Your Church on Facebook: It’s Not About You (It’s About Your Friends)

We’ve all felt the pressure.  We don’t want to be left behind.  We want to show we’re involved with social media.  So we put up a Facebook page for the church, we invite everyone we know to ‘like’ the page – and then what?

The vast majority of churches (and small businesses) haven’t come close to harnessing the power of Facebook because they don’t understand the fundamental principle of Facebook: it’s not about you, it’s about your friends.  Knowing how to harness the power of Facebook may transform it from being just one more thing you feel obligated to do into being one of the most cost-effective evangelism tools at your disposal.

So here are four steps to an effective Facebook presence:
 

1.         Understand How Facebook Works

Beyond being a forum for pictures of kittens, the reason Facebook is free for users is that companies want to push messages to your friends.  Why are your friends important?  Your friends have at least something in common with you – or they wouldn’t be your friends.  You work in the same industry, or live in the same town, or went to the same school.  Whenever you have an interest in something, there is a greater than random chance that one of your friends will share that interest.

Here is how a social media-savvy business uses Facebook:  A restaurant gets you to ‘like’ their page in exchange for a discount coupon on your next meal.  Perhaps you get entered into a sweepstakes by liking a page.  That company can now pay Facebook to push their posts onto your friends’ newsfeeds. 

You’ve seen these posts and perhaps not even recognized them.  It is a post in your newsfeed that has a heading such as “Jane Doe likes Target.”  This means that your Facebook friend Jane Doe liked Target’s page, and Target then paid Facebook to push their post onto your feed.  If your friend Jane shops at Target, there’s a good chance you might want to shop there also.

2.         Reach Your Followers’ Friends

Let’s say you have started your church’s Facebook page and gotten many of your members to like it.  Great!  But if all you do is post things on Facebook for your members to read, this is no different (and probably less effective) than sending them an email.  Being on Facebook has done nothing for you to this point.

When you post something as the page administrator, in the lower right corner is a little pull-down tab that says “Boost post.”  It presents you with some dollar figures and other choices.  You can generally “boost” your post (push it through to the friends of people who have liked your page) for a cost somewhere around $5 per 1,000 people.  And each time it shows up in someone’s newsfeed, it is preceded by the notice that one of their friends has liked your church.  So it doesn’t just show up “cold” – it shows up “endorsed” by someone they know.

Therefore you need a small budget for these “boosts”.  $10 can reach about 2,000 of your followers’ friends.  A budget of merely $100/year could boost one post every month of the program year.  This is extraordinarily cost-effective. 

Facebook only shows your post to people who are online.  So you are only paying for people who actually see the post.  While your post is being boosted, Facebook will show you how many people have seen the post and how much of your budget remains.  After a few tries you’ll get a feel for how long it takes a thousand people to see your post.

3.         Boost the Right Posts

Now you’re ready to start using the power of friends.  But which posts are the best ones to boost?  Posts advertising a specific event are often less effective because many church events are social events and a newcomer is reluctant to attend.  The best events to publicize are those that are less social in nature, such as a concert or a lecture. 

The most effective posts are effective in the long run.  Boost posts that build up a favorable impression of your church over time.  Publicize what you would like the world to know about your ministry, such as a description – with a great picture – of your church engaged in service in the community.

People generally don’t decide to go to church because they saw an ad.  An ad rarely triggers a person’s desire to go to church.  More common is that the day comes when someone feels a need to take a step on a spiritual path, and then visits the church that comes to mind.  If you have been successfully cultivating a positive image, yours will be the church they check out.

4.         Get the Right Friends

One mistake churches make is to create their page and then you, the pastor (usually), asks everyone you know to ‘like’ it.  The reason this is actually counter-productive is that your old seminary friends probably do not have Facebook friends who would be interested in your church.  You probably don’t want to boost your church’s posts to the members of your colleagues’ churches – and you especially don’t want to be paying to do that.  Only ask people who have a real connection to your church to be the ones to like your page, because their friends will be far more likely to be the people you want to reach.

So don’t just collect ‘likes.’  Collect them with a purpose, and put them to use to reach out to others with the Gospel.

Different vs. Better

I was in a discussion recently where it became clear to me that the denomination of which I am still a member, the Presbyterian Church USA, and probably other traditional, mainline denominations, has forgotten the simple distinction between "different" and "better."

The context for my saying this is that my congregation offers both a very traditional worship service and a contemporary worship service.  The congregation is growing.  Both services are growing.  And a part of the growth is due to us offering things that are "different", while a part of the growth is due to us becoming "better."

In recent years, the tenor of what has emanated from the denomination has singularly focused on "different."  They bellow that we need to do things differently - that the "old ways" won't do any more.  And while this is true to a large extent, a lot of their definition of "different" is symbolized by what strikes our old-timers as radically different forms of church - whether that means meeting in coffee houses or having rock music.

But what that ignores is that a lot of the change that is needed is just improvement.  A lot of the "old ways" that need to be upgraded are simply things that need to become better in execution, not always different in kind.  A lot of our older churches need things like paint and carpet and to get that pile of junk out of the corner.  The warbling choir (sorry Aunt Clarissa or whoever) needs voices that can sing the music (whatever music you choose) and above all, a warm smile at the door that makes a visitor feel welcome, not like an alien intruder.  In other words, it doesn't matter what style of worship you offer if you do it poorly.

Yes, our churches need different also.  But the goal of different is to reach a new audience.  Whether it is our contemporary worship or our social media outreach - the things we are doing differently are helping us reach people who otherwise wouldn't come to our church.

I love watching Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on TV.  Ramsey is a celebrity chef who goes into failing restaurants and screams obscenities at them until they change.  But the first thing that he always changes is this: the food.  They invariably serve lousy food using canned or frozen ingredients.  He ends that.  Good food.  Simple food.  Fresh ingredients.  This is the foundation of his turnaround every time.  We can learn from that.  Different is about deciding whether to offer French cuisine or Asian; it's about choosing a target audience.  Better is about whether your food will taste good.

So we are also growing because some of the things we've always done are simply being done better than before (and our goal is to keep getting better). There is still an audience for churches that are somewhat as they have always been - except that many of our churches aren't executing well enough.  Traditional music and preaching doesn't have to be boring.  Liturgy doesn't have to be read s..l..o..w..l..y. 

So before you get too fixated on starting something different, invest some energy into making sure that what you already do is being done as well as it can be done.  The problem may not be what's on the menu, the problem may be what's going on the plate.
  

MailChimp

Okay, I admit I was skeptical about the need to use a "professional" email product.  After all, our church database was quite capable of sending email blasts to the congregation and we used them regularly.  But Kellie (the Rev. Kellie Anderson-Picallo, now on staff and bringing great ideas) insisted that I take a look, so I tried it out.  I wasn't sure that it would make all that much difference if our emails went from plain text to something that looks like this:

Yet after the first time I used it, I was impressed by two simple things: 1) the fact that it tells me the open rate (and I can also see who opened it, and who clicked on links within the email) and 2) I could see when the emails were opened.

What do you think the open rate is on your email?  The industry average for churches is about 27-28%.  Our first mailing did better: about 35%, though I suspect this varies greatly with how "tight" your list is.

We sent the email during business hours, and the largest group of opens happened right after we sent the email.  But I also noticed that there was a "bump" in emails being opened at 7 pm.  This makes sense; supper is over, you can finally start settling in for personal business.  And we know that emails that descend below the top of the inbox rarely get opened.  So I thought: what if we send the email at 7 pm?  MailChimp allows you to schedule sends.  So we scheduled the next one for 7 pm and our open rate jumped to 44% - which is approximately where ours have been ever since.

Is it valuable to you to have an extra 10-15% of your congregation open your emails?  Switch to a professional service.  Send in the early evening.  The scheduled send feature means you can set it up during business hours for arrival even when the office is closed.

Why did we use MailChimp over Constant Contact?  At our size (list under 500 names, fewer than 12,000 emails per month), MailChimp is absolutely free.  Their template-based email designs are easy to use.  Amazing, isn't it?  An idea, initiative, simple data analysis = more congregants reading email from the church.  It's that simple.

Diary of a Simple Ministry

Last year, a woman who attends our church is in a meeting of church school teachers.  In casual conversation, she mentions that her husband - who does not attend church - loves basketball and had once mused about renting our gym once in a while for a casual basketball game.

We took what she said very seriously.  And we told her, "please tell your husband that no, he may not rent the gym.  He may, however, use it at no charge if we can announce it as a church-sponsored pickup game."  He jumped on it.  We settled on Thursday nights, as long as we don't have something else scheduled for the gym.  We announced it.

The first night, there were three people.  The organizer and two of his friends.  It was several weeks before there were enough people for a game.  But word spread.  It's Thursday night.  I just took a walk down there, and they had so many people that they are playing two simultaneous 5-on-5 half-court games, so 20 people can be on the court at once.

Is it helpful to the church?  Well, only six of the twenty-three people playing tonight are members.  The rest are friends of theirs.  Will they come to church?  Who knows - but now they know we're here, and they're probably telling friends about the good time they have at our facility.  And having a regular basketball game on the church calendar has to be positive for our image

What are the lessons here?  One: listen carefully for expressed needs and respond to them.  That instigating comment was not a formal request; it was a casual mention that could have been dropped.  Two: think about how any unused space might be used to host an activity that just needs space to get going.  Three: stick with it for longer than a week or two.  Four: don't think in terms of an income opportunity, think in terms of an outreach opportunity.  The ideal way to use your space is using it to start the process of turning strangers into worshipers.  (And you can remind your bean counter that this also produces revenue!)  In this case, it's turning strangers into friends.  We'll trust the Spirit to take it from there.

Do you have room - especially gyms, which are in short supply - that's just waiting to be connected to people who need the space?  Keep your ears open for the connection.

Take Your Church Up A Notch For Under $2,500!

Short and sweet: too often churches think they don't have the resources to professionalize aspects of their ministry.  Here are a few things you can do to improve your church for less than $2,500 total.

First, improve your Web site.  We were able to vastly improve our Web site in no time by using Clover (www.cloversites.com).  Their preset designs are clean, image-driven, and appeal to younger eyes.  You edit your site from any browser - no special software needed.  They support Google Analytics, a free tool from Google that lets you get incredibly detailed reports (I can tell you that in the last 30 days my church's site at www.englewoodpres.org received 490 unique visitors who saw an average of 4.53 pages and stayed for 3 minutes and 51 seconds).  Even better, your site automatically maps to a version designed for mobile browsers (20% of our hits are now coming from iOS or Android devices).  The startup cost?  Only $1,000, plus $240/year.  So far we've spent $1,240.  (Here's a hint: ask a couple of your shutterbug members to start taking pictures.  Lots of pictures.  Of everything around and in your church - during worship, at social events, crowd shots, solo shots, artsy pictures of objects like chandeliers and stained glass - you'll need a lot of interesting pictures to create an interesting site.)

Second, add a pager system to your nursery.  Parents, especially visitors, are attracted to a secure nursery.  A pager system gives parents the comfort of knowing they can be reached if needed.  We opted for the SmartCall system from HME Wireless (www.hmewireless.com) because it allows sending any one of eight preset text messages.  This way you can communicate with parents for a variety of reasons ("please come" or "diaper need") - the message that sold me was "Baby OK", so if a child is upset when the parents leave, you can inform them that their child has settled down.  The cost of a 12-pager system was just under $1,000.  To make the system work, order nursery labels from www.churchnursery.com.  These labels serve as an identifier and a "claim check" for the child.  A pack of sequentially numbered stickers/stubs is $30.  So that adds another $1,030 to what we spent before, bringing us to $2,270.

Third, add parking attendants on busy days.  Unless you have more parking than you ever need, you need to have a crew out there letting people know when the lot is full (so they can drop their passengers) and then directing them toward on-street parking.  This is especially important on Christmas Eve and Easter.  We use volunteer attendants of course, but they are equipped with safety vests (from Amazon.com, $7, Boston Industrial Safety Vest with Reflective Strips - Lime Green) and flashlights with signal cones (also from Amazon.com, $6, Dorcy 41-1482 2D Deluxe Krypton Flashlight with Safety Cone).  We have three sets for a total of $39.  Now we've spent $2,309.

Fourth, use press releases and invite local reporters to your events.  This one costs you nothing.  I participated in a podcast with Chris Walker of evangelismcoach.org a couple of years ago on press releases (link here) - and the beauty is that these are free.  But another simple piece of follow-up is to invite local reporters to your events.  Here is a link to a great article that was just published in a local paper about our Thanksgiving celebration.  Why did the reporter and photographer come?  We asked.  It cost nothing so we're still at $2,309.

Fifth, set up tables and chairs at your coffee hour.  I've said it before and I can't stress it enough.  Provide seating at your coffee hour; don't make it a mostly-standing event.  When people sit, they talk.  When they talk, they connect.  When they connect, they return.  And use large tables, preferably the 60" rounds that seat 8.  Why?  Because people are hesitant to join strangers at a small table, but a large table implicitly invites people to take any empty seat.  So how am I going to spend that last $191 to get us to $2,500?  On a supply of tablecloths.  They can be disposable vinyl tablecloths; buy a stash at a dollar store, replace them frequently.  But a bare table is uninviting.

There you have it.  $2,500 and you have a professional-looking Web site, a more secure nursery that is attractive to young families, provide a better welcome on busy days, free publicity through press coverage, and a better environment for your guests to connect.  There's no reason not to do these things.  Now.

Show Your Leaders The Next Level

I guess it's been a while since I had anything to say, but last week I led a trip where we took about 20 leaders and staff from my church, accompanied by several pastors and leaders from other churches, to the Catalyst One Day conference held at the main campus of LCBC Church in Manheim, PA.  The featured speakers were Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel, leading us on the topic of "Creating a Healthy Church Culture."

In a few days I'll report on the debriefing of my church officers, but my main goal was not the content knowledge imparted by the conference; my main goal for the day was to expose my leaders to the setting of a highly successful church.  Let's face it: few, if any, Presbyterian (PCUSA) churches are top-notch.  My church is doing well by PCUSA standards; we're growing in attendance, giving, and church school.  We've gone from being the 7th-largest church in our presbytery (about 50 churches) to second.  I think we're the best church within a 20-minute drive.  And the problem is that my leaders believe this as well.

This is a problem because we're not competing against other churches.  In Andy Stanley's latest book, Deep and Wide, Andy tells the story of the creation of North Point Community Church.  He simply says this: "When we launched North Point, every other church in Atlanta was competing for the churched people market.  We decided to get into the unchurched people market."

That's the core of the issue: we have to understand that we are competing for the attention of the unchurched.  Yes, we have to strive for quality, but we also have to choose how we ascertain our level of quality.  If we only measure ourselves against churches, then being the best church just means that we can attract members of other churches.  As a church, our competition isn't other churches (hey, we're on the same team) - our competition is leisurely brunches, kids' soccer, a trip to the gym, a picnic in the park.  If you can't imagine why an unchurched person would choose your worship over those activities, then you won't be able to attract them.

But these wildly successful churches have figured it out.  They have worship bands that are rock concert-quality; coffee as good as Starbucks; parking as plentiful as the mall; preachers who could hold your attention if they were reading from the phone book.  Their nurseries make you feel that your child is as secure as a gold bar in Fort Knox.

I needed my leaders to experience the next level, because our target is the unchurched.  I needed my leaders to see that we have to raise our game.  Being a good church among churches is simply not good enough.  It's harder to compete against the best that the world has to offer.  But we have to do it.  We have to succeed at it.  Because attracting the unchurched is what grows the kingdom.

I think the conference accomplished the goal.  Several of my key leaders are expressing that they understand that we need to step it up.  Once we have the will, discerning the way will be easier.

Welcoming Guests: Everyone's Job

Last week I talked about the importance of making coffee hour more inviting by making it less intimate.  This makes it a more accessible space where visitors don't feel they are intruding.  Remember, worship is not a place where people can readily connect with other people.  Coffee hour is generally the first place a visitor has the opportunity to form relationships.

Now I want to address the question of helping people get to coffee hour.  Think of the path from the worship space to the coffee space as a driveway with a "speed bump." Getting people over the "speed bump" is a lot easier if your members are giving guests a helping hand.  Remember, coffee hour is not the be-all and end-all of fellowship, but it is the place where most people start.

We have to turn our people into inviters. I spent my first two years helping our members develop the habit of inviting visitors to coffee hour. How?  Simple.  I made this a part of every committee meeting.  There is no committee for whom this is not their job. At each meeting I spent a few minutes talking up this larger responsibility. I encouraged the "regulars" to change where they usually sit, so that they might meet more new people (newcomers usually sit near exits). I encouraged them to introduce themselves and personally invite visitors to join them for coffee. The point was making sure that every person in any sort of leadership position feels it is her/his job to welcome our guests.  This was not a one-time pitch; it was a sustained message delivered every month for many months.

In our worship space, as with many churches, some paths lead toward coffee hour while some lead toward the parking lot.  I jokingly refer to the latter as "escape routes", and I encourage my leaders to pay particular attention to guests leaving by those doors.  I told my leaders that it's their job to play "goalie" at those doors and keep the guests from getting past them!

Of course this isn't obnoxious.  It's just a simple matter of introducing themselves and inviting them to stay for coffee.  A lot of times the response is "not this week, but perhaps next time."  And that's okay.  It means the person didn't escape unnoticed.  A guest doesn't want to be hounded, but he/she generally would like to be noticed in a subtle way.

Some of my folks worried about possibly offending longtime members if they mistake them for visitors.  My suggestion is that you always put the onus on yourself, not the guest.  Do not ask: "Are you visiting?"  That puts pressure on them.  It is easier to put the implied blame on yourself by saying something like: "I don't believe we've met.  My name is Rich.  Will you join me for a cup of coffee?"  If the person is new, they  will probably then say so: "My name is Jane.  It's my first time here."  But either way, it's an inoffensive way of introducing yourself.

We need to make sure that everyone, especially all of our leaders, sees it as their job to be welcomers.  And you know what?  It changed more than our welcome process; it changed the atmosphere of our church, because an attitude of welcome is contagious. 

Is Intimacy the Enemy of Creating Community?

We all strive to have great worship: meaningful, God-honoring, worship with wonderful music and excellent preaching. Yet we also see congregations where this doesn't seem to be enough - congregations where solid worship doesn't translate to increased attendance and participation.

We also know that community formation is a large part of the answer. People don't just come to a church for worship; they come out of longing for both communion with God and with other people. But the problem is not that these churches are stone-cold, unfriendly places. They want to be warm and welcoming, and their church feels like family. Yet I am learning that the "warm, family atmosphere" may actually be detrimental. You see, too much intimacy too quickly can actually be a deterrent.

The first place visitors get to interact with your members is coffee hour.  But many visitors either don't attend or feel uncomfortable when they do.  How do you make your coffee hour more inviting?  There is a simple rule that many smaller congregations forget: when a space feels familiar and intimate to members, it can feel off-putting to visitors, giving them the feeling that they are intruding on a "family" gathering. Ironically, making your coffee hour space less intimate may make it more inviting.

Here are some simple tips:

 1. Use a larger room. A room that "just fits" sends a message that more aren't welcome. Use a room that is comfortably larger than the number of people who attend (without dwarfing them).

 2. Use larger tables. First, make sure you have tables and chairs. Once a person sits down, you're guaranteed a longer discussion and greater connection. But visitors may not sit at a small table with someone they don't know. A large table (seating 8 or more) always says "please join us."

3. Welcome kids without restriction. Nothing attracts families more than welcoming their kids. Yet I see churches where the kids are expected not to mingle in the same area as the adults. Or I see churches with separate (and lesser) snacks for children. Visiting parents want to stay in the same room as their children and they want their kids treated well. (In fact, just as we have "visitor bags" for adults, we have special "visitor bags" for children.)

I've heard the curmudgeonly complaint that kids running in coffee hour might knock over an adult. Well, in 30 years of active church involvement as an adult, I've had coffee knocked out of my hands twice - both by adults.

Making your coffee hour less intimate may actually increase the chances of getting a visitor to go there. And it is there, not in worship, that visitors can actually begin to form the relationships that will keep them coming back. Our coffee hour is now amazing. People come - and stay. And once they come to coffee, I'm pretty sure we'll see them again.

More next week on turning your members into inviters ... in the meantime, I invite your comments and/or questions. What do you do to make it easier for guests to get to your coffee hour?

Start with Wow

I am really enjoying a new book just released by Michael Hyatt, Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers called "Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World."  While the book hasn't made me think "hey, I would never have thought of that," his presentation is clear, simple, and motivating.  It makes me want to redouble my efforts to position both me and my congregation for maximum effectiveness in the online world.

But his very first piece of advice is rooted very firmly in the physical world: "Start with Wow."  He makes a simple point: in order to make an impact we need to 'wow' people.  He then breaks it down very simply.  When someone has an experience of us, that experience can either meet expectations, exceed expectations, or fail to meet expectations.  His point is simple: both failing to meet expectations and meeting expectations are "not wow."  Only exceeding expectations is "wow."

He then gives a mundane example: the lobby experience of someone visiting his company, Thomas Nelson Publishers (Mr. Hyatt is the Chairman of the Board and formerly the CEO).  How can a lobby experience be a wow?  The visitor's name tag could be pre-printed and waiting.  The visitor is called a "guest."  The receptionist offers a choice of water, soda, or freshly-brewed Starbucks coffee.

It made me think: how can we provide "wow" experiences at the church?  How can the greeters create a "wow" experience for a person entering the church?  What would make our coffee hour a "wow" experience for those who stay?  What would give the children "wow" experiences in the Sunday school?

His methodology is so simple: envision it and make a list.  What would it look like to meet a visitor's expectations?  What would it look like to fail to meet expectations?  What would it look like to exceed expectations?  Take that third list and make it happen.

Is it brilliant?  I don't think so.  But it has certainly motivated me.  My next officer meeting will address this simple topic: doing our best to ensure that people who visit our church come away with positive experiences that exceed their expectations.  I'm motivated to start with wow.  And that's just the first section of the book.  I can't wait to get to the rest.

Adaptation

Last night I got into a mini-row after I received a flyer announcing the new Presbyterian Hymnal and I posted my opinion on Facebook that this is a rather antiquated and fruitless endeavor.  But what was more interesting is that my post mentioned the absence of an electronic edition (the flyer didn't mention it) and I received a rather defensive reply from a staffer telling me that indeed such an edition exists.  However, merely having an electronic version of a printed book is not what I mean by "electronic edition", and therein lies the lesson.

Adapting something for a new medium means more than just a straight conversion.  It means approaching the idea from the perspective of the new medium.  An electronic edition of a printed book that basically makes pages readable on your computer is not an advance.  It may be a convenience (just as I love my Kindle), but true eBooks (a few of which are only now beginning to appear) will have features such as dynamic illustrations, not scanned images.

A new hymnal could have been adapted for the technological age by taking advantage of on-demand printing.  You can cost-effectively print books on-demand in quantities of 50 or so.  What church would not order at least 50 copies of a hymnal?  This means that they could have secured the rights to 2000+ hymns, and allowed congregations to choose a manageable subset of them.  Automated cross-referencing would create the indexes, and each congregation could have a wonderfully tailored songbook.  Basic sets of hymns in various genres - traditional, gospel, praise songs, etc. - could have been suggested as starting points for congregations.

Custom print sets is something we already do.  We still use pre-printed offering envelopes.  Every year we send a list of the envelope numbers we use to the company that prints them.  They read the Excel spreadsheet and print those numbers.  An Excel sheet with a list of hymn numbers could easily be the basis for customized hymnals.  But the electronic edition could then have them all - with the capability of printing one-offs for those hymns not in a congregation's printed book.  This would be adapting to the new technological world.

Instead, the denomination remains mired in old thinking, and brought it forward into a new medium.  I've seen this movie before.  My first career - as a software consultant - started before Windows was even invented.  I lived through the era when customers wanted to see their favorite DOS programs ported to Windows.  Some people did just that - made the DOS program run under Windows.  They all died.  Others made true Windows versions of their software.  Those sold.

Where have we made similar mistakes?  What have we merely ported to new media instead of making a true adaptation?  An example that comes to mind is the church newsletter.  Many churches have resorted to emailing their newsletters via PDF in order to save money.  We don't.  Our newsletter PDF is available online, but we still mail hardcopy to everyone.  Why?  Because the newsletter is a low-priority read, and we feel that the odds of someone going back to read a low-priority email are zero.  For most people, an email that isn't answered right away gets lost.  A newsletter lying on a kitchen table has at least a chance of being read.

But beyond that the question is: why monthly?  A monthly newsletter makes sense for printing and mailing.  But for emailing?  Why send the newsletter monthly by email?  Why not chunk it up and send relevant parts of it weekly?  We reinforce our paper newsletter with weekly email blasts to our members reminding them of upcoming events.  Change the frequency and the format to the medium!  Don't slavishly preserve the format and frequency of print into a medium that doesn't demand it.

Worship presents similar challenges.  Too many churches have tried to offer "contemporary" worship that is merely a traditional service with different music.  Contemporary worship has a different ethos - it isn't just less formal, it's less linear in construct.  If you project everything and you aren't bound to a printed page - don't act as if you are. 

The new hymnal (which combines the worst of two worlds: new hymns and old praise songs) and many attempts at contemporary worship are two ways in which Presbyterians and other mainline denominations end up looking like DOS programs in a Windows world.

Don't make the same mistake.  For every new technology or environment, ask yourself a simple question: what would it look like if we designed it from scratch for this modality?  Then go and create that.  That's what it means to do a new thing.

Connected Pastor

I just wanted to mention here that I've started a new blog dedicated to the discussion of technological issues facing pastors and churches.  It can be found here: http://connectedpastor.blogspot.com/ and I've just put up my opening post.  I hope to cover explicitly technical topics going forward - some of which I've touched on here.  Hope you'll check it out and spread the word.

Execution Is Everything

I've been on a cleaning/organizing kick recently. Going through old church files, I came across a document from 1979 entitled "Church Officers' Retreat: Evangelism." It recounted the tremendous dropoff in worship attendance my church experienced from 1963 to 1979 (from an average of 418 to 160, a drop of over 60%). The report then outlined a series of actions they needed to take to stem the tide.

Most of the ideas were pretty obvious. "We must create a friendly, accepting church." "A way must be found to note visitors." "We need to investigate our relationship with blacks and Hispanics." "Minister to singles." "Explore possible service projects in the community."

Not enough of these things happened. Over the next 15-20 years the decline continued, though it slowed and eventually bottomed-out a few years before I arrived. Today we're still growing, and our average worship attendance is now the highest since about 1974. Why? When I looked at the this 1979 report, it seems that we've actually implemented almost everything on the list. We've achieved a significant level of racial-ethnic diversity. We have a singles group. We are definitely friendly and accepting. We have implemented a variety of community mission projects.

The 1979 report even identified some geographic opportunities, such as noting that there is no other Presbyterian presence to our east/southeast. And sure enough, a huge chunk of our growth is families attending who live southeast of us.

The interesting thing is that we didn't even have an officers' retreat to determine that we should do these things. We just started to do them. We consciously focused on how welcoming we were. We paid special attention to underrepresented populations of all kinds, from ethnic groups to singles. We noticed the lack of churches to our east/southeast and focused our marketing efforts in that direction. And it is working.

Lesson: diagnosis is easy, execution is everything.

I'm amazed at the amount of energy we expend (both in our local churches and in our denomination) creating "study groups" to study our situations, diagnose the problems, and propose solutions. It is an absolute waste of time.

You don't need a retreat to determine what's wrong. You simply need to start fixing what's wrong. You already know what needs to be done. Go and do it.

Managing by Actual Data

Now that the holidays have passed, I was reflecting on some of the decisions we made to maximize our impact in Christmas season. This year was interesting, in that Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday - something that happens every 5 or 6 years (depending on whether there are one or two intervening leap years), so this will happen again in December 2016. Remember, in the Presbyterian tradition we worship on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day (but we always worship on Sunday).

The previous time it happened was December 2005, and that year we made the erroneous judgment that there would be very sparse attendance on Christmas Day. We were wrong. We didn't exactly need crowd control officers on Christmas - it was actually a little below average for the bulk of the program year - but compared to say, summer attendance, it was really good. It was more than we had any Sunday in July of 2005. The crowd was also a lot of drop-ins, as well as people who decided to sleep early on Christmas Eve and come the next day.

So as we planned this year, we decided to trust the data from 2005, not our instincts. This meant that we asked the choir to come back on Sunday morning after a late evening on Christmas Eve (our late service ends just past midnight) and we had coffee fellowship afterwards, because we guessed that a number of the attendees would be newcomers. We wanted this (hoped for) surfeit of new visitors to have a full worship experience.

We were right. Or should I say, the data were right. We had an attendance experience similar to 2005 - good numbers on Sunday, including an unusual number of visitors. We gave them the best we had - full music, a fresh sermon (not a repeat of Christmas Eve) - and not a holiday skeleton crew.

The lesson is simple: make decisions based on actual data. Our instincts, and those of many in the congregation, continued to be that Christmas Day would be sparse. We were able to adjust our decisions to our reality for two simple reasons: we had acquired data and we acted on the data. How many churches fail to acquire data on every event? We count obsessively. We record what we count. We know how many pounds of corned beef were eaten at the St. Pats dinner; we know how many bagels are eaten at coffee hour.

Also important is that it is our data. Our context is not your context. Our data is not your data. For example, our conjecture is that one factor could be the predominance of Roman Catholicism in our area. So many of our members are former RCs it's amazing (mostly divorced RCs who feel rejected by their church). In Roman Catholicism, Christmas Day is when you worship - it is a holy day of obligation. (This is why Catholic midnight mass begins at midnight while our late service ends at midnight. Their worship is Christmas Day, ours is Christmas Eve.)

If you don't have data of your own, you may be able to learn from ours - but it may be totally off for your ministry context. We're grateful that we record as much data as we do, and in this age of everything being in electronic documents, it's easier than ever to find the records. They don't even have to be particularly well-organized - this is what "search" functions are for. My encouragement to you is to write it down. Save it in a Word document, or software such as Evernote, so you can find it. It may not seem useful at first, but it will.

Acquire the data, study it, trust it. Good decisions are easier to make when they're backed by facts.

Retrosynthetic Analysis

One of the areas where churches are known for wasting time is in strategic planning.  Churches often develop a "five-year plan", only to have it gather dust on a shelf and be supplanted within three years by a new five-year plan.

I believe that strategic planning is incredibly important.  However, my approach to strategic planning was shaped by the two areas of my secular expertise: synthetic organic chemistry and software development.

What each of those two areas have in common is that you begin with a vision of the finished product and then work backwards, step-by-step, until you have the basic building blocks you need to create the finished product.  In organic chemistry, this was called "retrosynthetic analysis."  You start with a target molecule that you're trying to make.  You draw it on a blackboard and ask: what would I need to make it?  You analyze it and think: "If I had compound B and compound C, I could make A."  But then you need to make B and C.  So you analyze them and say: "if I had D & E, I could make B, and if I had F & G, I could make C."  You then keep working backwards, sometimes for a couple of dozen steps or more, until you get to basic compounds whose synthesis is already known or (better yet) can be purchased from a supplier.

This is how I think strategically about my church.  One advantage of this method is that it forces you to have a specific vision about where your church could be.  And I encourage you to make this be a BIG vision.  So big that you can't (at first) imagine how you'd get there - the point of the process is to create a pathway you hadn't imagined before.

In churches, there isn't a single vision for your church - the vision is an amalgam of visions for different program areas.  You may have a vision for worship, a vision for children and youth, a vision for mission, etc.  Together they form a vision for the church.  Working backwards from a large vision is the best way to foresee the route to get there, the resources you'll need, and the intermediate phases you'll pass through.

Let's look at how this could work for church school.  Let's say you're in a very small church but your vision for church school is a weekly average of 80 children.

The first question is: what would you need for a church school of 80 kids per week?  The answer might be: 6 classrooms, 18 volunteer staff, and a 1/2-time Christian Education director.  Does your church have 6 classrooms?  Maybe you do, but 2 of them are rented out or being used for something else.  Know that someday you'll need them back.

Then you ask: what would you need to get to 80?  Now the point of this exercise is that you don't know.  So the question really is: at what point would you be confident that you'll get to 80?  The answer might be: "40 - if we get to 40, there'll be no way to stop us from getting to 80."

So then you run the same questions: what does 40 look like?  The answer might be 4 classrooms and a volunteer Sunday School superintendent. 

When would you know for sure you could get to 40?  Maybe the answer is 20.  What does 20 look like?  Maybe it's 3 classes run by the Christian Education Committee.  When would you know you could get to 20?  Maybe it's when you have 6.  What does 6 look like?  One class with a dynamic teacher.

How do you get to 6?  Start with one family.  How do you get one family to stay?  Perhaps by convincing them that you have a vision.  And know that one family isn't just one family, it's the foundation for your future.

What do you gain by working this way?  Now that you've worked backwards from where you want to be to where you are, you can look forward one step at a time.  At the size of having only one family with kids, you have a vision to encourage them to stay and help build something significant.  And you know you need to be looking for that one great teacher.

At 6 kids, you know you need to be thinking about laying the groundwork for a multi-class structure and looking for a person who might be a volunteer superintendent.  And when you finally recruit that superintendent, you can do so with a limited mission: to grow the church school from 40 to 80.  Knowing that it is a closed-end assignment can make it easier to find the right person - and easier to avoid the problem of having a position outgrow the person. Quite often I've found myself looking for a transitional person, not a permanent solution. 

When you get to 40 kids you know you need to get those rented classrooms back.  No long-term rental agreements on your space!  

Now do these steps work infallibly?  Of course not!  There will be many mid-course corrections along the way.  And notice that there are no timelines on this plan.  Each phase happens as it happens.  But it keeps you thinking big, it keeps you aware of the intermediate progress you're making, and it keeps you looking out for what you're going to need next.

This method helped me clarify the first steps I needed to take in jump-starting our Adult Education program, our Stewardship program, and our Mission work.  Some of the steps have seemed small, but I know they're actually more significant than my people realize.

Too many pastors have the attitude that all they need to do is help the church take a step forward and then see where it takes them.  My contention is that motion without vision is how you walk into walls.  There is no such thing as leadership without vision.

And notice that this method doesn't work with vague, amorphous visions.  If your vision for your church only goes as far as words like "warm and fuzzy", this won't help you get there (since "there" isn't defined).  But this is a way to realize big, hairy, specific visions for your congregation.  My vision (and I hold it very close to the vest) actually starts with my retirement.  I'm 50.  By Social Security standards, I expect to retire at 67.  I have a vision for what I'll be leaving in the hands of my successor.  I've had that vision since about a year after I started here six years ago.  It took a year to get the vision.  Will I be here until retirement?  Maybe, maybe not.  When the congregation cannot or will not advance toward that vision any more - that will be my signal to leave.  So I can't guarantee that I'll get there, but I know what "there" looks like.

If you start with a vision - even a big vision - and plan backwards from your vision to where you are, you can see that what you thought was impossible is actually doable.  And isn't that what faith is about?

A Brief Rant...

As Hurricane Irene approached, I checked the websites of four decent-sized Presbyterian churches in our area to see what decision they had reached regarding worship services on that Sunday.  To my surprise, two of the churches had no mention of Irene through the entire weekend - despite learning through other means that they, like most every church in our area, had cancelled services for the safety of our congregants and at the request of local authorities who did not want non-essential cars on the road.

In this day and age, there is no excuse for a stagnant, out of date website.  Almost everyone who visits our church looked us up online before visiting.  Your site should look as if it gets an update of some kind every single week.  Period.  I don't know what you think is more important than updating your site, but it isn't. /rant off

QR codes and social media

Churches all over the country are trying to figure how to use social media effectively.  I've been thinking about this for years, and I'm still in the process of refining my thoughts on it (and as soon as my thoughts coalesce, the world of social media changes anyway).

Anyway, we made one change starting last week: we added QR codes to the bulletin.  These ubiquitous blotchy squares are in our bulletin to do two things: one (pictured) takes people to our church's Facebook page so they can "like" the page.  This has a very direct purpose: to provide an avenue to maintain contact with people who are visiting the church but haven't given us their full contact information (they haven't filled out a visitor card).  It occurred to me that a Facebook "like" is a way for us to push information to someone without violating their core privacy.  If you like us on Facebook, we have your name - but we don't have your address or your phone number (unless you have no Facebook privacy settings enabled, in which case you shouldn't be worried about privacy anyway).

We used likify.net to create the QR code.  The nice thing about Likify is that is presents the user with a nice intermediate page that also maintains stats (and it's free).  I can tell you that last week, two people scanned this QR code during worship.  Not a huge number, but we'll see in the future if we begin capturing "likes" from people we might otherwise have lost contact with.

The other QR code we're using sends people to our Podcast page (fpce.podbean.com) where they can subscribe to my sermon audio feed.  Again, we're trying to attract people into a situation where we have continuing contact with them.  For straight QR codes, use the free QR code generator at http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ - simply enter a URL and it produces a QR code image for download.


I can imagine a day when we won't print paper bulletins anymore.  Instead, the sanctuary will be adorned with posters displaying a QR code that takes you to an online location for the order of worship, and you'll follow along using your smartphone.  Someday we'll be asking people to turn their phones on for worship.

It seems to me that we're still stuck in the mode of trying to make social media correspond to what we do already.  I see churches using Facebook as nothing more than an email replacement.  We're not being very effective yet at seeing what social media does on its own merits.  If you want pure "push" contacts with your members, use email.  If you want pure "pull" contact, that's through your Web site.

But one thing I've come to realize is that Facebook sits at the intersection of our public and private lives.  As such, it is a relatively "safe" place for marketing - when someone "likes" your organization, they aren't revealing too much about themselves, and they control when they want to "disconnect" from your page.  We should be able to take advantage of that in connecting with people on matters of faith at a stage when they may not yet feel comfortable disclosing themselves fully to the church but want to stay connected.  When I send you an email I'm invading your space.  A Facebook page update pushes to your fans' newsfeeds, yet somehow I don't think it feels intrusive.  So we'll see how the QR code experiment goes.  If it goes well, we'll have found a way to entice people to connect who might otherwise have come and gone unnoticed.

Booming Summer

Well, maybe not booming, but I see far too many churches simply call it a year and pack it in for the summer.  My church used to do it as well.  From the second Sunday of June until the second Sunday of September, everything went into hibernation.  The theory was that "nobody comes" in the summer.  Of course they didn't.  There was hardly anything worth coming to.

When I looked around at what the fastest-growing churches do, I didn't see them packing it in.  Sure there might be some accommodations to a season when some families are on vacation, but they didn't just throw in the towel.  After all, what percentage of your families are actually on vacation at any given point in time?  I'll bet it's no more than 10% - not every family goes on vacation, most go for a week (not two or three), and they don't go at the same time.

A few years ago we adjusted our approach to summer - by treating it less like the "off-season".  We're a church, not a ski resort.  The result has been that we have cut our attendance dropoff in half.

The main change we made was NOT changing the time of morning worship.  We used to move our normal 11:00 worship to 10:00.  This created confusion among congregants, some of whom would come at the wrong time at the start and end of summer season.  It created confusion in our advertising, which now can just say "11:00" instead of having a summer season disclaimer.  The old-timers believed that in the summer, the earlier time allowed people to come to church before heading out to picnics or the beach.  Reality check: these days, if someone is heading to the beach, they aren't coming to church first, even if it's at 7:00 a.m.

The biggest mistake I see is churches that either eliminate or curtail their fellowship time after worship.  We don't cut it back in the least.  We have, on average, as many or more visiting families per Sunday in the summer as we do during the program year.  If that seems counter-intuitive, it's because you're used to the old traditional rhythms of the church year.  But think of it from the perspective of the visitor: when is the easiest time of year to add something to your family's schedule?  Summer.  The kids don't have homework.  Working parents aren't traveling as much for business.  The lesson here is that you always have to thinking of things from the perspective of the visitor.

This doesn't mean we haven't made concessions to summer.  We have soloists singing instead of a full choir - but we always have good music.  I'm not planning to take any Sundays off in the summer (though this is unusual; I usually take one).  But our coffee hour after worship is full-blown.  We have a lot of mission activities - and in the summer, people have more time to serve.

People will lower themselves to the level of negative expectations every time.  When we stopped assuming the summer would be dead time, it stopped being dead time.  So next year, as you plan for the summer, take steps to make your summer schedule look a little more like the rest of your year - and your attendance will as well.

Four Things You Can Do

Often pastors will complain that their lay leaders block various initiatives they have tried in order to spur growth.  However, the pastor of a church has a number of things that are generally under his or her direct control.  As summer approaches, here are four things to work on:

1.    Improve your bio on your Web site
Did you know that site statistics usually show that the single most visited page on a church’s web site is the pastor’s bio?  People are looking for a point of connection to the face of the organization – and that’s you.  Craft your bio with the idea that someone wants to decide whether you are worth listening to.  Do you have something in common with him/her?  Will you relate to them?  You need to be asking yourself: “when someone reads my bio, what kind of person will they imagine me to be?”  (And it better be the truth.  You need to be the person they expect to encounter.)

2.    Optimize your answering machine/voice mail

Even before a complete sentence is heard, your recorded message has already communicated more than you think about your church.  What image is conveyed by the voice you choose?  Is it an elderly voice?  If so, your church sounds old.  Is it the pastor’s voice?  If so, your church sounds small.  A younger voice on your outgoing message will give your church a better image.

3.    Critique your bulletin
How does your bulletin stack up as a publication?  Does it hold to professional standards of appearance and content?  Are there typos or uneven spaces?  Is there anything that an unchurched person would find confusing?  We include the words to such liturgical staples as the Lord’s Prayer and the Gloria Patri; we don’t presume that everyone in attendance knows these words.  Raise the standard for the appearance of your bulletin.  Find someone with experience in graphic arts to critique your use of fonts and images.  Don't be text-only: use clip art libraries to illustrate announcements, use sidebars, use callouts.  Make it interesting! 

I periodically ask my congregants (esp. as summer approaches) to leave bulletins in my box from other churches they visit when they are on vacation.  It serves as a reminder that they ought to seek the fellowship of the church even when on vacation, and the bulletins often give me ideas for things to do and ways to promote them.

4.    Critique your preaching
Let’s face it: nothing is more important than your preaching.  The most important standard to set for yourself is to almost never have a bad week.  The reason is simple: one of the “riskiest” things your congregants will ever do is invite a friend to church.  They will be very reluctant to do so unless they are very confident that the sermon and the music will be something they can brag about.  On a scale of 1-10, it is better to be a 7 or 8 every single week than to be a 5 sometimes and a 10 sometimes.

I listen to my own sermon every week.  If your church doesn’t record your sermons, buy a small recorder (I recommend the Zoom H2, about $120 on eBay) and put it in the pulpit.   I listen (via podcast) to 3-4 sermons every week from other preachers I admire.  Delivery determines whether your content will be heard.  No preacher is good enough that he/she can stop working on getting better.  My goal is to never be lower than a ‘7’ (rating myself from 1-10) and to average an ‘8’.  A great resource is Andy Stanley's Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication.  It will help you stay focused on crafting messages that stick.

When you fix up your house and yard, it often spurs your neighbors to follow suit.  As you rigorously demand quality from yourself and the things you control, the other ministries in your church will follow. 

If "Love Wins" ... Theology Loses

I finally broke down and bought Rob Bell's controversial book, "Love Wins".  Although I expected to vehemently disagree with him based on reviews of the book (and indeed this is the case), I was also expecting at least some measure of theological depth.  In this, I was sorely disappointed.

There was no discussion of Weiss or Schweitzer, of Bultmann or Moltmann, or even of Barth - instead, his book is a simplistic polemic that dishonors the eternal importance of the topic.  His primary mode of argument is to put forth a series of seemingly contradictory Scripture verses, cited without context, and then saying "which is it?" - I can imagine him sticking his tongue out and saying, "nyah, nyah, nyah" as he does so.

It's actually difficult to critique the book in depth, because there doesn't appear to be anything remotely resembling a systematic theology or consistent hermeneutic undergirding it.  He uses the seeming contradictions in accounts of the afterlife to his advantage, yet he does not apply the same methodology to his advocacy for social action in the here and now.  If I were to argue using his methodology, I could take a verse such as Jesus saying "the poor you will always have with you" and use it to debunk calls to social justice (and this certainly has been done time and again - but does he really want to be using the same, lame rhetorical method?)  Bell is employing "situational hermeneutics" (analogous to situational ethics).

His analysis of the Greek language in the NT is hopelessly flawed because he ignores one basic consistency of the Gospel: that in the various places where salvation is set against damnation, the language used is symmetric.  So if he wants to argue whether "aion" is eternal or for a period of time, or whether "eternal" should be thought of in linear time or as standing outside of time, he discards the symmetry of the word choices and manages to take symmetric words and arrive at an asymmetric outcome.  If heaven is forever, so is hell.  If hell is for a limited time, so is heaven.  He falsely sets forth uses of the word "all" as if it always refers to "all" of humanity, when it is fairly clear that "all" can also mean "all" of the elect.  He plays weak language games

He also bears the conceit of presenting ancient concepts as if he has either invented them or rediscovered them, such as his emphasis on the notion of heaven as coming to earth.  The Westminster Confession of Faith holds that our souls will be reunited with our bodies on the day of resurrection.  He's not the first person to notice that in Revelation 21, the new Jerusalem is coming down.  But his conceit is palpable in his desire to force God to conform to his own standards of love and mercy.

In the end, he simply fails to discuss the following topics:

1.  In our sinfulness, do we deserve salvation or damnation?
2.  Is our obedience to God even possible without either prevenient or efficacious grace?
3.  What is the role of divine justice, not just love, in shaping the eternal future of humanity?

It's a good thing that this is his 4th (or is it 5th?) book and that he has a following.  Otherwise this book probably never gets published.  In our society, fame gets your ideas aired (see Sheen, Charlie).

But it's not easy for me to be as angry about this book as I was when I first heard about it, because it really just poses the same questions that I hear from the 8th graders in my confirmation class, and at the same level of discourse (maybe lower).  They don't make me angry by asking; their questions are well-meaning, just naive.  The only difference between my 8th graders and Rob Bell, I suppose, is that the 8th graders are teachable.

Straws, Sitcoms, and Sermons

Last night I was eating out and ordered my usual Diet Coke.  The waitress gave me a straw, but when I tried to unwrap it I realized it was defective.  The machine that crimps the ends of the wrapper crimped the end of the straw, so one end was closed off, rendering it unusable.

Later I was watching a video of Andy Stanley delivering the closing teaching at Catalyst Atlanta in October, and he made a joke about preaching – at the expense of Presbyterians, of course.  He said: “if your [preaching style is] all about theology and no application … then you’re Presbyterian.”

Sadly, too often he’s right.  And then I thought about my defective straw.  In a sense, 95% of the straw was perfect – but the crimp at the end made the whole straw useless.  Perhaps the straw is a symbol of the function of worship.  People come to worship with parched souls, thirsty for God – and good worship with good preaching can serve as a straw, enabling them to connect their thirst with God's living water.

But I suppose that too many preachers are providing a defective straw.  If the message is dry, inaccessible, or irrelevant to everyday life, the straw is crimped at one end … and if the message is all pop psychology/pseudo-theology, it’s crimped at the other end.  Either way, a good working connection between the congregant and Christ doesn’t happen.

When we think about how to connect to the parishioner, too often we pay too much attention to our content and not enough attention to the method of delivering that content.  The most effective way to deliver content is to be in sync with how people are used to receiving content in today’s world, and that is constantly changing.

I remember attending a lecture over a decade ago by Rodger Nishioka, a Presbyterian seminary professor who is known for work in the area of multiple intelligences.  At the time, persons using the Web was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today, yet he said that it was already impacting how sermons could be constructed.  He said that while sermons used to need to be designed with a smooth flow and seamless transitions, the Internet made people accustomed to “context switching” – clicking a link and jumping to an entirely new page.  Thus he said that you could now “hyperlink” in a sermon – make an abrupt jump from one context to another, as long as the listener could grasp the connection behind the jump.

That lecture caused me to continually be aware of how people receive information and design my sermons with that in mind.  For example, consider a sitcom.  It is actually 21 minutes long without commercials, presented in 3-4 blocks, the longest of which will be no more than 8-9 minutes.  After 8-9 minutes, people need a brief timeout (a mental commercial break) before proceeding. 

I’m very mindful of the 8-9 minute rule.  I try not to go more than 8-9 minutes without giving the people a brief mental break – repeat a point, make a quip – anything to allow the brain to relax for a minute and restart.

Another technique I borrow from television is what they call the “establishing shot.”  Ever notice how scenes often begin with a shot of an exterior – so you know where the next scene takes place?  Toward the end of a sermon, I often refer back to something I said earlier.  But if it was more than 8 minutes before, I preface it by saying, “Remember earlier when I talked about…” – that’s my “establishing shot.”  It gives them time to recall and refocus on what had been said before, preparing them to understand how that ties into what is coming next.

Speaking of tying things together, modern sitcom construction usually has at least 2 parallel stories that converge on a single point.  This is key to the modern sermon.  We read multiple Scripture lessons, but I don’t preach multiple lessons, I preach one lesson (usually the Gospel lesson).  And I preach one point from that lesson.

I don’t know where the old saw about “three points and a poem” came from, but that just doesn’t work.  What is effective these days is multiple illustrations of a single point.  There needs to be one “takeaway”, one central point.

Brandon Tartikoff, legendary programming executive with NBC in its heyday, used to require people pitching a TV show to sum it up in one sentence.  I vividly recall him talking about the pitch for The A-Team.  It went like this: “The Magnificent Seven, the Dirty Dozen, Mr. T drives the truck.”  Before we write a sermon, we need to be able to “pitch it” with a single, memorable sentence.  Your congregation can't get the point of your sermon if you write it without a clear and unequivocal understanding of the point you're trying to make.

So here’s my pitch for sermon writing: A good sermon is one point, multiple illustrations, familiar delivery.

I think that’s what I’ve discovered is the common link between the best preachers of today.