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CoolChurch News - July 2003
www.coolchurches.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Welcome
2. Learning opportunities you DO NOT want to miss
3. FEATURE: Common Miscues in Church Marketing
4. Online Stuff You Might Want to Check Out: TheOoze.com
5. On the Nightstand: Three great books
Welcome
Welcome to the JULY 2003 edition of CoolChurch News. This month's e-magazine has a bit of a different look/feel to it than previous editions. The changes are designed to enable you to engage the articles more easily and make navigation easier. If you're e-mail does not support HTML, you may experience some difficulties in viewing, but the entire edition is also attached as a Word Document that should be easy to open, print, and even share.
We've nearly doubled our number of subscribers in the past year. To celebrate, we are also doubling the cost of CoolChurch News. It will now cost you $00.
Pass this great deal along to others who want innovation and excellence to be a part of their ministry. Anyone can subscribe by simply sending an e-mail message to subscribe@coolchurches.com (be sure to put "subscribe" in the subject line as well).
If you enjoy this edition, send comments to chad@coolchurches.com and forward the newsletter to your friends. Enjoy!!
God's Best,
Chad Hall
Team Leader, Innovative Church Team
Baptist State Convention of NC
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Learning Opportunities you DO NOT want to miss:
1. Wired 2 Grow, featuring Randy Frazee ~ September 11, 2003
The details are still being put together on this world-class experience, but go ahead and put the date on your calendar. Randy is the Pastor of Pantego Bible Church in Texas and the author of the best-selling book The Connecting Church. PBC is a leader in the home-church movement and has fully integrated the home-church aka, cell group or small group) into the life of the church. Their strategy is to build a church and to build lives around 30 Core Competencies that mark what it means to follow Jesus. You'll enjoy a day of learning and sharing with Randy at the fifth-annual Wired 2 Grow!
Location: Charlotte, NC.
Cost: $40 if registered by August 25; $50 after August 26; $15 for fulltime students.
Register: contact Linda Hudson at lhudson@bscnc.org
2. A Day of Dialogue with Aubrey Malphurs ~ October 10
A respected teacher and consultant in the field of church life and renewal, Aubrey Malphurs is the author of nearly a dozen books and serves on the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary. In addition to writing the book(s) on church planting, he brings fresh insights into what makes a church healthy and life-expanding. You won't want to miss this day of informal dialogue with one the country's leading thinkers.
Location: Hickory, NC (Hollifield Leadership Center @ Lake Hickory)
Cost: $99, which includes lunch, materials, breaks, and program fee.
Register: contact Sandy Lail at SLail@Hollifield.org.
3. NetResults presents NEW2003 National Evangelism Workshop ~ October 15-17
George Barna, Tom Bandy, and George Hunter are three of the more than fifteen world-class presenters at this three day conference. Designed for clergy and lay people from a variety of denominations. www.netresults.org/brochure_ec2003.htm
Location: Charlotte, NC (Adams Mark Hotel)
Cost: $125/person (Barna's one-day session is an additional $60)
Register: 806.762.8094 ext. 102 or netresults@netresults.org
4. Jim Collins at two upcoming events.
If you are interested in how effective organizations operate (great leadership, effective values, sense of purpose, etc.) then there is no better person to learn from than Jim Collins (www.jimcollins.com). The author of the hugely popular book Good to Great will be at two church-related conferences later this year.
Check him out at The Leadership Summit (August 7-9 @ various satellite locations throughout the US) and at The Leadership Network's Camp Improv (September 30 - October 2 in Dallas, TX).
5. Equipping Today's Church ~ September/October/November of 2003
These conferences offer Multi-Ministry Church Leadership Training for pastors, staff ministers and leaders throughout the church programs and ministries. Church leaders may choose from over 150 elective conferences and training opportunities.
ETC Conferences begin with dinner at 5:00 p.m. on Friday and end with lunch at noon on Saturday.
Locations: Friday-Saturday, September 5-6 - LifeWay Conf. Center. Ridgecrest, NC
Friday-Saturday, October 3-4 - Caswell Conference Center, Oak Island, NC
Saturday, November 1 - First Baptist Church, Washington, NC
Register: Contact lkreiter@bscnc.org for more details.
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FEATURE: Common Miscues in Church Marketing
- by Chad Hall
In the mid-1990s a tech company (to protect the guilty we won't be specific about which company) produced a wonderful new small consumer product. Their product had twice the features of the closest competitor's and because of their production capabilities this tech company could price it well under what the competitor charged. They did the math: low price plus great features would equal world domination! But they were wrong. The unintended message they sent was that something was wrong with the product. Potential customers asked, "Since it promises so much and costs so little, what's wrong with it?" The company spent the next two years trying to convince their customers that the product was excellent despite its low price.
That little story resembles a scenario that plays out in many congregations. Churches across America have an image problem, not a product problem. Through our marketing (intended and unintended), we often send out messages to our communities that keep people away from the gospel. That's the bad news.
The good news (at least when it comes to marketing) is that most of our blunders can be overcome with some simple awareness and behavior modification. Here are five common marketing miscues and how your church can avoid them.
Read the entire article online at
http://www.coolchurches.com/articles/madison.html
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Great Online Stuff You Might Want to Check Out
This month, take a look at one of the best websites for exploring the whole shift-in-culture-and-how-it-affects-church sites around. TheOoze.com has been around for a few years, and it is still cranking out some of the best articles of any site out there. Most articles pretty much avoid the dual devils of whining and prescribing that some other church/culture/ministry sites fall prey to.
Some recommended articles from TheOoze.com:
- Why Postmodern Baptists Shouldn't Drink (And Incidentally, Why They Should Continue to be Baptists)
- Course Correction: Correcting Some Things We Got Wrong in the Modern World
- McCross
- Generation X-Men
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On the Nightstand
-by Chad Hall
An Unstoppable Force, by Erwin Raphael McManus
This highly acclaimed 2001 book is written by the pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles and offers a sweeping vision of how the church can be all God intends her to be: a force to change the world.
Readers will be dazzled by McManus's breadth of resources in leading the reader to consider how the church can present an apostolic ethos that is grounded in the early church traditions while engaging our multi-sensory, multi-layered, and post/pre-Christian culture through music, the arts, and expressions of love and hope that are unique to each local community.
McManus offers no easy formula, but his vision and fist-hand experiences will cause you to consider how your congregation might be an unstoppable force in your community.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Leslie Newbigin
Much is said these days about the wrestling match churches are caught up in when it comes to postmodernity. If you are ready for an intelligent and passionate look at how Christianity has succumbed to (and can find release from) the modern western shackles, this book is for you.
Newbigin served for decades as a missionary to India - he brings the heart of a minister and the eyes of a cultural anthropologist to this investigative look at what is the Christian message in a society marked by religious pluralism, ethnicdiversity, and cultural relativism.
One of the best insights is Newbigin's description of how Christians have unconsciously allowed western enlightenment thinking (based on modernity and allegiance to science) to become the lens through which we understand, interpret, and judge Christianity rather than vice versa.
Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton
Years ago, I heard Kennon Callahan (Twelve Keys to an Effective Church) say that an effective church is one that understands the strengths of the congregation as a whole and goes with the strengths, rather than spending all their time shoring up weaknesses. He made some parallel to football, saying, "If you have a strong running game, run the ball."
What is true for congregations is also true for individuals. In this 2001 bestseller, readers get behind-the-scenes insights into one of the practices of all great managers: discover a person's strengths and then equip, empower, and free the person to develop those strengths in a way that benefits the organization. The book is based on research done by the Gallup Organization, including extensive interviews of over 80,000 top managers.
The book's advice: Capitalize on strengths and manage around weaknesses. A pastor will benefit from this book by using its insights to help him tap into the strengths of those around him.
CoolChurch News - July 03
Copyright 2003, Chad Hall
CoolChurch News is a ministry of the Innovative Church Team of the Baptist State Convention of NC. The missions and ministries of the Baptist State Convention of NC are made possible by gifts to Cooperative Giving and NC Missions Offering.
No part of this publication may be reprinted or distributed without the direct permission of Chad Hall (chadhall@charter.net)
For archives of CoolChurch News, visit the articles section of www.coolchurches.com.
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