Marketing and Management Thoughts

Only 50% of people surveyed believe that Americans are implicitly christian as it has long been believed (Just as the trend is for someone born in India to be Hindu). This was slightly surprising since  75.2% (51.3% Protestant, and 23.9% Catholic – CIA:FB) of Americans are self proclaimed Christians.

This means that there is a cynical attitude forming in the hearts of American Christendom towards those around us. To further prove this point, the Barna Group reported on the people responsible for the lower demographic as:

Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64%) and three out of every five Hispanics (60%) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America’s default faith… People who said they are politically conservative, however, saw things differently than did the rest of the country: a slight majority of conservatives claimed that Christianity remains the natural choice of most Americans.

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Welcome to a new series that will be rolled out over the next few weeks where we’ll highlight the community building power of technology.

Everyone hopes that the ministry they lead will have an effect on influencing the lives of those they are ministering to. It is at this point that the church holds up the importance of community to bring about these changes. More and more we are learning empirically that intimate friends improve ones health and well being. This then becomes our goal; building communities of intimate friends. (more…)

Mecklenburg Community Church (website) was founded by a single family in their house and eight years later they had 5,000 members attending, 80% of whom weren’t attending a church. Their senior pastor offers some insights as to how they went about focusing on building a church of people from outside the church.

He believes there are 4 myths that churches buy into when trying to reach out and presents his reasons why they moved away from them. Also lists four ways they are drawing the unchurched in, like “Let them ask questions.”

Check out the very interesting reading. Gateway Country

It was surprising to me how relevant the article still is over seven years later. What are your thoughts?

Hat Nod to ChurchMarketingSucks.com (link).

Same old goals get the same old excitement.

Ever notice how excited people get about anything new. They talk about it and want to be a part of it if they can. Most often for us this happens vicariously because these new things are distant to us personally. These new things generally consist of new TV programming, relationships in our peers, or a new gadget that comes out.

There are websites, magazines, and multi-million dollar industries revolving around each of these because they feed off our human excitement about something new.

So what happens when we aren’t new anymore?

One probably many non-profit organizations face on a regular basis is going stale. The freshness that exists around new things fades when organizations get older. It is this reason NGOs try to make the most of their first year or two.

We can’t be new and young all the time, and there are benefits to being established (especially for fundraising). So how do we go about keeping this excitement?

This isn’t going to be rocket science.

Think about the organizations that you’ve been a part of and ask this question, when were you most excited about that membership?

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