Nostalgia is powerful

One of the hallmarks of our current society is the desire of many adults to relive their past. We see it in trends like house restoration, increasing numbers of people buying caravans, family tree research. Then there are events like Christmas carols and school reunions. As I have seen this growth in returning to our past I have realised there is a tremendous power in nostalgia.

This power of nostalgia presents a unique opportunity for churches to be in those places, to be part of those memories. Church initiated events such as Christmas carols, Sunday school camps and christenings are opportunities for churches to build happy memories into people’s lives.

One of things radio has taught me is that we have a unique place in being part of the soundtrack of peoples lives. The music and programs we produce are with them when they go to work, take the kids to school. We are playing in the background when they get good news and sometimes when they hear bad news. We can play songs that bring back happy memories as well as songs that cause them to reflect

Churches too need to learn how to place themselves in the soundtrack of people’s lives. Like a song or a smell or a taste suddenly takes a person back to a childhood experience we need to be in the good reminisces of a person’s life.

The challenge for us as leaders in churches is what happy experiences of God we are building into the memory banks of our community. Not just Christians but also the non Christians. The experiences of God should not just be confined to the auditorium but around the streets where we live.

Nostalgia is really people hitting the replay button on the sound track to their life to relive a past experience. My prayer is that you are doing something as a Christian to build a God memory in the life of non Christians in your community this year.

Ps: And as parents we need to be doing the same for our kids.

A new way of Church leadership?

As I watched this years State of Origin and the continuing success of Queensland I became aware of how much of this continued domination by Qld over the last 6 years is due to Mal Meninga and his style of coaching. Much has already been written about the new style of coaching Mal Meninga has brought to rugby league particularly at the high performance end. As an outsider it has the appearance of a manager like in European soccer. As the coach he brings in people with various levels of expertise and manages them as well as managing the players.

In some ways he is like a CEO/manager of a business. He doesn’t do everything. He compliments his own skill set with people who can do the things he needs done and realizes he isn’t always the best person to do some activities. He is not threatened by bringing in other mentors to do a specific task with a player/s.

As I have watched this unfold over the last couple of years it struck me that this model of coaching could work in a church too at a leader level. Rather than the pastor being the head and doing everything, the Pastor cultivates a team environment of leadership. Now before you say well I already do that, please hear me out. The difference here is that this style of management will mean that you will have people who are actually better than you being involved on your leadership team and in some public capacity.

I wonder if the manger pastor who is good at leadership but poor in preaching could have others in his church doing the bulk of preaching. The current model of church is the best preacher or the most theological qualified tends to be the senior pastor. I have been thinking that perhaps the best leader in the church should in fact be the senior pastor and the best preacher may be a mechanic or school teacher in your congregation. Then everyone can concentrate on their gifting and not have to do things which aren’t their strengths.

Too many of our pastors are focussed on working in the ministry when they should be working on the ministry. The church CEO who heads the organisation then has people involved in preaching, pastoral care and other activities like Mal Meninga does as the Qld coach. He is not doing everything. He is coaching the process of creating a successful team which includes lay leaders and the congregation.

This same model of leadership is replicated in schools. The Principal isn’t necessarily the best teacher in the school. He is the leader who sets the vision/culture for the school and will probably have far better teachers than them on the staff. The Principal isn’t threatened by that scenario and probably hopes that is the reality.

So am I saying Mal isn’t really the coach? No. What I am saying is that he knows his strengths and he is not threatened by bringing in others who maybe better than him in certain areas. He is very much the coach and the boss and sets the patterns for what needs to happen. He has determined the strategy for success. But he also surrounds himself with people to help make it happen. People who are happy to be Mal’s armour bearers. To do their part away from the limelight and for the greater good of the team. That only happens because Mal has created that culture. If you notice Mal has had many assistants across the 6 years and as some leave and others take their place the team hasn’t missed a beat. That is because Mal has stayed as boss and ‘employed’ people who are happy to be the armour bearer and stay in their role of expertise. They don’t want to be boss but they know they have skills to contribute to the success.

Now just maybe the future church congregation will be led by a Pastor who operates as a CEO who will empower the laity to do the work. Empowered lay people who share in the success of growth are more likely to want to contribute to the church and invite their friends to church. The job of the CEO Pastor is identifying the vision of the congregation and coaching the leaders and members into achieving that vision. I’m suggesting that perhaps the best theological trained person isn’t the lead Pastor but the person who has the best coaching credentials.

Just a thought. I would love to hear your comments and whether you agree or not.

When less is more

As I have been getting around church ministers, I have been hearing many people voice this similar statement ‘Sunday church service is just too hard to get unsaved people to attend.’ I am beginning to think that it is not so much what the Sunday church product looks like but the fact that people don’t go to activities they know little about.

An increasingly greater percentage of 96five’s audience rarely if ever attend church yet they are increasing their engagement with the radio station. Obviously they are not negatively affected by the Christian message in the programming. Attending church though on a Sunday isn’t an option for them. I actually think it is unfamiliarity with church which could be the problem.

Let me use the Bronco’s as an example. Very few people would go to a Bronco’s NRL match not knowing anything about rugby league. Virtually the whole crowd has at least some passing knowledge of the rules and format of the game and the Bronco’s. If there are any who go with no knowledge at least they go with someone who does and invited them to go.

Why are we surprised that strangers don’t suddenly start turning up at our services. What we do know is that strangers will come if they are invited by a friend. And most church ministers do encourage their congregation members to invite a friend to church.

What I have been seeing are ministers who are starting to think out of the box. What if I kept my congregation members less busy and gave them more opportunities to form relationships in the community. What would it take to resource Mary Smith to help her be Jesus in the school tuckshops? How could I help Rob at his kids sporting club be Jesus to the parents on the sideline. Historically church has been about keeping its members busy so they don’t get caught up in the world. Suddenly we have lost our influence in the world. What if your church businessmen were members of their chamber of commerce? Congregation members joined political parties on both sides of politics. Then we start being an influence, making friends and creating opportunities to invite people to a relationship with Christ and church.

I think as more Christians are released to be Christians in the marketplace not just in the pews we will begin to see our influence spread further and perhaps over time our attendances rise. Maybe the principal of less is more might work. Less work in church programs and more work out in the community might just work.

Managing Change in your Church

What is the biggest fear most people have in their life? Is it death, public speaking, sharks? I think the most common fear for people is the fear of change. People are scared of it. They don’t like it and sometimes will do extraordinary things to avoid it.

But in reality change is inevitable and in fact we face it daily. Just by growing old we face change. I think it is in fact not change we are scared of. People may articulate it as change but it’s not change but loss that people are actually fearful of. Loss of something they once had. It’s not the change of body shape we actually fear as we get older but the loss of our youthful energy, the loss of hair colour or even hair. The loss of normal slimness of youth replaced by middle-aged spread.

Church ministers are people who are constantly challenged with leading congregations through change. Recently I have spoken with several ministers who are currently taking their congregations through the difficult process of change. In these cases it is changing the format of their Sunday service. One of the things that will make it easy for these minsters is the recognition that is not change but loss that these congregation members actually fear. Loss of a familiar worship style, loss of predictability, loss of routine.

Now to some of us these may seem trivial things but to those people they are real losses and they will have real feelings of grief. For most of then they will in fact go through the 7 stages of grief over the loss of service style.

A smart minister will recognise this as loss and they work with those people in a more appropriate manner rather than thinking they are opponents of change. I actually think the oldies in our congregations are some of the biggest accepters of change because in their lifetime they have witnessed huge changes in society and technology. More and bigger changes than our kids have seen.

Why is it then that they seem to struggle then with a change in the church service?

I think Bill Hybels summed it up very well at the recent Global Leadership Summit when he said a good leader moves people from here to there. How does he do it? By making the ‘there’ more attractive than the ‘here’. Help them want to embrace the there by having the current here so unbearable that they will want to run to the there.

The three keys points for us as leaders to recognise in bringing in change is

• Recognise loss is the biggest part of change
• The need to make the end point more exciting than the start point
• Allow open two way communication through the change process

These are just some random thoughts. I would love to get some feedback on your experiences on implementing change in your church.

Branding your Church Part 2

Before I start with part 2 let me answer a question that was posed to me off part 1. What is the diference btween a vison statement, mission statement and a postioning statement? Here's my answer. I guess my definations of the three statements are:
Vision statement is what you organisation strives to be;
Mission statement is how you will achieve it;
Positioning statement is how people see you in the marketplace.
For example with 96five:
Vision statement: To be Brisbane's prefered radio staion for families;
Mission statement: Building stronger families, connecting people to Jesus Christ, supporting the Christian community, through excellence in radio broacdcasting;
Positioning statement: Families No. 1

We don't use our vision statement as our branding statement. Our mission statement is an internal organisation message. Our vision statement says that we want to have your family listening to us. Those that already listen to us know that. People who aren't listeners don't know that. Our positioning statement is the brand slogan that helps us achieve our vision statement. Our mission statement then lets our staff now the framework for all programimng decisions.
So in a church context vision statement defines the church's position in the community, the mission statement tells the leadership and congregation how it will be achieved and the positioning statement is short punchy and tells a non member about your church distictive.

Does that help. Your church vision statement should never change - it is timeless. Mission statement may not change either but can be fine tuned to reflect the strengths of the church and the positioning tsatement should rarely change as it always takes a while for the community to actually 'get it'.

Now for Part 2.

Communicating your Distinctives

Just as important as developing your distinctives is to clearly communicate them to your audience. Often a church lets itself down by not clearly articulating what they are doing. Churches have always been guilty of using words that are not readily known by unchurched people. Churches will talk about their contemporary music. There is actually no such music genre at contemporary. Try going to iTunes or a retail music store and asking for the latest contemporary music album. They just don’t exist.
Other use phrases like we are a bible believing church. Well aren’t we all – it is a given not a positioning statement.

Sometimes we will talk about a world famous speaker coming to speak this weekend. I ask the question in whose world are they famous in. Nelson Mandela is world famous but Bill Hybels or even Julia Gillard isn’t world famous, just known in their areas of life.

Also never confuse style with relevance. When communicating you need to communicate from a position of substance not from a position of style. People aren’t looking for something stylish but for something that actually meets their own needs.

Service Delivery

Make sure you can actually deliver your distinctives or promises. Make sure you are actually friendly and engaging. If you call your self a family church do you cater for single parent families? What about singles?

Embrace other churches.

Other denominations are not the enemy or opposition. We are actually on the same team. Notice in your community how all the fast food shops seem to be in one spot. That is because they know that works in a financial sense. So if a church opens up in your area don’t panic. It is actually a good thing. Also there are plenty of unsaved people to share around. The more churches the better. Again embrace your distinctive not the other churchs distinctives and you will be fine. After all didn’t God call you to be there?

Developing your Church brand

For awhile I have been doing some research in to marketing and branding and in particular how they can help a church effectively reach their community. In the next couple of blogs I am going to attempt to summarise my thoughts and studies on this topic and hopefully give you something to think about as you see how your unchurch community looks at you.

How is your church perceived by your congregation and by the community who don’t attend. These are two distinct groups of people with different needs and different ways of engaging them. Firstly we will look at how we engage our community.

Your Church Brand or distinctive.

Your church brand is how you are marketed or perceived by all people. Good or strong brands are instantly recognised and should create an emotional connection. When you see the Golden arches logo you don’t think McDonalds but you are automatically thinking about their products and how much you enjoy them. When you see the Nike swoosh you are thinking about how it helps you run, or how comfortable their clothes are. Even the logo CE, you don’t know what it means but you recognise it as some sort of quality control.

So what is your Church brand?

How does your community perceive your church? Do they recognise it they way you do. If you closed tomorrow would anyone notice?

Successful organisations work out firstly what message they want to communicate to their community. They identify that market and then look for what are the hot buttons for that group of people. Churches need to decide if their core market is their existing congregation or is it people who don’t go to church.

When you are developing your church’s distictives (brand) you start with what your audience wants not what you think your audience wants. This would include not only programs but what time the activity or even church service starts. Which day of the week you hold it? The church is really a service organisation. The church is the only community organisation that exists for people who aren’t its members. So when you run an activity make sure the people you are running the activity for actually want it.

You need to make sure you have distinctives that actually engage people. Quick check amongst you current church activities. Who is engaged churched or unchurched?

Well who is my audience?

Our radio station has a specific listener in mind when we create our programming. She is Mary Smith 34 year old lady with two kids, one in grade 4 another in grade 1. She has a significant male partner in her life, doesn’t go to church but is not anti church. She drives a family type car, kids play sport and the daughter does dancing. All our decisions on music selection, announcer breaks, copy writing for ads all come from what engages Mary and her life. Our radio station distinctives come from Mary’s life and what would engage her as a listener and a person.

Churches sometimes make the mistake of not being able to define who their Mary Smith is. Consequently you don’t know who you are targeting in your programs or even sermons. The same for departments such as youth or Sunday school. They all should have a core person in their mind when running their ministry.

Once you know what Mary looks like then you can develop your Church’s distinctives. Also be prepared that you Church’s vision statement may change. My experience is that most church vision statements are for the congregation not the lost. Most business vision statements are for the potential consumer not the existing member. That seems to be an interesting difference. I think a lot of churches get their vision statements mixed up with mission statements. Throw into the mix that many churches even use their vision statement as their branding/positioning statement. In reality you actually should have three different statements.

Next blog will look at how do you communicate your brand/distinctives to your community. I am also keen to hear your thoughts on this topic too.