I first met Paul Loyless on Twitter. It doesn’t happen often, but Paul and I were able to run together at a conference a year or so ago and I instantly fell in love with his heart and vision for the church. Paul heads a marketing company for churches and church plants called d2designs. Check out the site…I think they do amazing work.

I believe in Paul and his company and wanted you to know about them. If your church needs help with marketing, especially if you are a small church or church plant on a budget, I recommend the services of d2design and Paul Loyless.

Here is an interview I recently did with Paul:

Paul, you have a unique business. Having met you personally, I know your heart is more about building the Kingdom and less about profits. What drives you to specialize in churches?:

We are asked this question all the time and my response is always the same – I love the local church and I love pastors. More specifically I love small churches and church planters. While neither of them are perfect it is who God is using to call people to him and I want to see them communicate clearly and with excellence. It blows my mind that over the past 10 years I’ve been able to make a living doing this.

How do you judge whether your work with a church has been successful?:

My answer may surprise you. Most agencies gauge their success with how creative or cool their portfolio is. Not us. The only measuring stick we have is this…. have we helped the church clearly communicate their vision and message?

What advice would you give to a church or church plant who has never really considered marketing, but may be concerned about the expense?:

You are going to pay. There’s just no avoiding it. You will either pay with cash or you will pay with time. Most under resourced pastors (planters or small church pastors) think they can save money by doing it themselves or having a friend or family member do it for them. The ending is almost always the same: an inferior product and strained relationships. Marketing and branding are fun and exciting – no doubt about it. But God has called you to a community to preach His word, love on people and spend time in prayer and fasting for you community. That’s your calling – don’t fall into the black hole of branding and marketing.

I would also advise pastors to beware of the silver bullet solution. There are a lot of companies that have crept up in this space making empty promises to pastors that if they will just use their (insert widget here) that their church will grow 300% in a year just like the other churches they have worked with. It just isn’t going to happen.

Where should they start?:

Great question and the most important one. Start with a plan. We’ve created a great exercise called “5 Steps for Creating a Church Marketing Plan” that walks a pastor and/or leadership team through a process for creating a marketing plan. Most pastors skip this step and it is absolutely the most important step for creating a clear identity and vision. Once you know who you are and where you are going, creating the strategy for getting there is much easier.

Sometimes at a restaurant I ask the waitress to suggest an item from the menu for me. Considering what you have to offer as a company, pick one product and tell me why you would recommend it for me.:

Any chance I can order a two course meal here Ron? If so, I would start with ConnectFirst. It’s our new mover outreach program that connects churches with new movers in the community. It’s a solution we have that can benefit ALL readers.

IdentityPaks would be the main course. We wanted to create a solution for church planters and pastors of small churches with limited resources to have access to a quality comprehensive visual brand from web site to print materials. It took almost eighteen months of tweaking and improving the solution until we were able to bring the solution to the church planter at the lowest cost. We are thrilled with the solution and just as excited to see how positively planters and pastors of small churches are responding to it.

Need some marketing for your church or church plant? Contact Paul today!

(Full Disclosure: Paul did not pay for this post. I asked him for this interview. Paul has advertised on my blog, but I believe strongly in his services and would have posted this anyway, as I do frequently for causes and services I use or believe in personally.)

I want to come help your leadership!

If you lead a team…

I want to help you be a better leader…

It won’t be easy…

You’ll be intimidated at first…

You’ll be nervous…

I promise…

But…

It will open your eyes to some holes in your leadership…

It will help your team trust you more…

It will make your team’s communication better…

It will challenge you to improve personally…

I promise…

Want to know more?

Click HERE.

…was not just about me?

Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Philippians 2:4

What if…

Instead of going to be encouraged…we went to encourage others…

Instead of hoping to sing my favorite song…we hoped to sing “their” favorite song…

Instead of looking to be served…we intentionally served others…

Instead of waiting to be welcomed…we welcomed others first…

Instead of asking to be prayed for…if we sought to pray for others…

Instead of going to receive a blessing…we went to be a blessing…

What difference would it make in our church experience? 

Of course, church is ultimately not about either of us…it’s about Jesus…

But, church is also where people who want to make much of Jesus gather to grow, fellowship and worship Jesus…

So, I wonder how our church experience would be made different, if we approached it considering the interest of others…

Just wondering…

What do you think? 

Have you ever thought about the difference in faith and trust as it relates to our relationship with God? In this message, I addressed this issue.

In my LAST POST, I introduced the concept of a discipling culture being high invitation and high challenge. I believe this is the example Jesus set for us. (Read the previous post for further explanation.) In John 8, for example, Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, “He who is without sin cast the first stone” and “Neither do I condemn you.” That’s high invitation. Who doesn’t want to hear that? Jesus also said, however, “go and sin no more”. That’s high challenge. Who can live up to that?

One way this concept has shaped my teaching is to strive for every message to be high invitation, but also high challenge. I want my messages to be easy to listen to and enjoyable, helpful and applicable; even funny at moments (high invitation), but I also want each message to encourage disciplined personal growth and discipleship; helping people identify areas of their life where they need to change or improve to be more like Christ. (high challenge).

Please understand, I’m not an expert at this, nor do I hit a home run every week, but it’s a goal that I believe is making me better as I strive to meet it.

Some may wonder: How do you know if you’re reaching your target?

Well, I’ve been thinking about this for several months and I’m not sure that I can always know. It’s obviously very subjective. One thing I have started thinking through, however, and this is a developing concept for me, is that I can often evaluate the tension of being high invitation and high challenge by examining the feedback I receive from messages.

Here’s what I mean:

When a message is especially high invitation, I’ll receive lots of positive feedback…usually very public. People say “great sermon” in the hallway on the way out of the building, they post on my Facebook or they tell Cheryl how much they “enjoyed” my message. I love and need this type of feedback, because it encourages me.

When a message is high invitation AND high challenge, I’ll equally receive an increased amount of feedback…but some of it will be very private. I’ve learned that people seldom go “public” with the heart-wrenching stories of confession…at least at first. Let me be clear that I believe the ultimate goal of teaching is to point people to Christ and encourage them to be like Him. When I do this with equally high invitation and challenge, not only will I get public recognition, I’ll also get emails, whispers in the hall, or hear about it weeks later in a private setting. I’ll hear stories of repeated sins, struggles in a marriage, or hidden pain in a person’s life.

I developed a phrase I use to help me think through the effectiveness of a message in this area of high invitation/high challenge:

Personal Recognition vs. Private Correspondence

When a message is both high invitation and high challenge, it appears I am more likely to receive both types of feedback. Obviously, some weeks there will be more feedback than other weeks and I never preach seeking either type feedback. Some topics are more likely to produce private correspondence. I also know that just because I don’t receive feedback one week doesn’t mean I didn’t offer a challenging message. When I am receiving this private correspondence, however, in addition to the personal recognition, it seems more obvious to me that my messages are stirring people’s hearts to action and life change. (high challenge)

Does this make sense? This is one of those concepts that’s clear for me to think about than it is for me to write about or describe. I expect some push back about this topic and I welcome it. I just know it has been helpful for me to consider this issue as I have evaluated my teaching over the last few months. Feel free to dialogue with me about this concept of personal recognition versus private correspondence.

Last year at Catalyst Conference, I attended a breakout with 3DM, a ministry which helps pastors and churches think about the importance and future of discipleship. I had participated in a pilot coaching program Catalyst was conducting and this breakout talked about some of that experience.

The one thing which impacted me most was a slide that was shown. I don’t have a copy of it. I captured one with my phone, but it’s quality is not good enough to share here and I can’t seem to find another, so I recreated the concept in the picture here. (I know what you’re thinking…I’m an artist…right? ) Anyway, this one paradigm shaper has impacted my teaching and church leadership as much as anything in recent years.

You can see the diagram, but in case it isn’t clear, here are some explanations:

Invitation - This refers to the atmosphere and degree of welcoming a church or an individual message provides. Do people enjoy being there? Do they want to come back? Is it inviting? Is a message fun to listen to? Is it encouraging and helpful?

Challenge - This refers to the degree others are encouraged to grow in their walk with Christ. Are they challenged? Are they held accountable? Are personal disciplines encouraged? Are sins exposed? Are expectations strong?

The theory is that churches tend to fall into one of these four quadrants:

• Low Invitation / High Challenge – Produces a discouraged/burnout culture.
• Low Invitation / Low Challenge – Produces a bored culture.
• High Invitation / Low Challenge – Produces a cozy/chaplaincy culture.
• High Invitation / High Challenge – Produces a discipling culture.

I wouldn’t attempt to put churches in one of these categories, but I could. I know some of each of these. Chances are you do too.

If you put Jesus, the master disciple-maker in this diagram, we find He was both high invitation…people loved to be around Him…they were attracted to Him…yet He continually challenged them. He confronted them where their life needed to change.

That’s the kind of church I want to be. Those are the kind of messages I want to deliver each time I speak. To be a discipling church, we must find ways to be high invitation and high challenge.

Have you seen each of these type churches?

In my NEXT POST, I’ll share one way this has altered my Sunday teaching and the way I evaluate a message.

Responsiveness is extremely important in leadership and organizational health. It’s one of the non-negotiables for teams I lead. (I wrote about those non-negotiables HERE.) Being responsive shows that a leader cares for others, recognizes their value, and is disciplined enough to follow through.

There are times, however, when I believe responsiveness is not only the wise or right thing to do, critical in terms of protecting the relationship. If you are leading in a church or a business, these individuals demand a timely response if there is any hope if keeping them.

Here are 4 times when responsiveness is critical:

Busy leaders - If the President of the United States ever calls you it would be best not to say, “I’m busy right now, I’ll call you back”. Some people simply live busier lives than others. They aren’t better than others, just busier. They aren’t more important, but they often carry more responsibility. If they extend you time, they expect a timely response.

First timers - Whether a new customer or first time visitor to the church, these people don’t trust you yet. If you let them down early, you’ll never connect with them.

Injured or hurting people – Broken people are more skeptical of trusting others. They’ve received disappointment in life, usually from other people. Unresponsiveness now is received as further rejection.

People in crisis mode - In the moment of crisis, people understandably become incredibly dependent, perhaps even somewhat self-centered. Unresponsiveness is akin to uncaring for them.

Let me be clear, I’m not suggesting you can solve the person’s concerns immediately or that you have to drop everything else to respond. What I am contending is that with these type scenarios, responsiveness becomes even more important to protect the relationship. It could be as simple as a message which says, “I’ll get back with you soon”, which is not a bad practice with everyone. (Just make sure you keep your commitment!) It might be that you quickly refer them elsewhere for assistance. You could even delegate the response to someone else on your team. With these specific groups of people, the key is that some response comes in a timely fashion if the relationship is valued enough to protect.

Do you agree with my assessment?

What other groups would you add to my list?

In my experience, many of the new ideas for our organization…and for my life…have come while I was doing something else.

Usually when we are working on planning a service it’s when the best ideas for a service develop…

Often when I’m working on a blog post, I get several new ideas for a blog post…

Look at most great inventions and they were discovered while doing something…many times while doing something totally unrelated to what was discovered…

That’s because…

New ideas come from doing…

If you want to learn to innovate…if your organization needs changes…if you need some new ideas…

Do more and you’ll discover more…

Try more…Experiment more…Test more…Take more risks…

You’ll find some new ideas…

What’s something new your church (or you personally) are trying these days?

Let’s face it…going to the gym can be brutal on the ego…

Recently Cheryl and I moved downtown. It was an intentional life change (You can read about it HERE.) Part of that move involved changing gyms. I now workout on the campus of our local university, Austin Peay State University. I love the facility. I’m a huge supporter of our local school. Cheryl and I graduated from there, but there’s only one problem with my new workout location.

Most of the people in the gym don’t look like they need to be there…

They are young, lean, fit, strong, beautiful college-aged gym people…

More so than my last gym where lots of people looked like me.

Recently as I was sweating like the oldies it got me thinking…

Isn’t that the perception of the church at times?

I can’t go there…because…everyone looks like they don’t need the church.

They are smiling, joyful, seemingly have-it-all-together people.

If my life is falling apart, why would I want to go there? I don’t fit in. I have nothing to offer. My life doesn’t match their life.

But then again, maybe because my physical body is out of shape is the reason I need to be in the gym…

And, maybe it’s why, when my life is a mess, I need the church…

BTW, behind the beautiful bodies in the gym may contain some messed up hearts and minds. And, behind those smiling faces at church may be some mixed up hearts and minds. (I wrote about that HERE.)

Let me make a deal with you…

I’ll keep going to my gym if you’ll give church another chance….

Be honest, have you ever felt you didn’t belong in church because your life was a mess?