In his video for The Nines, Rick Warren talks about the need for a process of discipleship in a lot of the churches he is aware of. The question a lot of church leaders are asking is ‘how do we move people along from a needy attitude towards faith to a more committed “what can I give?” attitude?’
Is the problem that this is the wrong question? Instead, perhaps we should be asking questions about the way we market our faith in the first place?
The story about a teenage intern at Morgan Stanley who wrote some notes of teenagers’ technology usage is quickly becoming a bit of a legend. This is really interesting – I wonder whether companies had actually considered using teenagers to gather research before?
If you haven’t seen this yet, you can catch up with this story from the Guardian.
Here’s a full copy of the research notes which have caused the stir. From my own experience of young people, it certainly seems to ring true.
Found some really interesting thoughts from marketing guru, Seth Godin, on superbowl weekend:
Marketing is telling a story that sticks, that spreads and that changes the way people act. The story you tell is far more important than the way you tell it. Don’t worry so much about being cool, and worry a lot more about resonating your story with my worldview. If you don’t have a story, then a great show isn’t going to help much.
His thoughts have a really interesting application to mission – in putting on a great show have we forgotten the story? Or turned the story into a series of teaching points?
“Aesthetics are the post-modern currency of power”
There’s that classic statement about the modern world that “knowledge is power” – characterised in the way that any product which has some kind of “scientifically proven” stamp or someone in a lab coat supporting it is instantly trustable. We defer to those who have more knowledge than us. Knowledge, if you like, is the main currency of power – organisations trade useful information for power.
However, in a post-modern or hyper-modern world (or whatever other term you’d like to use) we find ourselves in an environment where information is more and more freely available to anyone. Now it is no longer the information itself gives individuals or organisations power, but how an organisation markets or brands that information that gives it power.
This came up on my RSS reader – made me think of a discussion we had in our Lab team meeting last night about language.
Last night, we were talking specifically about financial giving, but this idea of language is something that I’ve been talking about for a while to the couple of people who’d listen. I encountered the concept first in one of Dan Kimball’s books about the Emerging Church.
Kimball talked about how our language of church will go on to define our attitudes towards church, and so as church leaders the way we speak about church will go a long way to determine how our congregation views it. So, if we consistantly talk about church as a thing that happens, if we talk about services which people come to enjoy and consume – then this attitude will spill over into the attitudes of our church members. On the other hand, if we talk about church as a community, as something we are all a part of and contribute to, as a network of relationships rather than in terms of service provision, then that positive attitude to church should spill over into our congregations (or I should really say church communities).
Perhaps this explains a little about the place Willow Creek now find themselves in – church as a programme of activities rather than a community.
In terms of the Lab, I think that our change in language has been at least part of the reason for our increased sense of belonging and community. I won’t get all philosophical and psychological, but language is really the "verbal filter" or "verbal lens" through which we experience the world – surely the language we surround ourselves with must affect our worldview and our perceptions.
So our challenge with the Lab is now to let our "community language" settle and to consolidate it, and now to really think about bringing giving into our vocabulary – especially in the language of our worship. We need to bring giving out from the locked filing cabinet where we keep all the utility bills and other things we don’t especially like and reconnect it with our worship vocabulary.
So if you hear us talking about giving a lot at the Lab this term then you know the reasoning behind it ;-) We need to bring it back from just a way of paying the bills to its rightful place in the context of our worship as a community and as a church. Hope that made sense.
In the last post, I reflected on brokenness as a defining characteristic of humanity, and so therefore also of this revolutionary way of living that Jesus presented/presents to us when he talks about the Kingdom of God. I know that there are lots of questions I left unanswered in my extremely realist description of humanity – like what’s the point of even living our livers at all if we aren’t to aim for perfection? And so in discussing the other side of the coin – Wholeness – I’d like to try and kind of marry up the two and try and explore how this Godly Revolution can be characterised by both brokenness – broken people, sin, that "something’s missing" feeling – and by wholeness – being whole, fulfilled, complete in Jesus.
Like a kind of strange post-modern paradox.
I think that in exploring wholeness, and where that wholeness comes from for us as Jesus followers, we need to talk about hope. For me, this sense of being whole, being complete, is about the future – abouty being fulfilled in Christ in a day and a time yet to come – but also something we can be assured of and certain of. On that day, God will reconcile all things to himself.
And so, it is this hope and the faith that sustains it which form the connection between us, here in the present – our broken, imperfect selves – and this wholeness which we are assured of. Somehow, through faith and hope, this wholeness becomes not only true for the future – but also part of our present. Hey, that sounds quite cool ;-)
In my recent first meeting with my big boss (well, under Yahweh I guess), Bishop Dominic of Monmouth he talked about hope as the "unique selling point" of the church in marketing terms. Plenty of different crazy things in this day and age can offer you purpose, can offer you acceptance, can offer you love – and plenty of them can even do a pretty good job of being genuine about it, and can give you a relatively good return on your investment. But if C.S. Lewis is right and Christianity is of infinite importance, then only following Jesus can give you real, authentic hope.
Think I went off-track a little there… So anyway, hope seems to be this strange "thing" which forms a bridge between our present brokeness and future wholeness – we can realise that wholeness now, but only by faith through hope.
So perhaps it shouldn’t be wholeness that is a characteristic of the God revolution – but actually the pursuit of wholeness. We need to be striving for Christ, who is our hope of future glory, future wholeness.
Hopefully that made some sense – took me a couple of days to get round to finishing after my family arrived back from visiting relatives again and with packing and travelling back to Newport. Just arrived back this afternoon ready for a busy day tomorrow. :-)
Welcome to the blog of James Henley. I'm a young church leader / youth worker and student based in Newport, South Wales.
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