Now for me, poor use a two fold.  The first thing I notice is hideously poor design.   That is a function of me having worked with some of the best web designers in Chicago at one time.  The second thing I notice is the wrong message being sent out.  This happens most in three places.

1. Websites that self promote the church and market it.
2. Blogs that are filled with more ego than humilty.
3. Social Networking used to self promote and generate false buzz as opposed to…well..social networking with a community.

Let’s start with the websites.  Many church websites feature pictures of smiling multi ethnic people joined together and at least one of them has a cute smiling child on his or her shoulders. Then there is a Re/Max Realtor like picture of the pastor and his wife. Next we have a picture of either the building exterior or people worshiping inside.  Then comes the wording.  The wording often promises things like dynamic worship, relevant preaching, great kids programs, small groups, and a sense of real community and belonging unlike any of those other churches you have been to.  Church becomes the destination as opposed to a community of people on a journey.  The reason to come to this place is for the programs it has for you, the chance to be part of something exciting to belong to, and for an opportunity to be like those smiling happy people who are in that great building while getting to befriend the hip pastor and his wife. In contrast to this is an early church who saw a community living and working together and a Savior who tells us the Gospel is for the least of these and instead of talking about programs, talks of being God’s hands and feet, being like Christ, tasting eternal life, being a disciple and making disciples (which is not done in a class or small group, but out there in the wilderness). 

Now let’s look at Blogs. Many a pastor, including this one, gets pretty darn proud of their thoughts and insights and thinks everyone should be reading and learning at our feet and commenting on our brilliant insights.  Where we could be lifting up Jesus and trying to sort out thoughts and perspectives and invite others to join the conversation as peers (priesthood of all believers), we tend to show off.  We may not admit to that, but we are.  I recently read my first post all the way through to the most recent post and I am getting more and more arrogant with each month.  That will not do. We need to either repent of the pride and write from a more humble place or we need to stop blogging lest we look like Pharisees.  There is nothing wrong with sharing insights, perspectives, and even leadership on a blog, but there is something desperately wrong with pride and uplifting ourselves before others and Jesus.

The final one is social networking. According to Wikipedia (which I know is suspect to some, but I like it) a social network is defined as:

A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

The reason I like this definition is this is what I get out of it: Individuals connected by interdependency. We join a facebook group to share something that connects us and we are interdependent on each other as we share. Man!  If that does not sound like something Christ would want out of his church, I do not know what would!  I was on Facebook back when you had to have an .edu at the end of your email address to gain entry.  The early Facebook community exemplified this definition in the most beautiful of ways.  There was so much we could learn from those earlier and more simple days of Facebook.  But pastors and church leaders did not look to those lessons.  They instead decided to follow the examples of soda companies and pharmaceutical groups and they use their facebook groups to draw in crowds and they use their status updates to be a PT Barnum like person generating buzz and trying to create the impression that people are missing exciting things every day by not being a member of that community.  That buzz and generating desire to be on the in crowd is how one gets someone to start smoking or lose their virginity….not make disciples.

So what do we do?  For some, the answer may be to give up their online presence all together and become further disconnected from the emerging generation.  For others, it is time to rethink the way we present ourselves and connect on the web.  Our websites need to stop selling programs and using power adjectives and be simple expressions of truth and hopes and dreams and the Gospel.  Our blogs need to come from a place of humility.  Our social interaction on social networks needs to embrace the spirit of interdependency and  if we are truly leaders…we need to act like leaders encouraging that and not generate buzz.  In other words, we need to show our identity as followers of Christ and stop projecting an image.  Follow the way of Jesus and not the way of Consumerism.  Buy the way, the finger I am pointing at the rest of the western church leaders, I am firmly pointing at myself as well.  I stand guilty of this and will soon be changing the website, adjusting the way I blog, and rethinking the way I interact socially on the web.

So how would I redefine church growth?  Well, if we consider our church to be our family, then we need to look at it the same way a family operates at times. For the sake of argument, lets go nuclear with our imagined family.  So we have a mom and a dad and say….three kids.  In their case family growth can be defined in a number of ways.  Sure, they could have another kid, and another, and another and so forth until they have 15 kids packed in their 3 bedroom house.  But is that the only kind of growth they can have and is it the only growth they should have.  What about the relationship between mom and dad?  What about the dynamics of the relationship with the parents and the kids?  What about the relationships the siblings have with each other.  How about the relationships the whole family has when they are in a room together?  Family growth is more than increasing the numbers, it is growth in relationships, personal growth, and so much more that the family can do to grow together.  

Now let’s address the multiplication factor of the family?  Does the family create an ad, interview candidates, and help those people get married in a home nearby and start having kids and call that multiplication?  No.  What they do is that they raise their kids to have good values and a strong foundation.  In time and organically, those kids will grow and eventually find homes of their own, some (but not necessarily all) will find a relationship with someone and get married….the beginning of a new family.  That child who is now a spouse may even have children and like you, will raise those children with the same values and that they were raised on…along with some new perspectives found along the road of life.  These former children now raising children will still need their own parents for wisdom and guidance and advice and strength, but the dynamic of the relationship changes and in many ways the grown children become peers with their own views and perspectives and opinions.  You will visit their home and they will visit yours and the two families are unique, but they are interconnected.

How would all of this look in the church if we adopted aspects of this family into our definitions of growth and multiplication?  Instead of marketing campaigns we would improve our relationships and strengthen our bonds and make disciples.  When we do increase our numbers, we will look at it as adding a new member to the family and raising them with our values and dreams.  We will be adopting children into our family and taking that responsibility seriously as parents and siblings. When it comes time to "plant", we will have raised one of our children-or disciples-into starting a family of their own and we will be in touch as church communities as one family related to another family stays in touch and intermingles communities.  There is something lovely and organic that could happen here.  Just my thought for the day. 

From 2004 to 2007 I ran two small enterprises.  Silver Strand Solutions and GigaStrand Computers.  Silverstrand was a Linux migration consulting firm and GigaStrand was (at the time) one of a few companies out there selling computers with warranties that had Linux installed on them.  Running this small operation out of my house with a small band of cohorts we were able to get some clients that included names like Linspire, Novell, State of Indiana Board of Education, Intel, Microcenter, and a few others of note.  End of the day, I know how to use marketing and drive a successful campaign.  Just because something works, though, does not necessarily mean you should use it.  Frankly, I am no longer convinced many of these tools work as well as some think in the church.  Though some of these tools may get the desired result of more butts in the seats, I wonder if it is sending the wrong message and becomes a "bait and switch".  The irony of bait and switch by the church is that in the business world it is generally considered unethical and in some cases, illegal.  But that is not the point of this entry.

The point of this entry is this.  I have spent the last few entries venting some frustrations I have had about business as usual, but not offering a better way.  I am not so myopic as to think that what I propose is THE way or even a BETTER way, but it is an alternative that I feel more comfortable embracing.  At our last service we spoke about how we are almost a year old and now that we have a better grasp of who we are as a community, we want to start inviting other people to come to the party with us.  Why?  We feel there is safe harbor in this community and it is a great place to explore those deeper spiritual questions and make a difference.  We do not wanna have pizazz and zing and wow factors, we just want to extend a simple and honest invitation and be honest about what we are inviting people to.

So last Sunday I took out a easel and marker and we wrote down some things as a community.  We wrote about LifeBridge and YASO and here is what ended up on the board.

We ARE:
Open Minded
Accepting
Reality
Loving
Conversation (everyone has a voice)
Direct
Open hearts eyes and ears (togetherness)

We Are NOT:
Pressuring you to conform
Snarky
Phony Smile Sunday personality
a Right Wing-Republican-White Man Empire
Hypocritical bunch of legalistic pharisees
no dancing around touchy subjects like other places.
manipulative
money hungry

About Lifebridge:
We Talk about God stuff
Open up
Conversation
Freedom of Expression
Every day People-not perfect

About YASO:
Eye opening
Understanding environment
Youth group, but not
Group Therapy, but not

What is not in this picture? We never mention the music, kids programs, and other wow points.  We have a simple identity and now we want to tell people about that and invite them to it, if they want to come.  In a good marketing arc, you want to create awareness of a problem and show how your product or service is best suited to solve that problem.  But the gospel and a gospel community is not a product or a service, it is a journey.   How do you invite people on a journey or a quest?  The best way is to do it honestly and conversationally.  As community we have decided that there are other valid ways to invite people on a journey.  We still have to have a few meetings about the matter so I cannot tell you what we will do yet, but I can tell you that it is likely we will use the same tools some marketers use.  The internet, social networking, newspapers, press releases, stickers, etc.  But these tools are used by many other people other than marketers.  Websites and Social Networking groups are too vast to rationally discuss here, press releases talk about a great many things, newspaper ads are not always ads.  If you look at older papers that pre date the internet and telephones, you will find that people used the paper to communicate social events in simple and honest ways.  Not much wow factor was added to a bridge game at the Smith’s house..unless cucumber sandwiches being served is a wow factor.  Stickers and posters….okay…these are mostly used for marketing, but in our message, the stickers will say…

" As Christians, we’re sorry for being self-righteous, judgmental bastards."  Why?  Well, we feel the apology is overdue.

Because we embrace the conversation, much of what we say and do in this will likely be very conversational and verbose in it’s nature.  I doubt we will use a newspaper ad, for instance. I am not sure what you could put on a 3 by 5 inch section of print about this.  I also doubt we will do direct mailers.  My issue there is the impersonality of it all.  With a sticker or a website or a youtube link or a facebook page, there is an opportunity to interact and someone can share with someone else the link or the sticker or whatever.  You send a mailer and you look like you are trying to sell something no matter how well and honestly it is written. 

I will keep you in the loop of our next steps, but for now, I wanted to tell you a few things that were important to me.

1. There is a difference between invitation and marketing even though some of the same tools are used.

2.  We wanted our community more established in its identity before we started inviting people more broadly to it.

3.  We wanna be honest and would rather state who we are than talk up the music, preaching, art supplies for kids, and have pictures of a bunch of multi ethnic smiling people of a borad age range.  All of those tings are images, something you project…we want people to know our identity…who we are.  If they like that…cool, if they do not…cool.

If the core beliefs about Jesus, the Gospel, Mission, and Incarnational living are solid and the planter has a honest grasp of these things, then the expression of church community and the founding of that church community can, and should be allowed to differ.  

What was in my heart was to reach the dissillusioned and the ones with many hurts and demands put on them by the church.  The methods I felt compelled to use were wonderful for the "seekers" and the "unchurched" and for a plant where the planter is called to reach those people that is fine.  But when you are reaching the disillusioned and the burned, a different toolbox is needed.  I know of a pastor in Boystown in Chicago who reaches to the GLBT community and his expression and invitations are different than mine and the methods I was asked to use.  There is a church starting on the strip in Vegas trying to reach prostitutes and addicted gamblers…again, different methods.  What of the church trying to reach the homeless community…snazzy music and four color flyers may intimidate them.  It is the same gospel, but there are different expressions of reaching people and loving them and one size does not and cannot be expected to fit all.

In my case (to summarize), door hangers do not earn trust or open the opportunity to earn trust, the music does not have to be perfect (sometimes there is no music), and a conventional core would have been detrimental.  Further, in this first year the community helped form what we are as opposed to us forcing hopes and dreams into it.  Now, almost a year later, we are prepared to invite others to join our community now that we know what we are inviting them to.  

I do hope this better explains my frustration.  It is not with the methods themselves, it is that there needs to be room and allowances for trailblazers and callings that have different external expressions.  Counter culture sometimes means being counter to the conventional methods within the church and if we want to survive in this emerging post modern world, we have to become flexible to these alternative visions and expressions of community.