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December 31, 2009

Best @cmsucks Tweets of 2009

We started the official Church Marketing Sucks Twitter feed earlier this year and we've been having a lot of fun with it. And since 'best of the year' lists are so fun, let's double the fun with a best Twitter list! Um, let's get on with the list before this turns into a Doublemint commercial.

So with no further ado, the best @cmsucks tweets of 2009:

5) Lexus parked in 2 spaces w/ "APASTOR" license plate. That sends a message. @holycowcreative asks for your captions: http://ow.ly/ucxn

4) RT @stevenfurtick: There is no marketing dept. at Elevation Church. We're all the marketing dept. http://bit.ly/5Iwc9

3) Let's hope they're doing some good samaritan sort of work, but it's just bad marketing to park your church van here: http://is.gd/5braV

2) Speaking of bad church names, Chad Neal shared on FB about their rebranded youth group, "Ground Zero." Kicked off on Sept. 9, 2001. Doh!

And the number one tweet of 2009...

1) RAWRRRRRR. Breaking Church Marketing News: Popeasaurus is causing havoc in Chile. http://ow.ly/x7Xj

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 1:24 PM
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Merry Holidays Poll Results

It was a scary question to even consider asking. Would there be riots? Would Fox News cover our piece? Worries aside, we advanced boldly, asking that Christmas question: How important is the war between "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" to you?

Semi-surprisingly, only 10% of you call it "very important." You made your list, checked it twice, and boycotted anyone who used the "H" word in their holiday Christmas marketing.

The clear winner are the 40% who think it's fairly important, but only insofar as we should stand up to the "holidays" crusaders for being overly-sensitive and ruining all of the good holiday fun.

26% of you are feeling pretty "Meh" about it. You don't care what it's called so long as Santa backs his sleigh up to your chimney with a bag full of presents. Or perhaps you're a little bit truer about things, and you don't care what its called so long as we've celebrating the incarnation of Christ appropriately.

Next up are the rebellious ones. The bold 1% who do as the Romans do and think we should say, "Happy Holidays" because everyone else is doing it. You know what your mother would say about that...

Finally, 23% of you think we should be proactive about "Happy Holidays." Give it attention, cheer for it and hope it finds a nice, comfortable home in mainstream usage. After all, wouldn't we be offended if someone made us celebrate the birth of someone we didn't believe in?

Opinions might be spirited and strong, so try to keep good holiday cheer as you discuss this further in the comments. (Or, everyone might be checked out for New Year's.)

And while you're commenting, make sure to weigh in on this week's poll: What do you think is the best advice Church Marketing Sucks offered in 2009?

Oh, and Happy... uh, Christmas!

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:00 AM
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December 30, 2009

Top CFCC News of 2009

We’ve had a good year here at Church Marketing Sucks, along with our nonprofit parent the Center for Church Communication (CFCC). It’s a bit self-indulgent, but as we look back on 2009 we thought we’d recap the top CFCC news of the year.

5) Accolades
We scored two prestigious accolades in 2009 that quite honestly make us blush. First, Collide magazine named us best ministry blog. Then Church Relevance put out their list of top 100 church blogs and we landed in the 11th spot. Whoa. About all we can say is: Thanks.

4) Five Year Anniversary
In July we celebrated our five-year anniversary. In Internet terms that makes us a dinosaur. In human terms that makes us a kindergartner. You can decide which seems most appropriate.

3) Twitter
In August we finally hopped on the Twitter train. Since then we've pushed out over 400 updates to more than 1,700 people. Not enormous numbers for Twitter, but it's a start. Beyond the numbers, it's given us a new outlet for content and we're excited to see where it takes us. (What do you mean you're not following us?)

Continue reading "Top CFCC News of 2009"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:08 AM
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December 29, 2009

Most Hotly Debated Posts of 2009

With 2009 quickly coming to a close and everyone releasing their end-of-the-year and end-of-the-decade lists we thought we'd play along. So here is the first of several 'top of 2009' posts.

First we'll start with the most hotly-debated posts of 2009. We get a fair number of comments and some posts prompt a lot more response than others. Here are the most commented posts of 2009*:

5) Do You Need a Web Site? - 40 comments
Posted with only 20 days until the end of the year, this entry made an impressive end-of-the-year surge with 40 comments debating the necessity of a church web site.

4) Piper Wants You to Keep Preaching Pure - 46 comments
John Piper made a controversial statement that multimedia can be a distraction from truly powerful preaching. That's a recipe for debate.

3) Deadly Viper & Asian Stereotypes - 46 comments
Technically it's tied with the Piper post, but since this issue garnered comments across the web, we'll give it the third spot. Our discussion of the Deadly Viper controversy stirred up plenty of its own debate.

2) Pastor in a Box - 89 comments
Stuffing your pastor in a 6x6 box on top of the church roof for three days as an Easter stunt is bound to generate some discussion. It should come as no surprise that this issue also generated our most popular poll of the year.

And the number most hotly debated post of 2009 is...

1) Rick Warren & Spec Work - 133 comments
This should come as no surprise. A perfect storm of Rick Warren and a spec work contest generated 133 comments in less than two days. We had to shut down the comments as the discussion became less than civil, a first for Church Marketing Sucks.

*Another post would have landed at number three on this list with 56 comments, but we opted to scratch it from the running. Most of the comments concerned our editorial failure that we acknowledged and addressed by about the 30th comment. We're not trying to bury our shortcomings (hence this aside), but we'd rather focus attention on church marketing issues from the year rather than our editorial missteps.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:28 AM
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December 23, 2009

Cash for Clicks: Yule Log 4 A Cause

The good folks at The Chapel in Chicago have come up with an interesting idea to spread the word and the warmth this year. It's called Yule Log 4 A Cause, and here's what they have to say about it:

Many people in Chicagoland will go through this winter without coats, scarves, gloves, etc. Let's do something about that. Here are 4 ways you can take part.

Those four ways? Members of The Chapel have offered to donate a quarter for each unique site visitor, so you have already given by visiting, and you can keep giving by recommending the site. Also, they give information about dropping off coats and scarves at their church as well as making a one-time donation.

It's encouraging to see a church getting creative like this to address a problem in their local community. These sorts of sites have been popular in the past--FreeRice and The Hunger Site are two such examples. But it's a great way to develop your church's identity as a group who cares about local issues and putting an end to the pain in your city.

As of this writing, they've donated $331.25. Let's go ahead and help them get that number a little bit higher. Plus, who doesn't want to curl up in front of video fire.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:24 AM
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December 22, 2009

Extreme Church Makeover Poll Results

As 2009 comes to a close, many of your are pining for some upgrades around your church facilities. We decided to see just where our readers are longing for an upgrade the most.

We have a faraway winner for facility most in need of a facelift. 31% of you would upgrade your church's youth facilities. Turns out your students don't enjoy meeting in your church's original sanctuary from 1846, and you'd like to get them a place to call their own.

Next up, 15% of you need a church office upgrade. Your terrible day-to-day facilities aren't making actual ministry any easier. And for another 12% of you, the facility you'd most like to upgrade are your, ahem, facilities. You'd like to bring your church restrooms up to par and make them a place people love to visit.

The next biggest sources of pain are your parking lots and pews. Between sitting for an hour and then staying in gridlock, you're going to lose your religion. You'd love to devote some resources to new seating (or at least cushions) as well as parking lot infrastructure and volunteers.

And finally, 22% of you don't have any of these concerns because you don't have a building. Perhaps you meet in a home or you rent a building, but either way, you're whistling "Hakuna Matata" while the other 78% choose an answer.

This week's poll is a bit more controversial; In the spirit of holiday debate and division, how important is the war between "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" to you? Click on through to weight your vote.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 2:55 PM
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December 21, 2009

Called to Consistency & Living in Brokenness

From the beginning one of the communications issues we've continually harped on is that some of the very worst marketing for churches is Christians themselves. So often we're a poor advertisement for the faith we want to spread.

You don't have to look far to find examples of ethical failures. Like most years, 2009 is chock full of examples:

• South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford made headlines for "hiking on the Appalachian Trail," the excuse he gave when he was really using tax payer funds to rendezvous with his mistress in Argentina.
• Golfer Tiger Woods joined the infidelity club around Thanksgiving with his mysterious car crash. He eventually apologized for "transgressions." After at least a dozen women admitted to having affairs with Woods, he apologized again and admitted to "infidelity." He's currently taking an indefinite hiatus from professional golf and watching his many sponsors drop him like a rock.

Of course those are just two high profile examples of mainstream figures getting caught up in their own lies. Sadly, the famous person cheating on their spouse is hardly remarkable.

Unfortunately, the church isn't immune from our own stories this year:

• Cape Girardeau pastor gets six months in fraud case.
• Gaston County pastor faces 11 charges of sexual battery and 1 charge of sexual assault.
• Plaquemines Parish pastor faces fraud and drug charges.
• Surrey pastor jailed for enticing rape of teen church member.
• Miami pastor found guilty of looting county grant funds.
• Fond du Lac pastor makes off with thousands of dollars of holiday offerings.
• New York pastor used church funds to pay for plastic surgery (his lawyer said he was "very sorry").
• Miami-Dade pastor and his wife convicted of $7 million money-laundering and mortgage fraud.
• A little closer to home, well known blogger and pastor of Revolution Church in Canton, Ga., Gary Lamb stepped down earlier this year. (Your standard pastor cheats on his wife scenario, if such a thing can be standard.)
• Then there's the bizarre case of a NewSpring Church staff member and several volunteers harassing a blogger who criticized NewSpring pastor Perry Noble. [Sidebar: The wackiness of this story goes much deeper with the blog posts of James Duncan, who outs himself as the harassed critic and publishes volumes of detail on this debate, much of which questions the veracity of that vague NewSpring blog post and, if true, raises some serious questions. Of course nothing has been independently verified, it's just blog vs. blog, so we'll delve no deeper.]

Whew. Depressed yet? I think I may have inadvertently ruined Christmas.

There are two solutions to this.

Continue reading "Called to Consistency & Living in Brokenness"

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 7:13 AM
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December 18, 2009

Get a Job for Christmas

What's the gift that keeps on giving? That's right, employment. As you look to start 2010 off right, we'd like to humbly suggest our Job Lab and Freelance Lab for you to investigate openings for you to help the church communicate more clearly. Here are just a few openings we've seen lately:

Freelance Projects

• One day only: The Foursquare Church is looking for help on a site redesign with a quick turnaround.
  
• New Life Church is looking for a logo design for their student ministry.

Full-time Jobs

• Temple Baptist Church is looking for a full-time creative web designer.
  
• There are two openings at The Summit Church—one for a web specialist and another for a video specialist.

Visit the Job Lab and Freelance Lab to check out all the opportunities that have been posted recently.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:12 AM
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December 16, 2009

Free Advice: Don't Offend Those You Hope to Reach

Recently, a church in the San Diego area hosted an event, and then came under some heat. You can read the full story on San Diego's 10news.com, but here is the crux of what happened:

A church in San Diego invited folks to their Christmas program, including some 30 Muslims from their community. The program featured a traveling evangelist who described her conversion from Islam to Christianity, and naturally, encouraged others to consider the same option. When she began ridiculing Muslim beliefs and described the Koran as "nonsense," the Muslim attendees got up to leave. A shouting match ensued and the Muslim group vowed never to return to the church.

The article doesn't provide enough information to place the blame on either a tricky, manipulative ministry or over-sensitive, hot-headed attendees. But it does allow us to consider three simple questions when planning an event:

Continue reading "Free Advice: Don't Offend Those You Hope to Reach"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:01 AM
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December 15, 2009

Church Design Pet Peeves Poll Results

This week we took a good, long look at the pet peeves we all love to hate. I'm sure the poll was met with cringing and gnashing of teeth, with all wishing they could select multiple options. Unfortunately, you could only choose the most irksome error, and here's how you voted, in a surprisingly tight race:

The winner? Clip art! You don't like to see "designs" like these popping up in church materials. They're funny on the Internet, but things get serious when they make their way into real life. Just behind clip art are Comic Sans and Papyrus--the favorite fonts of churches across the country. But really, there's nothing funny about Comic Sans. Plus, Jesus hates Papyrus.

Next up are the 16% of you who hate phony stock photography. Your church looks like a whitewashed cross-section of Average Joes, but your stock photography has six friends of mixed races playing cricket. And rounding out the artistic answers, 7% of you are most peeved by churches like "Turtletop Town Church in Tottlesville, Tennessee" who have eight crosses in their logo--one for each "T."

Beyond that, 11% of you are tired of churches ripping off art. They're copying music or designs or anything they can get their paws on, and they're not following copyright law at all. Another 11% of you are tired of churches messing up the music lyrics. There are only a handful of words up there, they ought to be able to get them right.

Finally, 16% of you are above all of these pet peeves, and you have bigger things to worry about. Bummer, design pet peeves sure are a lot of fun.

This week, we're looking to hear: What aspect of your church building would you most like to give an extreme church makeover?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:43 AM
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December 14, 2009

What Matters Now: Free eBook

Marketing guru Seth Godin offers yet another free ebook, What Matters Now. But it's not all Seth. It features 70 other smart folks giving quick, 200-word riffs answering the question "what matters now?" It's a quality little motivational shot in the arm.

You'll find some recognizable names among those 70 folks, including Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters, Daniel Pink, Karen Armstrong, Chris Anderson, Gina Trapani--as well as a few folks better known in the church world, including Michael Hyatt, Anne Jackson and Dave Ramsey.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:38 AM
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December 11, 2009

Do You Need a Web Site?

I'm speaking next week to a group of college pastors, and I'm struggling. The first session is about church, communication and creativity ... no problems there. The second session is about web sites, and that's where I'm stuck.

I'm not stuck because I don't understand web sites, I've been involved in the technology world since we called web sites BBSs. I'm realizing my struggle is from a good tension, a tension brought from growth with how you and I, and everyone around us now use the web.

Does a ministry need a web site anymore? Could the web site be replaced with a web strategy? We have Facebook, blogs, twitter and an assortment of other technologies that keep us connected on so many levels and with so many things. Does a web site add to the clutter or does it clarify the ministry's voice?

Continue reading "Do You Need a Web Site?"

Posted by Michael Buckingham at 7:37 AM
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December 10, 2009

Church Marketing Lab: Invitations and Series

In case you're keeping score, we're just a hair shy of 10,000 uploads to the photo pool in the Church Marketing Lab. And nearly 4,000 members, to boot! That's great in the long-term, but what really matters is what happens day-in and day-out. So here are some of the works we've seen passing through this week:

The Kingdom is the third of three designs for a three-part series.

Continue reading "Church Marketing Lab: Invitations and Series"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:30 AM
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December 9, 2009

Thanksgiving Poll Results

We shared some stories last week of churches who were being thankful around the holidays. But each church has their own traditions and values, so we wanted to know how your church commemorates Thanksgiving. You could choose as many options as were applicable, and here's what you had to say:

27% of churches exercised their thankfulness through generosity. In some, way, shape or form, you reached out to those in need around Thanksgiving.

Another 20% of you went with a special Thanksgiving service. We'd love to hear in the comments what you did during this time. While 14% went on with business as usual--maybe a bulletin announcement or a pulpit-sponsored "Happy Thanksgiving," but that's about it.

Just a hair less of you, 19%, preached some sort of Thanksgiving sermon. "We're thankful for turkey, but we're more thankful for Jesus." That sort of thing. Conversely, 5% of you took the week off from services altogether. You just let folks be thankful for sleeping in on Sunday.

The final groups? 7% of you had a big party so people could invite their friends and feast together, and 7% of you skipped out on a geographical basis. Perhaps in your countries, you aim for thankfulness 365 days out of the year, without a special holiday for it.

This week, it's the topic everyone loves to hate: What is your most irksome church design pet peeve?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:50 AM
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December 7, 2009

Church Size and Spiritual Belief

Church size matters. Well, not really, but it can have an interesting affect on the spiritual beliefs of a congregation.

Despite the persistent perception that mega-churches somehow water down the faith in order to attract people, research shows that members of larger churches consistently have more orthodox beliefs. A Barna survey released in October shows significant differences in belief between churches of fewer than 100 people and churches of more than 1,000 people.

On every single belief indicator--questions ranging from the accuracy of the Bible, to the responsibility for personal evangelism, to the reality of Satan--people attending larger churches were more likely to give the orthodox response. The differences ranged from as low as 9% to as high as 25%.

When the research pushed beyond belief to practice, large church attendees were 17% more likely to be active across seven different behavioral indicators (attending church, reading the Bible volunteering at church, etc.).

So can we finally put to rest the idea that mega-churches are somehow weak on theology?

Size of the Numbers
On a less related note, the study found that 41% of adults attend a church of fewer than 100 people. If you push the congregation size to 200 you account for 64% of church attendees. Only 9% attend a church with 1,000 or more people.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks at 6:14 AM
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December 3, 2009

The Smithsonian and Social Media Strategy

What do this, this and this all have in common? Someone thought they were a great idea, and they thought wrong. And sure, we can laud their creators for being willing to take a risk, but before we go there, let's consider some other possibilities.

• They saw their competitors doing similar things, and hoped to one-up them.
• They assumed they could build a successful product out of independently-successful elements.
• They thought of something neat to do and plowed ahead, ignorant of conventional wisdom and best practices.

Churches face all of the same temptations when it comes to social media. They feel they need to "strike while the iron is hot," "keep up with the Joneses" or worse, "extend and develop their identity through brand equity and presence in a digital world." And they forget to ask "Why?" and "How does it fit with our overall strategy?"

Continue reading "The Smithsonian and Social Media Strategy"

Posted by Joshua Cody at 7:04 AM
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December 2, 2009

Churches Being Thankful

Sure, our name is Church Marketing Sucks, but above all, we like to see churches getting it right. Thanksgiving is a time when churches tend to stay out of hot-button politics, avoid saying stupid things and do something great. So what better time to celebrate churches being churches.

Take some time with us to celebrate churches communicating the gospel well during Thanksgiving last week:

• This New York church is opening its doors to the city's homeless gay teens.
• In Echo Park, churches give away thousand of turkeys each Thanksgiving.
• In Northampton, one church hosted 750 local residents in need of food. (subscription required)

These churches understand who they are, where they've been and what to do next. It's encouraging to see churches asking these simple questions and responding so sacrificially:

Who are we? We are humans--fallen, forgiven and redeemed. We are saved by grace, and we are thankful.
What does that lead us to do? We will reflect what we know of God to the world. We will accept those who are fallen, and we will show them forgiveness, redemption and grace.

At Church Marketing Sucks, we're thankful for churches like these, and we're hopeful that the same clarity will be a hallmark of local churches through Christmas and into 2010.

Posted by Joshua Cody at 8:24 AM
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December 1, 2009

What's in a Name Poll Results

The Internet is home to five years of crummy church signs, you've played with the church sign generator and we've done our fair share of lamenting ridiculous signage. But did you know that the name on the sign could be just as hilariously bad as those cheesy stick-on letters?

Neil Cole did He lists some of the hilarious church names his mentor has cataloged over the past years. Here was my favorite, which was a bit long to include in our options:

First Church of the Last Chance World on Fire Revival and Military Academy (in Dade City, Fla.). These folks have the first and last word on just about any subject. I don’t even want to ask what sort of military they are training.

This name didn't come easy. It's a mix between a poetic masterpiece and a frightening omen, constructed with strength and prowess. The first six words drip with consonance and rhythm, rolling of the tongue beautifully: First Church of the Last Chance. But from there, the final seven words turn to mayhem and madness: World on Fire Revival and Military Academy. Man, what a great name.

Of our poll options, the runaway winner was the Original Church of God, Number 2. You guys are suckers for some great irony. Nearly half of you preferred, OCoG#2, who have a pretty great acronym to boot.

Plenty of you were also fans of Hell for Certain and James Bond United Community Church, while I thought Lover's Lane Episcopal Church had a particularly poor showing. After that, it's pretty much just handfuls of you with particular affinity for each name.

I'm sure these bad church names are just the tip of the iceberg, so don't hesitate to let us know your own experience in the comments.

And while you're there, visit our home page to be a part of this week's poll: How did your church celebrate Thanksgiving this year?

Posted by Joshua Cody at 6:43 AM
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