The economy is having a hard time rebooting itself. . .
Everyone is struggling more than ever. . .
Does the church have any responsibility to address these economic issues?
It’s one thing to promote better financial planning but what about when the church starts to hand out cold hard cash each week, right?

Check out this story where one pastor has decided to reverse the offering plate in order to bring more people into the sanctuary:

Now, while this church is relying on this tactic as a fundamental church marketing tactic, some other churches do one-time giveaways while trying to tie it into a Biblical message.

But what if the size of the church giveaway becomes outrageous? Does this make a difference?

QUESTION: WHAT MAKES GIVING AWAY FREE STUFF AT A WORSHIP SERVICE OK OR NOT?

Beyond the first secret weapon that should be employed while doing ministry, there are a couple of other important things to bring to your work IMHO. . .

The second one is a direct assault against the notion that church is plain boring, predictable and outdated.

Church does haven’t to be.  Nope, not at all if you care about it.

God is creator and creative.  So should you.

Our world has changed enough where the “normal” isn’t normal anymore.  You have freedom to change the rules in almost every corner of life these days.  You just have to decide to do it yourself.

And the only way to do it is to embrace creativity.

Are you thinking outside the box?  Are you taking what’s black and white and flipping it, turning it upside down?

I love how this video captures something that is a mundane as black and white line drawings and escalating it to something moving, beautiful, imaginative, and inspiring.

QUESTION: If you’re as reckless as you can be with your imagination, what’s the one area in your ministry that could use some creative injection? Take the risk and leave a comment below!

So many people view church as strict, boring, hard, perfectionist, etc.

Sometimes the best tactic for effective ministry is a smile and learning (yes, learning!) how to laugh.

Are you enjoying what you’re doing?  Are you enjoying the time you spend with others?

Church can be fun.

Church should be fun.

Church is fun — if you let it be.

One of my long time axioms is: Take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously!

QUESTION: When was the last time you have a serious bout of laughter in church or while doing a ministry activity with others?

[I don't know about you, but at about 1:00 min and 2:10 into the video are some really "different" approaches to laughing I've never heard of before!]

This past week, a large group of Christian entrepreneurs gathered again to discuss what Gospel Entrepreneurship looks like.

The Entrepreneurship Initiative, a part of Redeemer‘s Center for Faith and Work hosted the event up high above NYC at the new 7 World Trade Center.  It was the perfect site to engage in discussions about new creation, especially as we could see Ground Zero coming to life on one side of the building while the hustle and bustle of the city was alive and well on the other side.

The best part was hearing Tim Keller speak about “God’s Brand” .  . .

God’s brand is weakness and humility, and nothing can go up against it.

Dr. Keller has been a long time pillar for me in my own faith development and it is always good to be able to struggle with issues such as Gospel Entrepreneurship with Tim Keller in the same room.

I love the way in which Dr. Keller sees the identity of Redeemer must avoid the selfishness of secular culture but at the same time, the tribal nature of mainline denominational churches which can dominate any church’s DNA.

Check out this short video interview clip of Dr. Keller:

QUESTION: Are the stories and images your church projects trying to promote its own brand or God’s brand?

I changed my Twitter profile background graphic the other day again.

I have two dozen or so Christian themed Twitter backgrounds that I’m preparing to release via the Tweeteratti Tuesday Free Christian Background Series here on Godvertiser.com.

It got me thinking about how more Xtians are starting to witness their faith to the Twitterverse and beyond with the simple effort of putting up Christ’s name out there for everyone to see via Twitter backgrounds.

King of Kings.

The One & Only.

Peacemaker.

Prince of Peace.

There are so many names for Jesus Christ.

What is the proper way to introduce Him to the world?

Here’s one suggestion that I have fallen in love with since Leonard Sweet put me onto it a couple of years ago.  Hope you are inspired too by it (and the response of the crowd is equally inspiring) – turn up the volume, play the video full screen . . . sit back and enjoy, unless you want to stand up and cheer:

QUESTION: THUMBS UP or THUMBS DOWN?

It’s FRIDAY!

Yup, another week gone by.

Like most Friday’s, it is a time for a pause and break from the weekly grind, for sure.  Today, I am asking myself some questions which I bring up periodically:

• The year is almost 1/4 over, how have you grown so far?
• Where are you on your New Year’s Resolutions?
• What are you doing differently today than 1 year ago today?

Personally, if I’m not careful with how I live out my daily or weekly life, time flies by like a blur and all of a sudden I realize that I’m in a never ending pattern.  Although it can be a healthy one, most of the time, it can be realized as a rut.

Doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again…and with the sense of purpose lost in the air somewhere back there in the distant past.

So one of my most sacred praxis that I keep is a randomization ritual.  Each month I carve out some time on my calendar and purposefully mix it all up.  Do something different.

We all need some randomness in our lives.   Otherwise, there’s a method to our madness madness to our [repetitious] methods.

Here’s some ideas for what I personally have considered for my own randomization rituals:

• Go out to lunch at a restaurant alone and bring nothing else — No cell phones, no dedicated Twitter devices, no people, no books, no reports, no nothing. Nada. Nunca.  EXCEPT a pad and pen. I eat slowly and observe.  People watch.  Listen carefully to the environment.  And I jot down random observations, thoughts, axioms etc.  I try to avoid at all costs task lists, reminders, to-do’s, etc.  This is a time of reflection & brainstorming.  And oh yeah, don’t order anything you’ve ordered before on that menu.

• Go the library and walk into the non-fiction stacks and start perusing books in a category I have no experience with.  Perhaps it is knitting, aerospace, crock-pot cooking, music genres I don’t normally listen to.  You’ll be amazed how curious your mind becomes when you set it in front of volumes of books just waiting to be picked-up and discovered.  It is not about reading books cover to cover, but browsing, investigating, being inspired not about the technical aspects of the category — I’m not so concerned about remembering the 12 different knitting pattern techniques, but rather more about planting seeds in my head about the creative aspects of the genre.

• Call  and talk to 3 people you have not talked to in 6 months or more.  These conversations are casual, non-intensive, but more importantly, they jog your brain about subjects, themes, interests, and ideas that were alive in me in the past.  Some of those ideas should stay dead and buried of course! but more times than not, these talks ignite old ideas reincarnated to help you with your future.

• Write a thank you note.  Yup, this is so old school that some of you readers might get offended.  Just to be clear, I am in fact suggesting that you use a physical writing instrument and get a note card out (for some, that means you’ll have to physically go out and buy some at the stationery store, but you have to do it!) to share the blessings you’ve received from someone else’s actions, words, or presence.  The easy way out is to send it to someone you know closely.  Here, I challenge you to write a thank you note to those who are in your sphere of influence, but to people would never in a million years expect something in the mail from you.  If you want to go a step further, write to someone who doesn’t know you personally – like a public figure, a speaker you heard at a conference, or guest speaker at church.  How about the head of a company regarding a recent positive experience with one of their employees?  You would think that writing a thank you note to someone who is technically a stranger is the easiest of the categories, but it’s not.  Your brain actually works harder to think about who to write, what to write and how to say it.  In the end though, this is more for you than for the recipient.  Going through this process reverses so much of the hard-wired processes we use on a daily basis.  It will loosen up that sludge in your brain and get your creativity going.  I promise you.  Plus I have never heard of someone getting offended for receiving a thank you note.  Have you? WARNING: thank you emails, text messages or tweets don’t count!
  

As you can see, they don’t need to be time intensive or cost intensive at all.  But you can bet that the benefits will be intensive changes to your life as you continue to infuse randomization rituals into your weekly or monthly routines.

What other ideas do you have for randomization rituals? Please share some new ideas with me so I can try them out in my own life! Leave one or two ideas in the comments below.

So thanks to Rev. Canon Dr. Jon Ignatius Lumanog for tweeting me regarding my original blog post that Legal Sea Foods wasn’t the first to focus their national marketing on Lent and the meatless habits of Catholics in our country.

I should have known that good ol’ American institution — McDonald’s — has an even older fish story related to Lent.

In turns out that 23% of all Fish-O-Fillets sold annually are consumed during Lent season.  Actually, the Fish-O-Fillet was originally created specifically for the 87% of McDonald’s customers who were Catholic — and thus observing the obligatory tradition of giving up meat for Friday meals during Lent.

What is interesting to me is that this seems like a typical bottom-dollar motivated story.  But another read on it would be that when almost 90% of your audience consciously tries to avoid meat during meals during a month every year, coming up with a non-meat alternative on the menu could also be seen as serving your customers (no pun intended!).

The other thing is that McDonald’s doesn’t make a direct, explicit appeal to Catholics or the religious calendar with its Fish-O-Fillet.   This seems a bit softer than the “get the most out of Lent” message from Legal Sea Foods we saw previously.

On the other hand, McDonald’s does ramp up its marketing for the meatless menu item during the Lent Season:

Apparently Catholics aren’t the only ones that enjoy Fish sandwiches on the McDonald’s menu since it is the only menu item that can be eaten at McDonald’s by people of some other faiths.

Is this like offering vegetarian options on a restaurant menu so that everyone who comes can enjoy something when you go?

So what do you think about all this?  PLEASE share your own voice and leave a comment below.

As we continue through Lent season, Easter is around the corner.

So what types of consumer marketed products comes to mind in our commercialized secular culture with this Holy religious season?

Cadbury Easter Eggs?

Marshmellow Peeps?

Go on, keep thinking. . .

How about LOBSTERS?

I just got an email from a merchant with suggestions for a new spin on the whole Easter/Lent marketing thing:

• TRY PUSHING LOBSTERS FOR LENT!

I’ve never thought about or even recognized any other product categories that have pursued LENT-based marketing.  Have you?

Legal Sea Foods is a premium product, and they certainly aspire to excellence in their business.  Their company is not a slimy or take-the-shortcuts-in-business type enterprise IMHO.  So shady business practices (or marketing practices for that matter) isn’t something which I normally associate with this company in particular.  (I have no idea if the founders are Xtian or not).  But I have to hand it to them that this one is quite creative.

As Legal Sea Foods tries to position themselves as a prominent option for “meatless Friday dinner ideas” –  Are they doing a service? Or are they exploiting the religious calendar?

I guess the question is where exactly are the boundaries for merchants to engage with those trying to live out their faith.

If you are ready to condemn Legal Sea Foods, what about the explicitly Christian companies that push other types of promotional Lent/Easter related products — like the re-purposed rubber wristbands as Lent reminders that I recently received at church — are these companies equally guilty of exploiting this community too?

My one criticism that does come to mind is that if this is *not* a simple ploy to exploit the church calendar, it would have been better to see the click through landing pages (or even a section on their site) helping their customers to explore the topic of meatless dinner alternatives. . . How about some sea food recipes? Or customer stories of their own family traditions involving friday night fish fry’s for dinner, etc, etc.  Once they become an actual resource, and not just a salesman, the authenticity in their communications efforts can really shine through.

Please leave a comment below with your thoughts on this issue.  I’m very interested to see what you think!

Sometimes the ministries can become consumed with who comes in through the front door of the church.

Our churches build out extensive outreach campaigns, coordinate home visits for new comers, employ direct mail and other church marketing tactics.

But there’s another door that goes unguarded and it’s becoming a big problem.  In fact, it’s big enough that 52,000 people a week leave the church through the back door.  That’s a lot of people.  No wonder our pews, especially in the mainline denominational churches are becoming a little bit more spacious every Sunday.  This is exactly why the church is dying, some may say.

Once you’re paying attention to the mass exodus out the back door of the church by existing members and attenders, I’m sure it is easy to guess why.  But do your guesses match-up with reality?

Here are the top 3 reasons why thousands of frustrated people are leaving the church in droves.

1. They do not believe they are being told the “gospel truth” by their pastors
2. They do not believe the church provides true Christian fellowship and community; and
3. They do not believe their individual giftedness and spiritual purpose on earth, as part of a body, are recognized.

“In short, American Christians increasingly feel like strangers within the church that is supposed to be the body of Christ,” according to W. Hendricks, author of Exit Interviews

What is your church doing specifically to guard against #1, #2 or #3 above? Please share your thoughts with us and leave a comment right now.

I have no idea who is behind this product I came across on Amazon today, but IMHO, their product marketing guys need a little help.

Christian themed book, music and other products are big business these days. . .

Christian themed toys are a big business these days. . .

But for some reason, I just didn’t think I would ever encounter this action figure, at least not in this manifestation of it:

There’s two things that just struck me when I first saw this:

1. Why is there a “DELUXE” version of Jesus?  What is a plain old Jesus then?
2. How do you discount Jesus…by 7%?

What would kids do with Jesus Deluxe anyway? The fish and loaves of bread are a good idea, but without the “after” what good are they to tell stories or really portray Jesus’ works?

This is either blasphemy or a brilliant way of reaching out to kids in a very contextual manner.  But which one is it?

Please leave a comment below and say your $0.02.