coffee houses, etc) and ask yourself why. Because of the atmosphere.
We need to take church to the people and place a premium on creating an atmosphere that is conducive to community.
Graphic designers outnumber chemical engineers 4 to 1. There are over 400 designers at Sony and 60 for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
7 – The best publicity is the stuff people really want to talk about.
Seth Godin in response to a question by a Google staffer about how to go get people talking: “create remarkable things that can be remarked about.”
What do people want to talk about? Don’t just think about what we think that should talk about.
Put publicity before advertising. Tell your story before you sell yourself.
8 – Remember God is in the details
Make sure God’s leading and God’s presence is a part of every step.
9 – We need to be really, really, really good story tellers
Stories are easy to remember. Jesus was never without a story (Mark 4) when He spoke. In Matthew 13 when His disciples asked him why he always spoke in stories, He said that they (disciples) had been given insight – but if there is no readiness, there is no reception.
Jesus created readiness, to reception to insight through the stories He told.
We are hard-wired to respond to stories. Stories bring the invisible and abstract to life. Stories illustrate the big picture.
Collect your stories, the are invaluable.
Stories involve five parts: the situation, conflict, solution, climax and resolution.
The media responds to stories – and stories are easily passed around,
We have the Greatest Story Ever Told… we need to know our Story.
If we ‘can’t live without it’ maybe we shouldn’t live with it.
When all is stripped away, the media/technology, the lights, the sound, the screens – the story remains.
This was one of my favorite talks of the weekend. The information was covered so quickly and I can only write so fast. I'm so glad you took such thorough notes. Re-reading this helped me a lot. Thanks for the post.
Posted by: Matt Holley | 18 September 2006 at 12:48 PM