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September 28, 2007

Church Marketing Lab: Wonder, Family Life, and Kids' Weekends

This week, we saw the first day of autumn. I checked the Church Marketing Lab for designs of foliage, football, and all fall colors, but I didn't come up with too much. But this week, we did see some great submissions, like these:

Run 1 and Run 2 of a series called "Wonder,"

Continue reading "Church Marketing Lab: Wonder, Family Life, and Kids' Weekends"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 8:19 AM
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September 27, 2007

Free Catalyst Tickets

I realize it's last minute, but our friends over at Aspire!One have two tickets to next week's Catalyst conference that they're giving away to the CFCC community. You'll have to cover your own transportation, meals, lodging, blah, blah, blah. The tickets are good for Thursday and Friday only (not the labs on Wednesday).

If you want them, drop us an e-mail for why you think they should be yours and we'll have them FedEx'd out for Monday delivery. There are no tricks or gimmicks to getting these--it's too late for that!

Update: The two Catalyst tickets have found their homes so you can stop e-mailing. However, it appears that Jesse the Catalyst intern has some "fire-sale discount [tickets]" so call him at 678-225-3553 if you're still looking to go.

And for anyone else who is already going to Catalyst, there are several CFCC friends who will be there so say hey to someone--especially those closet readers of CMS. Josh and I will be there too. See you next week!

Posted by Brad Abare at 6:36 AM
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September 25, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: Verbose Nomenclature

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 5 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

Besides ancient language we also exclude visitors with our Christian-ese. These are words almost exclusively used in Christian circles. These can include theological terms, religious words and various other words that are not found in our everyday vernacular.

Sometimes we are well meaning, but we use pious words that might exclude people by making them feel less righteous. “Bless” is one of those words. I am still shocked when someone tells me, “Have a blessed day.” I guess it feels like they are pointing out to me how good of a Christian they are--and implying that I am less pious than they.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: Verbose Nomenclature"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:17 AM
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Announcements Poll Results

Sometimes when you're at church you hear the words, "Let's go ahead and bring up our [blank], Mr./Mrs. [blank] for the announcements." Sometimes, when you're at church, you hear a collective sigh and the sound of dying momentum. We asked you how to fix that.

Most of you think announcements ought to be relegated to videos before or after the service. 46% of you are tired of someone rambling on about announcements in the middle of the service.

22% of you like the way things are. Announcements make your heart skip a beat, and you love to hear them during the service. 12% of you want to get them out of the way at the beginning of the service. Then, people could just come late if they didn't want to hear them.

8% of you want them at the end of the service so folks can slip out if they need to. 2% of you, whose church I might not be too excited to visit, want to tell about the potluck supper at the beginning and end of the service. A final 11% of you want to give announcements the boot and go all e-mail newsletters and web sites. Blasphemous announcement killers.

This week, it's about time for big fall kickoffs with football, fireworks, giveaways and more. Is your church doing something to kick off the fall?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:22 AM
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September 24, 2007

Church Marketing Lab: Icons, Route 56 & More

We're here again to let you know a little bit of what's been going on in the Church Marketing Lab. Here's a sample of some of the submissions we've seen this week:

Route 56 5th and 6th grade class has a new logo.

Continue reading "Church Marketing Lab: Icons, Route 56 & More"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:16 AM
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September 22, 2007

MinistryCOM 2007 Recap

by Michael Buckingham, Guest Blogger

I'm just getting back into the swing of things after a great time at the MinistryCOM conference in Nashville last week. I talk often about setting the bar as communicators, and what a great time of hanging out with 400+ people who are pressing forward to set the bar, and many that are blowing it away!

Terry Storch of LifeChurch.tv kicked off the conference on Thursday morning ... this guy doesn't just get technology he understands how to use technology to reach people. He made a simple point, but one with a lot of impact: Our focus as a church used to be all about service times, Sunday morning was where it was all at. But that simply doesn't apply anymore--we are a 24/7 culture now.

Continue reading "MinistryCOM 2007 Recap"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:45 AM
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September 20, 2007

What if Church was Fast, Fun & Friendly?

Brenton Balvin recently went to work for Target and noted that Target strives to be a 'fast, fun and friendly place to work and shop' and maybe churches need to be fast, fun and friendly.

In the light of our current series on church visitors these are great concepts to keep in mind:

• Fast - You'll probably accuse me of being too consumerist, but how many visitors can sit through a 45-minute sermon? I know I can't.
• Fun - Has church ever been fun? And would an outsider consider it fun?
• Friendly - We all think we're incredibly warm and friendly, but that's because you know everybody.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:53 AM
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September 19, 2007

A Visitor’s Perspective: Watch your Language!

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 4 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

Within a week or so of moving to the South, I had a flat tire. My roommate, who was from India, took me to a local garage to get the tire patched. Out of the shop walks a character right out of your strongest stereotype. In order to get at the screw piercing my tire the mechanic proceeded to bark some directions at me in a language I couldn’t understand. By the contorted expression on my face he concluded that I didn’t understand him, so he added some confusing gestures to his drawl. Only after my Indian roommate translated (English being his sixth language, not counting Southern Drawl) could I follow his directions. At that point I realized I was an outsider.

Few things make people feel like an outsider more than the language used around them. If this is true, how does the language we use in church make our visitors feel? To avoid excluding people we have to pay attention to verbose nomenclature that we use in our worship service--since this is the way most people are introduced to our church.

Continue reading "A Visitor’s Perspective: Watch your Language!"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 8:48 AM
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September 18, 2007

Marketing Focus Poll Results

Last week we asked you where your church concentrates its marketing efforts the most. The most popular place to concentrate efforts was, not surprisingly, Sunday mornings. 24% of your churches place the most marketing emphasis there.

After that, there's a near tie. The second most popular focus was on your members. After all, if you concentrate on them, they'll go out and market for you. Right after that, the churches of our readers put the most effort into serving the community. Having events other than Sunday and large-scale marketing round out that group.

9% of you concentrate most on the sermon because theology trumps marketing. Only 3% of you are engaged in door-to-door marketing or other way to get in touch with individuals just to spread the word about you. I'm saving 13% of you for last, and that's you guys who aren't putting any effort into marketing. Well, we're glad to have you here.

This week, let's talk about church announcements. How do you think they should be done? Let us know in the poll to the right.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 9:27 AM
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September 17, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 3 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post here to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

There’s a paradox when it comes to welcoming a visitor: on one hand, they want to anonymously investigate the church without pressure; on the other hand they don’t want to be ignored.

My wife and I were enjoying a church we had been visiting for a couple of weeks. Over that time the church allowed us to visit freely without making us standout as visitors. However, the only time anyone said “Hello” to us was when the whole church stood up to “pass the peace.” When we eventually tried to find a Sunday School class (or something) to connect with some other people, we couldn’t find anyone to ask. We eventually found a table in the lobby with a sign declaring it to be the “Welcome Table” but no one ever showed up. Even though we liked the church, we never returned.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: The Welcoming Paradox"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 1:19 PM
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The Art of the Critique

Sometimes there's something that's just so good in the Church Marketing Lab that it needs to migrate to our front page here. This is one of those occasions.

User "wiseacre photo" has written up a piece called "The Art of the Critique." It aims to be a guide for churches hiring designers to critique their work in its early stages. It succeeds at being much more. It can expand from graphic design to employee reviews to volunteer encouragement to pastoral critique. And beyond. Here's a taste of what he says, but you can read the whole article in our Church Marketing Lab.

Continue reading "The Art of the Critique"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:34 AM
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Church Marketing Lab: Sorry Church Site, God is Green and More

This week in the Church Marketing Lab, the discussion board was crazy with a couple long threads, and the photo pool saw some great new submissions. Now that we've given you some links to keep you busy, check out a sample of this week's designs:

Here's a promo for a sermon examining what it means to be "green like God."

Continue reading "Church Marketing Lab: Sorry Church Site, God is Green and More"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:05 AM
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September 13, 2007

A Visitor's Perspective: An Embarrassing Problem

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 2 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective. You can read the original post to get a better understanding of David's experience visiting churches for the first time.

What do you think is the most pressing issue for a first time visitor to your church? The doctrine? Now I am a doctrinal stickler, but I’m realistic enough to realize that most visitors don’t care much about this. The music style? Good music can give a great first impression--whether traditional or contemporary--but most visitors will just sing along with whatever you have. The sermon? While a sermon could definitely cause people to leave a church, I don’t think this is the most pressing issue for a first-time visitor. First-time visitors care most about not embarrassing themselves.

Continue reading "A Visitor's Perspective: An Embarrassing Problem"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:24 AM
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September 12, 2007

Franchising Church

We're living in modern times. Everything is outsourced, and everything is franchised. Why should church be any different?

Todd Rhoades at Monday Morning Insight discusses this model of church planting where a larger church will directly partner with a new church plant.

Of course, every instance of this is different, but with a North Point plant franchise in my own town, and with friends working there, this is what I see.

Continue reading "Franchising Church"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 11:36 AM
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September 11, 2007

RSS Church Poll Results

Last week, we asked you if your church was using an RSS feed for their web site. We've harped on RSS for your church before, and we were hoping that since then, more of your churches would have started providing RSS feeds.

28% of you are using RSS feeds for your sites. So about three of every ten churches provide a feed for their site. What sorts of things do you use this feed for? Messages? Events? Prayer Requests? Something else?

22% of you "haven't needed it yet." From the standpoint of someone who doesn't visit web sites if they can help it, I read that as 22% of you don't want to keep me in the loop.

Another 32% of you don't have an RSS feed because you don't update your web site. Hey, Moses didn't regularly update the stone tablets, so maybe you guys are doing the right thing on that.

The final 18% of you are a little confused as to this whole RSS thing. You've seen that orange button before. You've heard me call out web sites that don't have it (I'm looking at you, Barna). My best advice for you is to check out the Wikipedia article on RSS.

Before you go check out that article or update your church's web content, head over and let us know where your church most concentrates its marketing efforts. The new poll is up now.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 2:07 PM
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Church from a Visitor's Perspective

by David Zimmerman, Guest Blogger

This is part 1 of a 9-part series on attending church from a visitor’s perspective.

Here's a little of my back-story: I was a church planter for a number of years, trying to plant a rather contemporary church for a very traditional denomination. After a couple of years of hard work and a shift in the powers that be, my mother church decided to close my work down.

After this I found myself in an unusual position--for the first time in years I was being welcomed into a church rather than welcoming people into church. Unable to shake my church-planting mentality, I was particularly sensitive to the way churches approached visitors. After visiting a few different churches, I started to realize something: many churches have forgotten what it's like to go to a church for the first time.

Continue reading "Church from a Visitor's Perspective"

Posted by Guest Blogger at 7:52 AM
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September 10, 2007

Free Site Giveaway

Calling all church plants, upstarts and new ministries. We wanted to let you know that HotPress Web a Denver, Colo. based web marketing company is donating a custom web site to a nonprofit on September 31st.

With the free site, you'll get up to 25 pages, content entry assistance and management, site architecture, e-mail and a year of free hosting.

They do this every quarter. Last quarter's winner was The Cunningham Foundation.

So if you have a need for a new web site, go ahead and apply here.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:20 AM
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September 8, 2007

Internet Ministry Conference... You Going?

Last week I mentioned that I will be in Nashville on September 13-14 for MinistryCOM 2007. The week following, on September 19-22, I will be at the Internet Ministry Conference presented by Gospel Communications in Grand Rapids, Mich. It looks like they have a pretty sweet line-up of speakers, so I'm looking forward to learning with everybody. And with registration being closed out already for the event, if you didn't sign-up, you'll have to wait for next year.

As always, if you'll be in Grand Rapids later this month, be sure to say hello!

Posted by Brad Abare at 3:48 PM
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September 5, 2007

Skipping Summer Sundays?

An interesting story came to me via Slice of Laodicea about how one church handles their summer services.

For June, July and August, the San Francisco Journey moved to a once-monthly service schedule. You've told us before that there's no momentum at your church in the summer. Do you think switching to a monthly service schedule would help? Would it build momentum and excitement, or would it just afford an opportunity for people to fall away?

Overall, I just wanted to point out how one church deals with creating summer momentum. Some do more church, others do different ways of church, and someone thinks less church is the way to go. Hey, I'll bet their September 23rd kickoff will be pretty buzzworthy. What do you think, church marketers?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 1:39 PM
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Extreme Makeover Poll Results

Last week, we asked you which typical church function needs an extreme makeover. We gave you nine choices and let you vote, and you made it a close race. Here's what you thought.

The church function you'd most like to make over, Sunday school, had 18% of you demanding change. The church function you'd least like to make over, seeker-friendly services, had 8% of you demanding change. That's a small gap.

Of the seven choices that fell in the middle, vacation Bible school took the "ugliest church function" title. Next up came a tie. 13% of you think church marketing needs some changing (three cheers to you), and 13% of you think that "church in general" is in need of some help.

Slightly less of you, 11%, thought our next two activities need making over. Potlucks and Sunday morning dramas. The two terms are a little bit scary, with the potential to go so wrong. (Think hairs in soup and productions of "Christmas Shoes.") Finally, 10% of you think the token patriotic July 4th service needs to be revamped. Only 1% of you think there's no makeover at all needed.

So let's hear it in the comments. How would you change these things? What else would you change? Which of these would be blasphemy to change? Let us know.

This week, look on the right side of our page and let us know if your church has caught onto the RSS trend since we posted about it.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 5:15 AM
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