Integrity Matters
Over on the Church Marketing Sucks blog, author Anne Jackson responds to a question about how churches can ensure they have effective marketing and communications without burning staff out. In her response, Anne writes about the importance of integrity in church communications. She tells the story of a time she refused to design a mailer for a church because they insisted on projecting an image of their church that wasn’t true. She lost the job as a result, but she kept her integrity.
This topic resonates with me because of Christians who have recently accused me of slapping photos of children on promotional materials to raise funds for missions the easy way. Our missions department does have a humanitarian ministry that meets the physical needs of many children, but we are careful to not convey a message that isn’t true. If an offering isn’t going to meet physical needs, we don’t use images or language that would convey a lie. To do so, as she writes, would be a sacrifice of integrity incongruent with a holy life.
In addition to the overwhelming spiritual reasons to not mislead people about your ministry, such a strategy is also likely to backfire. Misleading your audience will confuse them. They may not recognize that the materials are for your ministry, or they may begin to associate your ministry with something else. Moreover, as your audience begins to discover that you have misled them, you will lose their trust. Once you have lost trust, good luck raising funds or recruiting volunteers.
Yes, a dishonest approach to fund raising may temporarily meet your needs. But it’s not worth the long term consequences – to your ministry’s credibility or your personal integrity. I find it interesting, too, that Anne suggests that dishonesty in church communications is one way to lead to staff burnout. If you don’t want to burn out, don’t lie.
Calluses
I’ve been learning how to play guitar. At first, it was painful, because my fingers weren’t used to pressing the strings. After enough time practicing, my fingers are used to it -calluses formed, and I can slide my fingers along the strings, barely feeling them.
Sometimes, I think the constant exposure to the needs of the world’s lost and poor have the same effect on my heart. At first, it hurts to see pictures of kids who are hungry; appeals for more missionaries tug at my heart; I’m compelled to pray for the salvation of the friend written about in a missionary’s newsletter.
But day by day, I get used to it. I read stories that make other people cry without a second-thought, and then, I write a story that hopefully will elicit an emotional response in readers. But I don’t really feel anything. It gets hard to even write an emotive piece, because I’m so numb.
And then, every now and then, something breaks through. At work today, it was a missionary’s heartfelt request that people pray for a friend’s salvation. Tonight, it was the movie War Dance.
I don’t know that emotional appeals are really the way to go when trying to recruit and raise funds for missions. There is only so much emotion people can feel. But it’s nice to not be quite so numb, at least for a day.
"Gives us 20 more like these!"
A young couple were approved as missionaries today by our board. Yesterday, the assistant director asked our team to interview them, then write an article for the church’s periodical. Specifically, he said the couple were young, committed, and ready to go; if he could carbon copy them 20 times over and place them around the world, he would be a happy man.
They are a fantastic couple. And the church does need 20 more like them. Dedicated, full of faith, ready to serve. Ready to come under one of the older missionary couple on the field, helping how they can now and preparing to advance the work once the others are retired.
Our hope is that the article will inspire others. We asked them what they would say to others, especially younger people, interested in serving in missions but uncertain if there is a place for them. And what they would say to those who aren’t even interested or haven’t considered it.
I hope that message, as well as their faith and dedication, comes through in the article. We’ll likely run an ad next to it for our missions training programs, and I pray God will give the church 20 more couples like them!
That mobilization thing
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the idea that I could me a missions mobilizer. I love to write, I love to design, and I know the Web. I love to communicate the importance of involvement in the Great Commission, and I feel like I don’t get to do that nearly enough. So why not develop a site where I let it all out? Or write articles for sites geared to the emerging church generation, start a MySpace group, participate in online forums, encourage those I’m in relationship with to be more involved, and blog about it all?
I don’t know what the right strategy is, but I do think it’s time for me to start doing this. At work, when anyone suggests that I did more than what was required or otherwise suggests that I shouldn’t expend so much energy in my work, my response is often, “This is who I am; this is what I do. This [promoting missions] is what I will be doing, in one way or the other, for the rest of my life.” It’s time I just start doing it every way I can, whether that’s tied to an organization, employer, church, or not.
Going forward, I want to start a blog devoted to my experiences in missions mobilization and communications. I’ll write about the things I create at work, the message boards I participate in online, the articles I publish on different websites, and the people I talk with at church and elsewhere. The blog will be the journal of my mobilization efforts and my reflections along the way. (My first task is to name the blog. Any suggestions?)
Of course, a blog about my efforts to mobilize those within my circle of influence is only as good as my efforts to mobilize. And so I’ll do more to communicate the missions vision to the church. I’ll continue participating in related message boards, but I’ll write some articles for Christian websites, especially those frequented by the younger generation. Some of the missions topics I want to write about include:
- Missions’ Goal – calling all nations to praise Him
- Support roles in world missions
- The priority of the least reached
- “But what if I’m not called?”
- Postmodern missionaries
- Motivations for missionary activity
- Communication tips for missionaries
- Online media strategies for missionaries and agencies
- Top 10 missions books
God’s will and me – missions mobilizer?
I work for a denomination’s world missions agency. It’s not the denomination I’m a member of though, and I had decided to pursue an overseas missions assignment through my fellowship, the Assemblies of God. Now, things have changed a bit, and I may stay longer than planned.
That’s caused me to think a lot lately about what God’s will for my life really is. Clearly, His general will for me is the same as every believer, to love Him and serve Him and be transformed by Him. Specifically though, I know I am called to a lifetime in missions, and I’ll most likely be employed in a related area for my entire career, whether I have a salary or raise support.
I’ve known for a while that mobilization and least-reached peoples are what I’m most passionate about. Communicating the vision and needs to the body of Christ is what I want to do, and I want to communicate it in a way that leads to action. I want to help people go, pray, and give. It also goes along with my desire to provide resources online to missionaries to help them learn how to better communicate with their supporters.
The work I planned to do overseas is primarily in communications – helping to make the missionary’s and region’s needs known to supporters.
Put all that together, and I’m starting to realize that mobilization is where I really belong. This quote from an article on George Verwer’s site explains it well:
“If your heart’s cry is for the whole world,
if you can’t seem to hear God directing
you to go to one specific people or area,
if you’re gifted naturally and spiritually
in communicating and encouraging,
perhaps your strategic niche is that of a
mobiliser. You can encourage, exhort,
prod, lure, hand-hold, cajole and pray whole
churches into a sharper vision of their part in
God’s global purpose.” – Bob Sjogren and Bill and Amy Stearns
New Ministry Strategy and Media Blog
I came across a new ministry strategy and media blog today, Forward Thinking. Recent posts includes topics like strategic volunteering, defensive blogging, and ministry branding. All are written from a decisively Christian view and seem to reflect a genuine desire to glorify God through the strategic use of media, technology, and business principles. For instance, in the post about strategic volunteering, the author demonstrates how the principle reflects Biblical teaching, quoting Eph. 4:15-16 in support. The blog doesn’t smack of a desire to increase a church’s size through slick marketing; rather, it reads like genuine Christian service meant to enable churches to communicate and function more effectively, for the glory of God.
The blog reflects my own desire to merge my skill in communications with my passion for world missions. I’ve thought about starting a blog or website geared to helping missionaries better communicate their stories, but I’ve never got past the thinking stage. Seeing this blog, and the (possibly new) Lucky Rock media ministry \ ministry strategy \ mobile & Web ministry group that it is connected to rekindles my dream .
Awesome Missions Videos
In an effort to recruit the YouTube generatin, TWR has released three missions videos. The videos are really entertaining and catchy. I wish I knew how to write stories like these. Take a minute and watch one; I’m sure you’ll be impressed!
