No Excuses in 2011!

Was chatting with some good friends this week and we all got a little riled up as we dreamed about the future of how churches and ministries do marketing and design.

What we came up with, and what I declared at that dinner was - there's no excuses in the year 2011 to have bad design, a lame website and lack of passion and innovation in our marketing our churches to our community. We are bearers of the greatest news in the history of the world. We must not settle for poor quality or less than passionate attempts at portraying these truths in the Gospel to a lost and dying world around us!

My generation speaks fluently in this "language" of social media, design, innovation, creativity, world wide web. If you want to reach us, you need to speak our language. A friends recent blog states: "a recent study showed 52% of users would not return to a website because of its ascetics! That means if your church website is ugly you are guaranteed half of the people who visit will not return." And in another great article: "The church website has been a great way for people to meet us before ever actually meeting us. This has become common in every other aspect of life. We want to know if a restaurant is good and so we look it up online. We want to know if we should spend money to go see that new blockbuster movie so we look it up on “Rotten Tomatoes”. The same is true for those looking for a church."

Obviously we can only work with what we currently have access to and what we know, but we should give it all we've got! 

On one hand, we know God uses the "foolishness of preaching" (1 Corinthians 1:21) and foolish and weak things to shame the wise. (1 Corinthians 1:26-31).

And on the other hand, Colossians 3:23 exhorts us, "whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." How much more so when we are speaking of the work of the Kingdom of God on earth, the salvation of men's souls and the mission of the local church?!