evangelism

Movements have a cause. Their message behaves very much like a virus. I was intrigued about the guidelines released by Governments for containing the H1N1 virus, the virus also know as ‘Swine Flu’. These same principles that will stop viruses form spreading are the principles that will cause a movement to die out.

Viruses are stopped firstly by there being a mechanism in place to ‘catch’ or ‘contain’ the delivery of the message. If you want to quench the power of a movement, start to dictate how, when and in what way the viral message is to be delivered. Start to issue guidelines on what is appropriate and what is not, on who should be involved, and what the right ‘qualifications’ for the task at hand are.

Secondly you ‘bin’ it. You try and keep control over your message – keep it ‘contained’ in a secure and safe place.

Thirdly you ‘kill’ it by using a chemical agent that works anti-virally. When a counter-message is evoked, an anti-message, if you will, is spread, that has the power to totally undermine your movement and leave it dead on the water.

In many circles, churches have almost killed-off the raw power of the message of Christianity by doing just that. The ‘virus’ is ‘caught’ by insisting on qualifications for the job. Thus a whole clerical hierarchy has evolved and it ensures that only appropriate channels are used to deliver the message. Secondly, special ‘bins’ called ‘churches’ and ‘cathedrals’ are the only places authorised to house this message. Thirdly, an anti-virus is applied – a positive message (virus) of hope, love, and peace has been replaced by one of end-of-the-age-doom, of judgement and of performance against standards of behaviour.

This tragedy has seen the people of God transition from being the light of the world, to a community that shies-away from the world in order to avoid being contaminated with impurity.

God is now raising an end-time army of surrendered ones who have totally been infected with the virus of LOVE, and who are actively engaging with society in order to get as many infected with the same virus as possible.

Currently listening to a really interesting Podcast from the Stanford Centre for Social Innovation.  It is a talk given by Chip Heath, a member of Stanford’s business faculty and one of the co-authors of a book entitled “Made to Stick:  Why some ideas survive and others die…”

In this podcast, Chip Heath draws on the psychology behind Urban Legends to examine why some ideas become memorable. Urban legends are a really useful prototype for this research because by nature Urban legends tend to be very persistent and durable and they also tend to cross boundaries easily.  This is manna from Heaven for any serious marketer or influencer.  Within the Church, we have to be honest enough with ourselves about the fact that given the degree of “information noise” that people in our societies are bombarded with, we do want to influence people, we do want our message to be credible and memorable, and we do want our message to cut through the “noise” and “stick”.

There are six basic attributes that will allow an urban legend, or your idea, to “stick” and be a SUCCESS.  They must be:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

For more on this, listen to the podcast and check out the book!

A couple of the things really stuck (pun intended) with me from the talk.  One of them was that he described how Saddleback Church were really concrete about who their target person was that they were trying to reach.  Saddleback Sam, and Saddleback Samantha were two fictional characters that represent the profile of the typical person that they as a church want to reach.

Because they have this “person” identified and profiled in such a concrete way, decisions happen automatically in order to further their organization’s mission to reach such a person.  Does my organization have a “Saddleback Sam” identified?:

“Saddleback Sam” is a well educated young urban professional. He is self-satisfied, and comfortable with his life. He likes his job and where he lives. He is affluent, recreation conscious, and prefers the casual and informal over the formal. He is interested in health and fitness, and he thinks he is enjoying life more than 5 years ago, but he is overextended in time and money, and is stressed out. He has some religious background from childhood, but he hasn’t been to church for 15 or 20 years, and he is sceptical of “organized religion.” He doesn’t want to be recognized when he comes to church. (Hunter, 1992, 155)

The other issue was that sticky messages have to be emotional.  The most successful anti-litter campaign in Texas occurred when they identified that male truck drivers were the ones causing the most litter.  Rather than raising fines, or having to police more, the organizers of this very successful anti-litter campaign capitalized on the Texan male’s sense of Texan patriotism by launching the “Don’t mess with Texas!” campaign.  By playing on their hearers sense of identity they managed to secure a much better outcome than by playing on people’s fear of retribution or punishment.  He makes the statement that identity is far more powerful than consequences and that it is far better to appeal to the hearers’ sense of identity and who they want to be than to threaten them with consequences.  WOW – what a message for us as a church.  Let the doomsday prophets take note!!!

In this video, renowned marketing expert Seth Godin delivers a speech at Google where he shared his insights on marketing, excellence and building a remarkable organization. Although the video is fun to watch, and very insightful, it is in the applications that I see to church planting that the gems are there for the taking.

He touches on the following points, each of which are main points on each of his books:

• Permission marketing – In western cultures, in order to approach people with a message, you really have to ensure that they have given you permission to approach them. In other words, speak to those who want to hear you, have shown an interest, and are open to the message.
  • All too often marketers will blanket bomb the town with a message that nobody wants to hear. This is “spam” type of “evangelism” and it risks proposing a solution without the person having an underlying relationship of trust with you – a recipe for rejection.
• Have a product or an idea worth talking about. The concept, idea, service or product must really sell itself.
• Purple cows – All cows look the same (read boring) – but a purple cow is remarkable. It makes you stop, take notice, call friends, and make a remark. Always seek to build a purple cow.
• Ideas are like viruses – evangelists are like sneezers who sneeze on people who give them permission to get infected, who in turn become carriers and then sneeze on others.
  • Infecting a small group of people who want to be infected – they then infect others and you have effective growth.

What type of organizations are we building? Purple cows are organizations that are remarkable because they stand out from the crowd – the marketing funnel (Getting people from the target audience and feeding them through your organization) has been turned on its side to become a megaphone that preaches your distinctives from the rooftops.

Photo by Speedy2

Had a planning session with a few other pastors today for an event that a Gibraltar student wants to organize next summer. This girl got saved in her university and she is definitely going for it!

She is organizing a fully-fledged evangelistic campaign for next summer, intending to bring over a bus load of students from the United Kingdom. It is going to be awesome! On the cards are a service at the beach (!), together with a BBQ, a DVD night, outreaches at the local bars, concerts and lots more.

C’mon Jesus!

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There is so much right about my friend Mark’s post (“Seeing Jesus” on MadeToPraiseHim) that I feel like just linking to his post. He shares about a conversation he recently had with a reiki healer about Christianity, and healing and the supernatural, and you can see the grace with which this individual was treated.  Salt of the earth, baby.

Dear Christian, just do humanity a favour and just go there and read. ‘nuf said. (Link)

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