Halloween is over.

Thanksgiving — the largest, most visible, forgotten holiday is right around the corner.

That means, the commercialized CHRISTmas is basically here.

We’ve heard of reports that the Christmas retail season has already begun as a general secular movement as early as August now.  We’re devoting almost 1/2 hour entire calendar year around this civil holiday at the end of the year.

It is hard to find any other parallels like a date of December 25th having such an impact as far away as July or August 25th.  Not even birthdays in such a ME-centric culture are thought of this way.

Today, I received an email promoting a Free Amazon MP3 Album Download of The Veggie Tales Christmas Album for Kids:

In one sense, this is spot-on theologically: Giving away a free gift in order to celebrate another absolutely and completely free gift.

But one another sense, it is kind of a twisted manifestation when the religious circles are buying into what is being done with the timing and celebration of the civil religion around Christmas.

Is there a difference between marketing of *a* church and marketing *using* the church?

I think there is a difference, but I’m interested in what your thoughts may be on this question of the commercialization of Christmas.

My hope is that you refrain from sweeping rants as you leave a comment below. Your thoughts?

Dr. Timothy Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC has something to say about Justice and the Church.

Curious, that type of justice being prescribed is a “generous” one.  In a nut shell, it is in the character of God and we are called to live it out, just as Micah 6:8 tells us plainly.

While his first NY Times Best Seller, The Reason for God, was aimed at non-believers generally, this book directs the challenge toward a readership within the church community.

Here’s the first chapter to whet your appetite on Dr. Keller’s latest teaching on the subject: Read the rest of this entry »

Urbanization is a trend that isn’t going away anytime soon and the Church needs to take notice.

That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of some discussions being held at the super-event, Lausanne Movement gathering in South Africa this month.

At the conference, Dr. Tim Keller drew upon Genesis 1 and how we are made in the image of God to illustrate why the Church needs to focus upon the cities of the world:

“In these cities you have more image of God per square inch than anywhere else in the world…So God makes the numbers argument.”

Dr. Keller’s position on Urban Mission & Contextualization is quite sophisticated, given that it is a vision that has been 20 years in the making at Redeemer as well as through Redeemer City to City‘s church planting center.  Keller of course has all the while been working to mobilize a movement within NYC right in his own backyard.

Here’s Dr. Keller’s most recent 18-minute talk on the topic:

p.s. Tim Keller’s latest book is being released Nov 2nd. Grab your copy of Generous Justice.

QUESTION: Given this perspective on the mandate for urban mission, how can suburban & rural churches + laity contribute to this cause from where they stand?

Driving up to our house, our kids yelled out “OOOOOHLALA!”. . .

. . .that’s because they spotted the box left at the door by our friendly neighborhood UPS guy and it had that distinctive packing tape with repeating “RueLaLa.com RueLaLa.com RueLaLa.com. . .” covering the seams. 

Opening up a RueLaLa.com package is always fun.  [That's because the Ruelala is an invitation only website that gives members access to private sales and huge discounts on fabulous stuff.  YOUR invitation is right here.  Just click through and sign-up]

Alongside the merchandise that we purchased at a steal — always — is a large pink-maroon-some-color-that-has-a-funky-name colored envelope.  And one can’t help but notice three things about it when you go ahead and look inside.

Thing things you can’t help but notice struck me as 3 lessons the Church could learn from the RueLaLa.com experience.

Take a quick look at this video below as I share the three lessons every ministry can’t be reminded of enough! Read the rest of this entry »

These days, you can’t get away from writing.  As technology proliferates, most people are finding themselves more and more engaged in generating and sharing ideas.

This of course necessitates good articulation through writing – whether through white papers, blogs, or even super short tweets and facebook status updates.

So it is increasingly becoming important that we understand how to communicate properly when we put our words to paper (or keyboard!).  The question then becomes:

Is your pen mightier than the sword?

Part of good writing is knowing the rules.  Many professional writers and academics look to The Elements of Style as the measuring stick for proper writing technique.  This summary of the rules used to be featured on an individual’s website, but it has since vanished — yet tons of people, university professors, and more are still trying to reference this summary of The Elements of Style.  While the original book stands at only 56 pages, this summary of Stunk & White’s rules is handy-dandy and it gets the gist of it across just fine.

Here they are: Read the rest of this entry »

On the last day of September, ministry leaders and church planters gathered together in New York City to discuss and encourage each other about what’s happening in The City…

If you pause the visit the Movement Day website, you’ll find some tangible reasons why they they came together.

• The 40 largest US metro regions are home to 170 million people — this is more than 50% of the total 2000 census population. And New York City is a unique home alone by itself — the 21.5 million people in the NYC metro area represent 1 out of every 300 people on the planet!

• In our large cities we face daunting spiritual and social challenges. These include vast unreached populations, profound poverty, and an emerging youth population struggling to surpass the 50% graduation rate.

• The critical belief is that it takes a movement of God’s Spirit and God’s People to transform a city. It takes collaborative leadership to initiate a Gospel Movement.

Dr. Timothy Keller of Redeemer Church gave one of the keynote talks.  He titled it, “It Takes A Movement To Change A City.”  It is a great talk, much of it is at the heart of Redeemer City to City‘s approach to church planting.

Listen to Keller detail his vision for a urban leadership and urban movements: Read the rest of this entry »

I recently cobbled together a post about getting people come BACK to church a second time.

But of course you have to get them there the first time in order to invite them back, right?

Pastor Michael Lukaszewski of Oak Leaf Church has been on my radar recently for some of the ideas he’s been sharing in the blogsphere with such straight-forward clarity.   This and some of his other ideas have been inspiring me to cut straight to point and share more “meat and bones” when it comes to church marketing vision, strategy and tactics here on Godvertiser.com. . .

One of his recent posts listed 40 unique ways to invite someone to church.  Yup, we always talk about getting our people to invite others to church, but it sounds easier than said and done.  People get paralyzed because they feel like they don’t have the right opportunities to invite someone.  There are tons of ways to create the right environment to simply ask.

First, here are some of the interesting ideas for inviting someone to church that immediately stood out from Pastor Lukaszewki’s original list: Read the rest of this entry »

Most churches believe they have open doors that just scream “welcome!” and may actually see some success in getting 1st time visitors.

But then, over time, not many people actually return for another visit.  Where did they go?

Ministry leaders are often left wondering why people don’t come back to their worship services another time.   Rationalization often leads to assumptions that since a church gets visitors, they must have succeeded in creating a friendly, inviting environment for new comers.  And this sometimes leads to lack of ownership of this important detail of converting first time visitors into repeat visitors.

Of course, it is easy to think those first timers just got busy the next weekend.  Or they assume most visitors aren’t serious about faith, so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t check out a church two weeks in a row.  Or a host of other excuses ministries can come up with on behalf of the absent returnee.

Truth be told, 1st time visitors don’t come back for a real tangible reason — their decision is now based on the reality they just experienced in person.

The hard part isn’t getting someone to come your church when they don’t know much about it.  It is only after they’ve experienced your church community in person — when all your ministry efforts are really felt — for them to consider retuning a second time.

Rick Ezell, pastor of a church in SC, believes there are actually 5 critical reasons why 2nd time visitors are a myth in many churches.  He says:

• Visitors make up their minds regarding your church in the first 10 minutes.
• Most church members are not friendly.
• Church guests are highly consumer-oriented.
• The church is in the hospitality business but don’t realize it.
• You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

So then, what can churches do in order to get more 1st time visitors to turn into 2nd time visitors?

Here are 12 practical tips for getting the ball rolling with your ministry to start thinking about this in a serious way: Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, we announced a free giveaway sponsored by the nice guys over at Logo Bible Software company here on Godvertiser.com.

Although you were probably wishing for free software, it was actually for some free soft wear. hehe.

So we had a bunch of entries and finally picked three random winners from the comment entrants — Drum Roll Please . . .

The winners are:

• Scott Adamson

• JoshInThe818

• Ryan Strother

Woohoo!  You guys will be strutting your stuff shortly as you proudly display your Logos Bible SoftWEAR!

So what’s next?  Come back next week to Godvertiser.com when we’ll announce a really cool freebie giveway we already have planned for you. 

HINT: The free contest prize involves something as small as a pack of gum, but carries 66 books inside, and you can *listen* to it on the go (yup, that would mean it is battery-powered!)

Today, we hear from guest blogger Pastor Ryan of Central Baptist Church in Ohio. He chimes in on how we all have a choice in building assets or liabilities for the Church.

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Last week, I saw on the local news and then read about a church around Columbus, OH, who is involved in an ongoing battle of protesting with a strip club.  The short version: this church has been protesting outside the strip club for several years now, even to the extent of photographing club goers and their license plates and posting online.  Now, the dancers from that club are protesting outside of the church on Sunday mornings.  It appears that both parties are stubborn and are not going to stop anytime soon.

Recently, the big news was about the church in Florida who was going to burn a Quran on 9/11 in protest of Islam.  This absurd situation is drawing negative attention even from military leaders and our Secretary of State.

I look at these situations involving two local churches and I can’t help but wonder what their real motivation is in acting this way.  Because they certainly aren’t acting like the church as Jesus intended. Read the rest of this entry »