CreativeJournal.net

My friend Joe leads a young church plant in Brooklyn. His blog post today let him get a few things off his chest. Such as admitting that he doesn’t know how to grill meat… and he’s from Texas. This post is almost as transparent as Joe is in real life. His blog, Brooklyn & Beyond, is always an inspiration to me. Go check it out.

LINK

If you’re using Internet Explorer v 6.0 on a PC, please upgrade to 7.0 (click here), or better yet, go to mozilla.com and download Firefox 2.0 to use as your primary web browser.

Users using IE 6 on a PC will see a light blue box as the header instead of the graphic. I would imagine lots of websites and blogs might look a little better after you upgrade. Thanks.

I decided to respond to Rudolf’s comment (below) with a post, since I want to make sure I’m not being misunderstood.

I don’t know if i read it correctly but did you say that you don’t think there is a church for everyone?!!!!!!!!

WHAT”S UP WITH THAT!

sorry i just don’t understand where you are comming from.
Is that not what we as God’s church are stiving for…UNITY.

I want to preface my response by saying that I don’t desire for this blog to be a place to argue or debate theological and/or philosophical questions. There’s LOTS of other blogs out there that love this kind of thing.

Yes Rudolf, you read it correctly. I did say that I don’t think there is a church for everyone. Now, what I meant by that may be different than what you think I meant. While I don’t think any church, or denomination or religion has “it” all right – that’s not even the direction I was going. I was simply saying that each church, each family, takes on a unique personality and purpose. This can take shape via the pastor, the members, the neighborhood, or any number of factors. The personality will usually drive the purpose. Some churches focus on overseas missions. Some focus on local outreach. Some sing traditional hymns a cappella. Some play rock n roll. Some don’t sing at all. You should find the style and personality church that works for you. Find a church that challenges you. That excites you. That makes you want to get involved with what they’re doing.

I think the church that sings a cappella and the church with the bass guitar and amps are still serving the same purpose and same God, while using their unique situation to form a unique culture.

All that to reinforce my belief that the marketing efforts each church may make should accurately and honestly portray the culture, the personality and purpose of that church. Visitors should have some idea of the unique experience that church has to offer.

I hope I answered your question and clarified my true intent in that statement.

Felt inspired this afternoon to change up the look of my blog. For the most part I’m loving it, though I still have a few small tweaks to make over the next day or so.

I never redesigned the basic template I’m using, and so it never really felt like my own. Now it does.

Whatcha think?

First, thanks so much for the comments on my previous post. It’s great to read your thoughts.

I think in the name of fairness, I should point out that – for the most part – I don’t personally believe (nor wish to believe) that churches go around maliciously stealing sermons, designs, ideas as a regular business practice. However, I do know that there are exceptions, but mostly it comes down to a lack of education. Churches aren’t saavy to the world of marketing and advertising. They’ve never had to be. They don’t really know what graphic design is, or why they would need such a thing. On top of that, they don’t value design & marketing, and something without value is without a price tag. So they don’t realize that using another churche’s design is plagiarism and, in essence, stealing.

I’ve never heard of a graduate with a preaching degree who minored in Marketing. I don’t think “Church Marketing 101” is something that Christian universities and Seminaries teach their students. Marketing certainly isn’t a tool preaching programs make sure their grads are armed with. It’s because marketing is a dirty word in churches. It’s the “M” word.

The reason is that churches, along with a great percentage of the public, feel that advertising and marketing is the same thing as lying. It’s tricking people into buying into something they don’t need. While I cannot deny that this exists in the corporate world of buying and selling, this is not the type of marketing and advertising I am advocating for churches.

I don’t think there is a church for everyone. I don’t think there should be. Each church has it’s own personality and it’s own style. If it’s not the style for you, than you should move on and find a church that you want to be involved with. If each church has it’s own style, than each church should do a little research, find out what kind of person finds them appealing and target those people. Casting a narrower net, if you will.

How? The big M.

By truthfully advertising who you are and the experience a visitor can expect, and getting your unique message to the right people, is marketing. If you over-promise and disappoint a visitor than you failed. Once the marketing has gotten the people in the door, it is the solid branding of your church that will keep the experience alive and make it easier for your members to become involved and stay involved in supporting your message and your mission.

Churches that understand this principle, understand that they usually don’t possess the resources in-house to create and execute a successful advertising and marketing campaign – if they were so inclined to attempt one. Luckily there are tons of freelance designers, photographers, marketing and design companies, and small ad agencies that actually know how to do this sort of thing – and are usually willing to work within a church’s small budget (even pro bono if you catch them in the right mood…). These people are professionals. They have training and expertise. I feel that churches should rely more on lay people, in every aspect of running a church, but especially in dynamic marketing. In essence, when it comes to marketing and advertising for your church,  you get what you pay for.

Churches shouldn’t be afraid of being cutting edge. They should be afraid of becoming irrelevant and unnoticed.

Plagiarism was a really big deal in grammar school and high school. Parents, teachers and librarians joined forces to convey the serious consequences if caught plagiarizing a book report, essay or term paper. Nothing short of the cops showing up in school and hauling you away in front of your classmates. I know I was scared into submission.

Within the last 13 months, I’ve had two designs of mine plagiarized. The absolute worst part is, they were plagiarized by churches. I’m fairly certain that it would bother me under any circumstance, but being victimized by a church seems to make it a little worse.

Just to be clear, I’m not referring to the stealing of ideas or concepts or tidbits here and there… we all do that. In every profession. I’m talking true blue plagiarism. I’d love to link you to their websites and call them out by name, but I’ve decided not to. But I will discreetly share the stories.

The first instance was a church on the other side of the country using a website design I made for my own church, here in NYC. It was the same layout, same underlying code that I hand wrote – they just changed the color palette and swapped some photos out. A member of that church whom I do not know told a mutual friend of ours that he and others just assumed I had done the design work for their church. This would be a compliment had the design been better than my original, but it wasn’t… by a long a shot. We put up a little fuss and they apologized and promised to change their website. They did, but it took them 9 months to produce an original website for themselves.

The second, and more recent, was a collaborative design for an upcoming 6-week-long sermon series between the minister, myself and a photographer. This church is one of my best and favorite patrons. It is an original concept, original photography and original layout/design. The minister promoted the series on his blog and within days it had been copied and proudly promoted on another minister’s blog. This minister actually had the gall to freely (and quite proudly) admit how he stole the idea and even linked to the original.

[Update: It was just brought to my attention that this same design has been ripped off again! This time they at least tried to be a little original, yet still bastardized (jargon) the integrity of the original design.]

And these are only the two instances that we found.

Preacher Mike Cope wrote a great blog, back in January, on pastors plagiarizing sermons from other pastors (found here). I think that theft of ideas happens every day in the corporate world. I’m just a little shocked at how prevalent it seems to be in church community.

I’d love to hear feedback in the comments section from readers who hold positions in ministry. What’s the deal?

Ok, so I’m going to temporarily ignore the heartache caused by the lack of comments on the previous post and move on in my life. Thank you to those who felt enough pity on me to leave a short comment.

I went to get my car inspected this afternoon. Unlike other states, New York doesn’t conduct vehicle inspections at the state-run DMV, rather they only license independent service stations to perform inspections. As I came back outside from the waiting room to claim my vehicle, I was initially shocked as I saw the new flash of red in the corner of my windshield.

“Crap. I failed.”

As I got into the driver seat, and picked up the waiting inspection report, I was cheerfully greeted with PASS typed in Times New Roman Bold, in three different locations, in three different point sizes – the largest having to be close to 36pt. Staring blankly at the page, sure that I was misreading the simple message of the report, my eyes slowly scanned the red sticker in my windshield. It wasn’t a FAIL sticker. It was a PASS.

New York State, in all their infinite wisdom, decided the 2007 inspection stickers would be red.

I’m not sure about the rest of the country, but in New Jersey, our neighbor to the south, when you fail inspection you get a big red sticker that says I FAILED MY INSPECTION. LOOK AT ME. Okay, maybe it just says INSPECTION FAILED. As embarassing as the red failed sticker may be, you can’t really fault it for being red. A passing sticker in NJ would be yellow, or green, or purple, or blue. Never red. Having never failed inspection as a NY resident, I don’t know how they handle it, visually.

What the bureaucrats in Albany fail to understand is that colors – most especially the color RED – actually have significant visual meaning to most, if not all, people. It’s not just some artsy fartsy colorful fantasy. It’s actually scientific. Color speaks a very important and accurately defined language all its own. It affects our brains on a subconscious level. I guarantee that if you saw a large octoganal sign painted red with the word GO at an intersection, you’d slow down drastically, if not stop altogether.

A stop sign in Mexico is going to be red. As it is in the UAE, China and New York State. Red means STOP. Red means NO. Red means DANGER. Red means CAUTION.

When it comes to vehicle and transportation signage, the color red’s visual language is not screaming the positive “look at me, I passed my vehicle inspection test”message. I think I may actually call the head DMV office in Albany tomorrow to inquire about this, if not complain a little. It’s my right. I vote.

I think I can count on two hands my usual visitors to this blog. As I look at my daily hits and unique visitor statistics, I know that a lot more people find this blog on a daily basis, and I feel that it’s about time we met.

So, whether or not I know you personally, please leave a short comment letting me know who you are (first names are fine), and something interesting about yourself. Even if this is your first visit, leave a comment. Even if you found my blog on accident, leave a comment. Even if you NEVER leave comments on blogs you read, leave one here.

I mostly really curious as to who you are and why you come here.

As I creep up on my 3rd anniversary as a blogger, I have intentionally avoided a blog like this because, well… honestly, fear of rejection. It’s tough to put yourself out there like this and then get no comments back… or even worse, one or two. So, let my self-esteem experiment commence!

I found this morning that listening to the iPod really makes cleaning the freshly fallen snow off my driveway a much more pleasant task – as it does my long work commute and traveling long distances with a toddler. The time certainly was right for us to invest in one.

And since I’m so behind on really discovering all that iTunes has to offer, I only recently discovered that one of my favorite bands, BNL, has been putting out their own free podcast for about a year now. It’s more or less behind-the-scenes stuff. The band members discussing song/album titles, telling funny stories from past tours, debuting snippets of new and experimental songs, and more general good-natured nonesense. I downloaded all the past episodes and started listening today. Very entertaining stuff – not really surprised since they’re such an entertaining band both live and on their albums.

24-hour stomach bugs are the worst. At least I hope it’s only 24 hours! Abbie started it, then Erin got it, and now I’ve had it since last night. Hopefully Kate remains impervious to the bug.