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Qualitative Church Statistics vs Quantitative Church Statistics

2×2 has discussed this issue before, but yesterday we heard a social media expert say the same things we were saying from a marketing perspective.

Brian Solis, a leading market analyst, uses the terms qualitative measurement as compared to quantitative measurements.

He discussed how the quantitative statistics of the past mean less in the world that is evolving.

How many members you have on your congregational roster means little compared to the engagement you can measure among both members and nonmembers. There are new possibilities for building relationships with the community that do not fit the old church model. The borders of your community are expanding. (2×2 is just a little church, but we get ministry questions from all over the world.)

This will affect church institutions as well. Supporting Lutheran Social Ministry agencies was a popular option for churches in decades past. Often a representative would attend a service to give a Temple Talk and report on their agency’s good work. Today many churches get involved in local humanitarian efforts through their associations in the community and work. They hear their frequent messages outside of church, are attracted to their causes, and sense they can help. The church’s social agencies (which do a great job!) will get short shrift —unless they too learn to engage with the community in new ways. Secular Social Service agencies are very good at this and will get church members’ attention.

Engagement is a new emphasis. It’s always been important to ministry. Before the advent of Social Media there was no way to measure it. You never know how many people read your fliers and newspaper ads. You can only guess how many people might have listened to your radio spot. Pastors had no idea if their sermons had any lasting effect whatsoever. We shaped our ministries on tradition and guesswork.

Engagement can now be measured. You know how many people visit your web site. You know what topics led them to you. You know which pages they visit and how long they spend on each page. You can engage your visitors with comments, polls and forms long before you meet them.

In some ways it is good that the Church tends to lag behind. We can be beneficiaries of other people’s trailblazing.

But the Church cannot afford to lag too far behind. All churches compete against an overwhelming amount of secular competition.

When our Ambassadors plan a visit, we visit a congregation’s web site first. You can bet that other potential visitors are doing the same thing. We are surprised at how many churches still have NO web site. Many who have web sites have not updated them in years. We clicked on a link for “latest newsletter” and read news from 2009. Even the best SEPA congregational web site we visited was just beginning to get on board with its web potential. They were paying a firm to curate secular feature-type news, a good thing, but still missing the interactive potential of Social Media.

We can’t say it too often or too loud. All congregations must get involved in Social Media if they are to be taken seriously in coming years.

A good denominational goal would be to help every congregation get started and learn to keep up with this vital but fast-changing communication/evangelism medium. You will have to hold a lot of hands in this venture, but it is necessary and worth it. This is concrete help that congregations need and denominations are best positioned to supply.

2×2 can help!

photo credit: slightly everything via photo pin cc
09 May 2012

The Third Most Important Religious Holiday in America. . .

. . . and it’s part of every faith.

Are you ready for Mother’s Day?

On this day, all mothers are elevated to sainthood.

The sacrifices they make are recalled in detail. Mothers tend to put family before self and career. It took most of recorded history to notice.

How did mothers attain this revered status?

Most people don’t give the theology of Mother’s Day worship much thought. A recognition of the role of a mother’s love in our faith formation makes sense to most. Mothers are a key part of God’s gift of family.

Love is the central message of Christianity. Mothers are the universal representation of love.

On Sunday morning, we can contemplate the love of Jesus, his sacrificial caring for all of God’s creation, his heart open and his arms outstretched to every child of God regardless of race, age, gender, status, intellect or infirmity.

What we know about love comes to us through that first bond with others in God’s creation — our mothers.

A mother’s love is tangible. It isn’t embedded in our stained glass windows or abstractly retold in scripture. For some of us our mother is still sitting next to us in the church pew. For others she is a cherished memory.

Some Christians reference frequently Christ’s mother, Mary. But the references to a mother’s love is obscure in much of Christianity. In centuries of hymnody, mentions of motherlove are rare outside of the Christmas carols.

It is indeed odd that in just the last century or so, the status of mothers became so elevated that, on this one day of the year, it is an unofficial part of the American religious calendar.

08 May 2012

Planning Ahead for a Pentecost Object Lesson for Adults or Children.

Send your church a Pentecost Birthday Card. They’re hard to find so we made one for you.

Download the high res image for printing here.

If you have an imaging editing program, type the name of your church under the word “BIRTHDAY.”  We left room.

Notice the fiery background and the descending dove. You can talk about Pentecost imagery in your lesson.

Take the image on a CD or flash drive to your local quick printer and have one printed and scored for you. It shouldn’t cost more than a couple of bucks. Ask for a trim size of 7″ x 5″/ tent fold. Don’t forget, you’ll need an envelope, which your printer can provide.

Write a note in the card. It can be from you, scripture or a “note from God” about the importance of Pentecost.

Mail it to your church, but don’t open it until worship. When you or a congregation member opens it, read the message to your congregation. Pass it around and talk about the image of fire and the descending dove.

Here’s a second part of the object lesson. While the card is being passed around, wheel out a birthday cake (optional) and a special candle which you can order online.

Light this flowery candle and it unfolds in a fiery display of two-tiers of small candles which spin as Happy Birthday plays. It will leave a lasting impression. Stand back. It makes quite a show!

You can put the candle on top of a cake if you wish to celebrate after worship.

If you happen to belong to SendOutCards online card service you can upload this art and send a card using this customized card service. They even offer the candle which would arrive with your card in a nice gift package. For members the total cost is under $20 and as low as about $15. For added effect, this card service allows you to create over-sized cards (roughly 11 x 8.5). The big size would be very effective in the congregational setting.

We recommend churches become acquainted with this card service as it is a great evangelism tool. We’ll talk about this cards as an evangelism tool in a later post. If you look up the site and want to join, you can reference our membership number (85519).

For example: If Pentecost is confirmation day in your church, you could take a photo of each confirmand and send the same card with the confirmands picture inside and a note from the pastor or congregation. A personalized card commemorating this faith milestone is sure to be a cherished keepsake.

PS: A video of this object lesson would be great video to add to your congregtion’s web site or blog or Facebook timeline.

photo credit (retouched): hapal via photo pin cc

06 May 2012

Ministering in a Design-Driven World: Branding Part 2

An article in Forbes today talks about how design is now a pivotal part of any organization’s identity.

The article speaks to the Church. Churches are accustomed to poor design in their publications. They work with poor equipment and volunteers much of the time. The church newsletter, dotted with cheesy clip art, is fairly standard even among large churches. It’s almost a universal branding—and the branding message is not a good one.

Your members will accept this approach to design. But  is it working beyond your church membership? Is it helping you communicate with the world — a world that is increasingly influenced by design.

Don’t despair. Good design is accessible even to design amateurs.

Facebook makes design simple. All you have to do is upload photos. Everything will fit into the design template. There is still an art to finding, choosing and using photos. Taking your own photos is so easy today, there should be nothing stopping you.

But Facebook is Facebook. One design fits all!

Blogging formats offer the same professional design capabilities with more variety. Start your blog by choosing a theme — there are hundreds to choose from. It will be easy to create a clean and functional web site using a theme (template).

Ask your members to spend an hour taking photos of the neighborhood for you to use on your congregation’s web site, blog or Facebook. Make a contest out of it to get more people involved and add to the fun! They don’t have to be “church” photos. They can be street scenes, store fronts, parks, schools, gardens, fields, sports, architectural features or public events. This will communicate to the unchurched that your congregation cares about the neighborhood.

Be cautious about using images of people without their permission. You can do this by artful cropping. Watch your local TV news for tips. Whenever they take school footage for example they tend to show backs of heads or images of kids walking or playing with heads totally cropped. If the people are your members and they say OK — go ahead and use full images.

Clip art has come of age. There are great sources of photos available for free use if you add a photo credit at the bottom of your post.  Try Photopin or Flickr.

Learn to use a photo image editing program.  (Type “free photo editing software” into your search engine.) Most computers have a basic application pre-installed.  Start by learning to size and crop your photos. Then learn to add type or adjust colors.

It’s time to say good-bye to the amateurish church newsletter. People expect more today. And it isn’t hard to give it to them. It helps to brand your church as progressive and forward-looking, not stuck in the past with out-dated communication skills.

04 May 2012

One Last Word from the Church You Love to Hate

The Annual Assembly of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America convenes this Friday.

In 2009, the SEPA Assembly voted to allow Bishop Burkat and SEPA to take Redeemer’s property. The vote was in defiance of their own governing rules. Someone should have challenged the constitutionality right there and then.

But they didn’t. They followed the crowd.

The vote dealt with nothing but property. Bishop Burkat interpreted the vote as permission to do anything she pleased with Redeemer. She had already declared us ineligible to vote with NO constitutional authority. This part of our appeal was ignored by Synod Assembly.

She used the vote about our property to justify a personal and vindictive attack on Redeemer members. Lesson learned: Speak up for what you believe in SEPA/ELCA and have your livelihood threatened. (In East Falls, we call it the SEPA Inquisition.)

SEPA clergy and congregations remain silent. Bullying works.

And so, with no vote of the congregation and no discussion, an entire congregation was excommunicated from the ELCA and SEPA Synod. “Get out and hand us the keys.”

At least the remaining congregations know what will become of them if they dare to challenge leadership. The pattern is well documented. Your clergy will disappear. Your calls and letters will go unanswered. There will be a knock on the door. You’ll be locked out. It’s legal now, because no one spoke up. Any individual in the Church who dares to protest will have their lives turned inside out and upside down.

No one is doing a thing to stop it.

Synod Council has been ineffective at representing the congregations they serve. They fell in line behind the bishop early on. They have been hiding behind her skirts ever since.

Redeemer is still an active worshiping congregation, despite the abuse. We still have faith that Lutherans will speak up. It’s a Lutheran tradition, after all.

Redeemer’s ministry will continue regardless of the strength of SEPA’s backbone.

Redeemer is not closed. We are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod — its bishop, its Synod Council, its Synod Assembly and all its congregations and clergy. Shame!

Will  SEPA Synod 2012 make a difference? Probably not.

The people of East Falls will always be the people the Lutherans of SEPA turned away.

02 May 2012

Valuing the Church’s Chatterati

A recent business report recommended that a company’s “chatterati” are as valuable as top management and should be compensated accordingly.

Chatterati are the most effective social media employees. They chat. They personally engage the customers. They trouble shoot problems before they become crises. They know who is in charge, but they also know the people who will solve the problems — in charge or not.  They are social managers. They’ve got the gifts of gab and initiative…and they are a treasure.

How this applies to congregational social media endeavors remains to be seen, but it is an interesting development. 2×2 believes the Church is experiencing a social crisis. Its historic top-down management style is now attempting to manage people who have no familiarity with religious authority, question the need for it, and are prepared to comfortably opt out of religions that stress it.

Chatterati have been around forever. In the past, chatterati had no real value to the church because the only valued communicators were those with theological training. They had sole access to the pulpit and to publishing. If you wanted a voice in the Church, you had to be part of the system.

The challenge to the Church today is to create a channel to put the skills of natural communicators to work.

Even as the mainline Church gasps for breath, it will try to control its message, checking for doctrinal compliance and making sure no one steps on current leadership toes. This will become a futile exercise. The ability of the Church to control its message is gone. The better tactic would be to foster, nurture and take part in resulting dialog. Strong Church leaders will be influencers, not dictators.

The Pope’s recent criticism of women religious is an example. There was a day when scathing criticism from the Vatican would have the religious orders shivering in their habits. The recent reaction from female religious leaders was more on the order of a bemused shrug. 

What’s happening is not a plot or disrespectful defiance. It is a result of technology’s influence on the world. The barriers between leaders and followers have crumbled. Governments are dealing with it. Business is embracing it. The many benefits far outweigh any need for caution. It’s here to stay.

Church, get your chatterati on board. You are going to need them!

photo credit: Swamibu via photo pin cc
01 May 2012

Redeemer’s Entry in East Falls Chili Cook-Off Earns Mention

We didn’t win, but our entry got a prominent mention in the Roxborough Review for our inclusion of fresh pineapple. Adding fruit to spicy stews is something we learned from our African members. The sweetness cools down the fire of the chili.

This was our first year to enter the fairly new neighborhood tradition. We have grand plans for next year.

You haven’t tasted anything yet!

Redeemer is not closed: we are locked out of God’s House by SEPA Synod who claims to very much want a Word and Sacrament Church in East Falls — after working for more than a decade to destroy the Word and Sacrament church they already had here.

Meanwhile, Redeemer is still part of our neighborhood.

29 Apr 2012

The Ambassadors Celebrate an Important Birthday

Today, the Ambassadors of Redeemer will not be visiting churches. We are worshiping together on our home turf and celebrating the birthday of the ONE and ONLY SEPA pastor who took the time to know and appreciate the ministry of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls before joining the throng who would see our ministry destroyed for Synod’s monetary gain.

This one pastor is a true man of God. He carries with him his Bible—its binding held together with tape, its pages curled with use. For the past three years, he has joined us in worship at least once a month, led us in communion, visited our sick and shut-ins, checked on our individual members periodically, and prayed for us daily.

Other SEPA pastors have done nothing.

SEPA, you can be proud of this dedicated servant. He is a model for you all, especially those new to ministry.

We’d use his name but we know he is not one for the spotlight. Happy birthday to a man of God.

29 Apr 2012

More on Church Hierarchies

Large churches don’t need them.

Small churches can’t afford them.

If they are to have value, hierarchies must do more than exist. They must make themselves relevant, affordable, and a force for the best of what the Church can be.

28 Apr 2012

How Hierarchies Threaten the Neighborhood Church

There was a time when small churches had little choice but to affiliate with larger church bodies. It was their only way of assuring access to quality leadership, resources, and to effectively reach out to the world at large.

Times have changed. Hierarchies have grown while supporting churches struggle. They are expensive. Congregations can’t afford them and are beginning to realize they are not as necessary as they once were.

During formational years, denominations are eager to sign up as many congregations as possible. As time passes, relationships change.

Meanwhile, the care and feeding of the hierarchy continues. Smallest neighborhood churches are in jeopardy.

The measure of a regional body is how it honors the promises made to the smallest congregations when they joined the denomination.

Some joined with as few as 20 charter members. Today, with 80 or more members they may be deemed not worth saving. Their property and assets? That’s a different story.

Few congregations ever set out to grow beyond a certain sociological level. Church experts call them family/parish/program or corporate categories. Family churches are happy being family churches. Program churches are not trying to be corporate churches.

The focus of most congregations is and always will be local. Sometimes congregations find themselves adding a new sanctuary or growing their staff. It is usually a reflection of neighborhood growth. Often significant growth never happens, but the church can still fulfill its mission in its neighborhood.

If growth is the goal, most neighborhood congregations are at a severe disadvantage. They have far fewer options in attracting professional leadership. Denominations even admit to assigning “caretaker” pastors with low expectations for ministry. This drains a congregation’s resources and self-esteem.

A pattern begins. Small congregations know they are not getting equal services. They withhold support.

But hierarchies accumulate more than wealth. They accumulate power. With dwindling support from small and neglected congregations, they begin to exert power. As part of the process, they equate the level of support they are receiving with the congregation’s viability. They try to get resources wherever they can and if the congregations choose to not support the regional body — well, watch out!

Regional bodies and church agencies start to look for ways to fund the structure they have become accustomed to. “Development Offices,” funded with the offerings of many churches, target donors — who are most likely members of the participating congregations. The word “mission” will be in all their promotional material. People are more likely to give to corporate “mission” than to corporate “rent.”

They are now in competition with their member congregations for offerings. They want a bigger piece of the church pie.

With the recent court ruling in southeastern Pennsylvania, church hierarchies — even those prohibited from taking church assets by their founding constitutions — can legally reach directly into the wallets of their congregations without their permission. They need only issue an “opinion” that the church is not viable. We at Redeemer, know how easy it is for leaders to reach that “opinion,” especially when the denomination is running a six-figure deficit budget.

In the end, this is self-defeating. Eventually, the regional expression of the denomination will be funded by a roster of churches — all in financial decline.

Eventually? Look at the church statistics.
Almost every church in SEPA Synod is in decline!

The success of the future church is still dependent on a presence in neighborhoods. That’s where most people attend church — where they live, vote, send their children to school, and where every other aspect of their lives has roots. It will always be this way. People are not attracted to church by the size of the parking lot but on how they fit in. Statistically, most Christians choose to join small churches.

That’s 2×2’s mission. We support small church ministries.

photo credit: Brother O’Mara via photo pin cc
27 Apr 2012