August 11, 2010
Greetings from “Hot” lanta - and hot it is. Although it's hot, hot, hot outside, as usual, the meeting rooms are a bit brisk. So, in the middle of a southern heat wave, all these church folks are running around in jackets and sweatshirts.
We were treated to an inspiring worship service with the Rev. Susan Mitchell preaching. Rev. Mitchell is the co-pastor of the new church start in Atlanta. She was once a member of Trinity UCC in Chicago. Her message challenged us to not merely lean on God because in leaning, we still bear our own weight and have control but when we fall back on God, we let God bear our weight completely which takes a lot of trust!
Secret #3 was revealed to us - Compelling Communication. Rev. Ben Guess and Rev. Michael Piazza were our presenters for this secret.
Rev. Guess is the Minister and Team Leader for Publishing, Identity and Communications on the National UCC staff. He pointed out the many ways that media has changed. These changes have brought about many new opportunities for communication. Do you realize that just 45 years ago, most people were using rotary phones? That many homes were still connected to party lines? That privacy for phone conversations was achieved by stretching the very long cord on the kitchen phone that was securely anchored to the wall down the hallway and into a closet and under a blanket? Things have changed a great deal in a relatively short span of time. Although new varieties of communication have emerged, many of the old ones have remained in one form or another. What this means for the church is that we have many levels of communication and the various generations within the church will have a preference for at least one of them and often multiple forms. This means that we communicate with our members and prospective members best when we use multiple forms of communication - print, email, web site, facebook, twitter, etc.
Rev. Guess also shared a list of the variety of communication resources that are used by the national UCC.
Rev. Michael Piazza is on staff at the Center for Progressive Renewal. Prior to that he had served as the Sr. Pastor at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas. During his ministry there, the church grew from 280 to 3,500 members.
Rev. Piazza reminded us that people are looking for what the UCC has found: Grace forgiveness, mercy, reconciliation. community connections, friends, relationships, meaning, purpose, mission, calling, hope joy, God. He challenged us to consider that marketing is essentially evangelism and gave us seven keys of effective marketing: (1) Marketing begins at home, through a mobilized congregation, ready to get the word out and invite others in. It also means our facility is our biggest billboard and we should pay attention to what it says about us; (2) Consistent persistence if vital - it takes 5 direct mailings to show results. We should get our message to the congregation again and again and again and then get it to the community again and again and again; (3) Tell stories - Ingmar Bergman once said that facts go straight to the head. Stories go straight to the heart. Jesus told stories more than he preached. What stories are we telling about our faith and about our church? (4) One size fits some. Since we are all different, marketing and communication needs to be done in a variety of ways; (5) Use all your tools - all forms of communication available to us. We should not be catching up with technology - we should be anticipating new technologies and be ready for them as they come along; (6) Think multi-level. Go beyond using multiple forms of communication by asking those who receive communications from the church to share it with their friends. If they get an email about an event at church, forward it on to their friends that might be interested; (7) It's all about the experience. He gave an example of Starbucks. They set out to become America's front porch - the place where people go to sit with friends and drink coffee together. We are challenged to discover what experience we are offering to people and tell the world about it.
In a workshop exploring web design and social media, presenters David McCullough and Cameron Trimble gave us many good tips and resources that can help design websites to be effective forms of communication. We were also introduced to many forms of social media to help us get the word out and manage data bases. Facebook is just a drop in this technology bucket!
The Rev. Susan Mitchell and Mr. Coy James revealed the fourth secret to us: Ad-ministry-ation. Both presenters emphasized that vital church administration is that which empowers all members to be involved in the work of the church.
In a final workshop for the day, Sandy Lueschen invited us to open doors to generosity in our congregations. One of her intriguing comments was “people give, not to meet budgets, but to change lives.” When a church can show that lives are being changed, people's giving responds.
Tomorrow we'll receive secrets # 5 & 6 and more workshops to delve into those secrets a bit. Our final day (Friday) will be dedicated to secret #7 which has already been revealed to us as vital worship. The event will conclude with a closing worship and commissioning. With all the wealth of information that has already been presented to us, it's hard to realize that we're just a little over halfway through the event.
On the lighter side - We are now on facebook! Go to www.facebook.com and search for Congregational United Church of Christ Neenah/Menasha. You'll find us as a group and you can join the group. Then, invite your friends to join as well. It's a great way to get the word out about us.
I've had a couple of responses to yesterday's challenge about the reasons why I was so excited about the new UCC t-shirt and sweatshirts that make reference to 1957. Each of the respondents have got one reason but not both. Anyone who can come up with both reasons will be eligible for a bag of M&M's and (now I'm going to raise the prize a bit) a new Still Speaking baseball style t-shirt with a big red “57” on the back. The winner will be announced on Sunday!