A World Of One Hundred People

If we could shrink the Earth's almost six billion population to a village of one hundred people, the resulting profile would look like this:

Fifty-seven Asians, twenty-one Europeans, fourteen North and South Americans, and eight Africans.

Seventy would be nonwhite.

Seventy would be non-Christian.

Fifty percent of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of six people.

All six people would be citizens of the United States.

Seventy would be unable to read.

Fifty would suffer from malnutrition.

Eighty would live in substandard housing.

Only one would have a college education.


We Americans focus way too much on our "right" to be a Christian nation (although in my book, that's a silly term and cause) and forget our responsibility to the rest of the world to distribute wealth, goods and services equally.

Cinematic by Cool Hand Luke

The other night I had a dream
It unfolded to the silver screen
A tragic fire, some tears were shed
I woke to find our hero dead
And wondered, "What if this was me?"

If my life was cinematic
With a soundtrack so dramatic
You'd be the hero and You would save me
And it would have the sweetest ending

I want to live in such a way
That when I'm gone my friends would say
That if my life was turned to Him
I'd be standing on a mountain shouting victory in the end
But in my heart I know it's only true
If I'm supporting actor and the Oscar goes to You

If my life was cinematic
With a soundtrack so dramatic
You'd be the hero and You would save me
And it would have the sweetest ending

I don't want to let You down
I want to make You proud
If anyone is watching me
I want to make it count for something

What if it ended here?
What if the credits rolled now?
What would the critics say?
Would it be the biggest let down?

If my life was cinematic
With a soundtrack so dramatic
You'd be the hero and You would save me
And it would have the sweetest ending

I want to make You proud

No matter how carefully I try to put the puzzle of my past and present together, I am always cut by the sharp edges.

The Power Of...None?

I used to think one person could make a difference. I remember seeing the movie "The Power of One" several times in the theater when I was in college. The great thing about college (if you had a little bit of spending money) is that if you like a movie, you can always find someone - a roommate, the guy down the hall, the girl you've been wanting to ask out - who hasn't seen it. That's how I saw Groundhog Day eleven times in the theater, I swear on my auntie's undies.

Anyways, there is a scene in The Power Of One where the grown up "P.K." comes to an amazingly beautiful waterfall and reflects for awhile. Afterwards, we see him back at school, talking to the headmaster (played by the incredibly talented late Sir John Gielgud), asking him if they could start a Saturday school for the townships of South Africa. The headmaster says "There would only be 12 or so of them teaching. What kind of difference would that make?" P.K. then says "A waterfall begins with only one drop of water, sir. Look what comes from that."

I remember my early ministry years - bright-eyed, filled with aspirations and dreams of making a difference in the lives of teenagers. Those were fun years - all-nighters, sumer trips, broomball, watching kids make spiritual commitments, all that jazz.

I look at those same eyes in the mirror today. The sun has bleached the area around my gas permeable contact lenses (the lenses are smaller than most contacts) into a hazel-green hue; the area covered by the contacts are still the original brown. But in those eyes I see defeat. I see bitterness. I see dreams unfulfilled, expectations unmet. I see disapproval by angry parents, I see harsh words by cruel church-goers, I see someone who has been beaten down by many things church-related..

My first real recollection of a sense of awareness that something is wrong with the church is when I was a youth pastor in Dallas, TX. I had just moved my wife and I from my hometown, where I had been a youth minister at my home church for six and a half years. We had some disagreements with a new staff member who was given far more power than he should have received and thus was making it difficult on other staff members.

At the new church in Dallas, the youth pastor was scheduled to do the invocation at least once a month. The first Sunday I was scheduled, I prayed from my heart, out of my excitement at being somewhere new, somewhere fresh, somewhere different. That week, I got an e-mail from someone in the church who had counted the number of times I said "Lord" (I think 8 times) and the word "just" (I think 10 times) in my prayer and wondered if I would be a better "invocator" if I prepared what I was going to say in advance.

I had some dabbling with an uneasiness at church before: I remember singing strange songs at church camp, trying to match the exuberance and fervor on my fellow campers' faces and failing miserably. Every year at camp there was a talent show at the end, and one year each "family group" had to come up with some kind of skit or act for the show. Our family group decided to do a marionette skit, where we would memorize a long passage of Scripture, and each marionette, sitting on another person, would spout out their part of the passage. I screwed around all week long and didn't memorize my part, so at the talent show - when it came to my part at the end - my partner and I decided to do a short comedy sketch about me forgetting the last part of the Scripture. Everyone thought it was funny except for my family group leader, who took me aside afterwards and asked me if I thought Jesus was laughing at my rebellion.

I remember the anger on my stepfather's face at my home church one Sunday. My mom had been struggling with lymphoma for a few years. Her chemotherapy had made her hair fall out, so she would wear a wig to church every Sunday. One weekend she decided she had enough with the wigs and threw them out. At church that Sunday, I looked around me and saw the stares and glances - the same glances I see people make when they are uncomfortable around people in wheelchairs or who have prosthetic limbs, and my heart ached for my mom. My stepfather was so angry at the reaction of people around us that he and my mom proudly walked out at the end of service - and never attended another church service again.

This year marks my tenth anniversary of being a full-time paid minister. These last ten years have been marked by many lows and many highs. However, the last few years I've struggled with wondering if I would be more fruitful and more fulfilled if I worked at a regular place of employment and used my gifts as a volunteer in a local church. But the last year has also seen me drift away from the idea of the typical American church model driven by individualism and consumerism. I certainly haven't given up on God, I just don't think church the way it's done in today's times - keeping its feet firmly planted in modernity - is a cause worthy of my investment anymore.

Can one person make a difference? I think he can - outside of the trappings of the modern church. The problem with church people is not so much sin or evil - it's just that the devil makes us so busy with doing church activities that we don't really do anything for God and for His mission. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble, so I will stop for now.

Lottery Scams And One More Thought About Church Marketing (But I Wouldn't Count Out More Thoughts In The Future...)

Today, in the mail, I got lucky.

It was actually supposed to be yesterday (today is Sunday but I didn't check the mail yesterday), but I got lucky today.

I got a letter in the mail that told me a lottery ticket that I didn't purchase was the winning lottery ticket in the El Gordo Sweepstake Lottery Program, and I won $615,810.00. Woo Hoo!

However, before you all try to get ahold of me and pretend you're my best friend and all, there's something I need to tell you.

It's a hoax.

Yeah, I knew it right away, but just to make sure, I checked out snopes.com, and sure enough, it was one of the many lottery hoaxes that are known to dupe and cheat people all over the world. I hate scams. I feel sorry for those who get taken in by these scams, but it happens all the time.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a scam artist in the church.

When we market the church, we of course are trying to present the church in the best light, as the perfect place for someone to come, get plugged in, make friends, get closer to God, and become a super holy Christian. Unfortunately, in my experiences, those kind of things happen to church people few and far between. Most of the time, there is a select group of people within the church who might have started the church or knew the right people and all, and they are the ones who are really benefiting from being at church. The rest of the people attending go each week, hoping that whatever was promised to them at first will come to fruition, but will most likely leave disappointed each week.

Just like a lottery scam. A letter from a scam artist presents the situation in a perfect light and promises great things to happen if you take part in what's going on. However, when you read into it and research, you find out that they really just wanted your money and didn't care about you at all in the first place.

Sound familiar?

My family and I went today to church. We went to a church nearby our house that is a huge megaplexchurch thing. They had almost 12,000 people on Easter Sunday (and Saturday evening - which I always think is kind of funny that people celebrate Easter on Saturday night - what does the service look like? "Well folks, Jesus is still in the tomb as of right now, so we're just going to sit here and wait until tomorrow. Thanks for coming.") The thing I dislike about this certain church is that they are the best marketers of their church that I have ever seen. Slick promotional materials, billboards, concerts, website design and all - but when you actually go to a service and look beyond the showy worship, the flashy preacher, the Starbucks inside the church building, the free Krispy Kreme donuts, the guest speaker who I guess won the T.V. show "The Apprentice", and more - you realize that it's all just a facade. There is no depth. Of course, I'm basing this on three visits to this particular church and numerous conversations with people from my former church who started attending after they realized what this huge church was all about - nothing.

Church marketing sucks. A church is naturally attractive to unchurched people when its people are living authentic Christ-like lives on display in front of them. When that happens, you don't need artificial means to get people to come to the church and then sock 'em with Jesus - they've experienced Jesus already in the lives of people who love Him and love others.

Which reminds me, I'd like to invite you to a new church that I've founded. I've decided to call it El Gordo Church of the Lottery Christ. Want a donut?

A Gamecock Is Better Than Two Wildcats

I'm not the biggest basketball fan, but I do enjoy the time around the NCAA men's tournament, affectionately known as March Madness. Of course, the tournament goes into the beginning of April, so what do you call the part in April? April Agitation? April Acrimony? April Acerbity?

Anyway, three games particularly came to my attention - two of them were in the NCAA tournament, the other one was actually in the "we're not good enough to be in the NCAA tournament" NIT. Let's talk about the two NCAA games first.

The first game was Arizona vs. Illinois in an Elite Eight matchup. Arizona is my favorite college basketball team; I of course was rooting for them. Amazingly and stupidly, Arizona gave up a fifteen point lead with four minutes to go, and Illinois sent it to overtime. Illinois was ahead and Arizona had the chance to take the last shot. They called timeout, worked out a play that I'm sure they practiced a hundred times, and then went down the court with a few seconds left and didn't get a good shot off at all. Stoudemire clanked one, and the game was over. Illinois won. I was pissed.

The second NCAA game was again a team called the Wildcats, this time it was Kentucky vs. Michigan State. Once again the game went into overtime, and once again the team behind called a timeout, set up a play that they had practiced a million times, went out on the court and again didn't get a good shot off at all. Michigan State wins the game.

Contrast this with what happened in the NIT championship game, featuring St. Joseph versus the Gamecocks of South Carolina. With ten seconds left, St. Joseph ties it on a three pointer. Rather than calling a timeout, rather than setting up a play, rather than stopping momentum in order to think out a solution in order to win the game, the Gamecocks coach let the game continue and allowed his players to improvise. What happens? A three pointer at the buzzer to win the game and the tournament. I must have replayed the last thirty seconds of that game with my Tivo about thirty times.

What's the point of all this? Well, it's my second example of bad marketing in the church. My point is that sometimes churches spend all their time coming up with strategy, purpose, vision, direction, goals, directives, etc. in order to then do something for the sake of the Kingdom, when I believe God is calling us to take action now. I mean, it's good to have all that stuff, but in the churches I've been a part of, it seems like doing all of the background work ends up taking all of the staff and elders' time; time that could have spent actually running the church and meeting new people and fulfilling God's purpose for their church. They act more like the two Wildcat teams who had to strategize the "final shot" and act less like the Gamecocks, who actually made the final shot.

Another example of marketing gone wrong in the church.

Pitfall Harry and the Marketing of Church

I used to love the game Pitfall back in the good old Atari 2600 days. Of course, my family had the Sears version of the Atari 2600, which meant that some of the cartridges worked, others pretended to work but usually ended up just turning the TV screen odd and unusual colors.

Thankfully, Pitfall was one that worked. I played that game almost as much as I played Defender (I'm proud to tell you that I reached 900,000 on Defender once. I played it for six hours straight and I swear I still have the groove in the palm of my hand from that old black joystick with the one red button). Unfortunately, as opposed to my obvious genius at playing Defender, I was never really good at Pitfall. But heck if I didn't try.

One of the areas in Pitfall where Pitfall Harry usually died for me was the part where you had to jump on and over three crocodiles in a pond. You couldn't just jump over them quickly all at once, you had to jump on each one of their heads, wait for their mouths to open and close, and then jump to the next one. I was always a little confused as to where my little Pitfall Harry should stand on the crocodile. If he went too far one way, he went into the drink. If he was too far the other way, into the crocodile's mouth he would go. It was a constant tension, trying to find that right spot.

This brings me to the subject at hand, as you see in the title above - church marketing. On one hand, marketing is important in the church - developing a logo, an identity, a website, some t-shirts, etc. You can make a pretty good case that every church needs some kind of marketing; otherwise, who in the community even knows that the church is around? At my former church, we needed to have signs with our logo, service times and location; otherwise no one would know where we were meeting and when. This area of marketing would be what I call the "Pitfall Pond". If you don't have some of these marketing concepts within your church, you will get lost in the pond of church anonymity. (Of course you could make the point that the best marketing tool for the church in getting your name out should be your people; very true but usually highly unlikely. Most "church people" don't know any unchurched people outside of their work relationships, especially if they've been involved in church for more than a few years.)

On the other hand, I believe marketing is dangerous. I believe we can get so focused on marketing, that it ruins God's design for what He wants the church to be. We can get so caught up in imitating corporate and business marketing methods that we fail to truly live out our calling as a church. This area of marketing would be what I call the "Crocodile's Mouth". If we focus all of our attention on this, we will get chewed up and spit out.

Let me give you a couple examples of the latter area of marketing. The first one I will cover in this post; the second one will follow in the next post. The first example would be the "Purpose-Driven" model. Most people would agree that Saddleback's model for church growth and health is an effective marketing and vision-directing tool for a church. I am one of those few (I think there aren't many of us) who would disagree. Perhaps if a church takes a couple of concepts they learned at the conferences that they paid big bucks for, they may be okay. The problem is that most churches just try to copy exactly what Saddleback has done in their own community, with their own people, in their own culture and geography and style. I know of churches who basically just copied Saddleback's purpose statement, the "going around the bases" process diamond, and whatever else they could pillage and steal. The great thing about just copying something at a conference is that you don't have to put any hard work or prayer into it. You don't have to seek God to see what He is calling your church to be in your community. All you have to do is churn out a purpose statement with the five 'M''s: magnification, maturity, multiplication, membership and ministry.

The problem is that vision and purpose statements most likely reflect a marketing statement of what the church wishes they were. Rather than Saddleback's mission statement, perhaps a more honest statement would be something like: "At So-and-So Community Church, we want to build the biggest building in the state, manage a multi, multi, multi-million dollar church budget, build a parking lot bigger than the one at Mall of America, and get our senior pastor to publish a book so that he can become a household name and bring in even more people."

Here's a mission statement for a church that someone has written that I would actually like to see a church have:

At So-and-So Community Church, we are a church that is trying to overcome our differences and inadequacies to somehow reach the lost in our community because we are honestly concerned about their eternal destiny but we're not really sure how to do it and we often fail to show Christ's love...but we really do love Christ and the lost.

How do we find the right spot between the crocodile's mouth and the pitfall pond? I think it's different for each church. And I think it takes a lot of prayer to know exactly what kind of marketing and how much marketing a church should strive to have (or not have).

Next time: the second example