Category: church

i spent a little bit of time with a new pastor today. he has come into a church where the old pastor had been there for 25 years and the taken A LOT of vacation over his last 3-4 years. apparently the church members felt like they could never find their minister because when he wasn’t on vacation he wasn’t anywhere near the church office either. the church’s response was to get this young minister to sign a contract of what is expected of him. i think this is a good idea. i like knowing what people expect of me and i like them knowing what i expect in return. part of his contract is that he will spend a certain amount of time in the church office and those hours will be published for the church members to see.

this is where the problem arises. this church needs new members. these new members are either going to come because of the old members inviting people or the new pastor meeting new people and inviting them. since this pastor is new in town he is going to find it hard to meet anyone outside the church when he is required to be in the office. now i understand that it is important for people to know how they can reach the pastor but i’m not sure the answer is sticking the pastor away in an office alone. i’m real thankful that people in tapestry consider my “office” to be emy j’s coffee house. i would rather be in the public than in a closed off room.

first, i love asbo jesus. his cartoons hit so many things on target. like the one above. every now and then as i dream about the future of tapestry i wonder what will happen when/if we have to move our worship gatherings. i love the fact that we meet in rented space and that the space is a public school. it fits with who we are and since one of our dreams is to form new churches from our growth instead of just getting bigger we shouldn’t need to move. it is a part of who we are.

i’m not opposed to church’s having buildings. all the previous churches that i was involved in had buildings that they owned. sometimes the buildings were used incredibly well and sometimes not so much.

the problem is that often the building becomes the center of everything. it is the focal point that people try to convince other people to come to. that’s why people say “where do you go to church” or “where is your church located.” sometime in the past we reached the point that we associated church with a building rather than a group of people. every now and then i am real thankful that tapestry doesn’t have a building. it’s a ton easier to focus on the church being the people when you don’t have a building to mistakenly think is the church.

i’m not a big fan of the term “branding” when used by churches. i understand what is meant and i am definitely not opposed to churches having good looking logos, fonts, and colors but the term “branding” really rubs me the wrong way. part of the reason for this is the apparent view of “branding” by some churches as the ultimate way of attracting people to their church. this blows my mind. why in the world would a non-follower of CHRIST go to a church because of a cool logo (most of which in my opinion predictably shout “hip CHRISTian”). i’m betting that they wouldn’t. CHRISTians, on the other hand, well we are pretty much idiots for new logos and such.

richard reising has a great post on the issue of “re-banding on momentum.” he hits pretty hard on the tendency of some churches to think that a new logo and look are what they really need to reach people and therefore they change their look without changing anything beyond the surface. reising states:

What this represents is surface re-branding. It is an epidemic. It is the concept that if we are not attracting people, it is because we do not have the right name or image, and therefore, we need to change it and re-design our look. With all the love I can muster, if you are not growing what you have, it is not because of your logo. If you are not connecting with people that come through your doors in a way that causes them to come back and bring others, no amount of design can create a long term fix. If you do have momentum however, the right brand can be a catalyst to new levels of growth.

it’s a pretty good post and worth the read. i’m not sure that our “branding” (oh how i hate this word) says much to the world outside the church other than someone in the organization likes graphic design. since i like graphic design i’m ok with that but i’m not going to waste a lot of tapestry’s resources on it.

i love it when people make something work rather than buying some prepackaged thing that someone else produces. we (the u.s. of a.) tend to be a nation of consumers rather than producers. that’s why i love it when someone or some organization sees something and say to themselves “i can make something of that or at least make something better.” adam found the above exercise bike on the side of the road and then decided that he could develop a table for it so that he could pedal while he works. adam is a graphic designer so he sits in front of his computer quite a bit. this is the first stage which is merely a mock up to make sure the idea works. i can’t wait to see the final stage.

i wish churches would do more creating rather than consuming. most churches consume programs developed in other regions for other people that have little, if anything, to do with the cultures in which they live in. at their best these programs are used merely as frameworks that are adjusted to the people and culture. at their worst the programs are rigid and the church leadership expects everyone else to adjust to them. i wish we all would create more. this doesn’t mean that everything will be different from church to church but it does mean that a group’s “finger prints” will be all over whatever they do. the programs they use will “look” like them, instead of looking like every other church in the nation that is using that resource. if we don’t feel like we can create something entirely new, we should at least “hack” what we find out there.