Putting Flesh and Blood on the Data

Arianna Huffington, recently ranked 10th on Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business 2011, offered excellent advice to those of us who desire to communicate more creatively in the church.  When asked what book has changed the way she sees things, Huffington's choice was Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber, in which 

He writes about the magic that arises when you take relatively soulless information like poll data, facts, and figures and channel them into a story with a purpose -- in the process putting flesh and blood on the data. So I guess it didn't so much change me as provide an eloquent affirmation of the power of using narrative to connect with people.

Sometimes we communicate the facts of the gospel without putting "flesh" on it.  Using creative stories can put the facts into context - the context in which it first existed and the context in which the listener can apply it - and help your communication to connect.

Trendy Churches

Last week there was a report in the ASTD Learning Executives Network newsletter, LX Briefing, about UPS.  The article stated that "ninety-nine percent of UPS's advertising dollars are spent using social media outlets or other Internet-based sites." Editor Ruth Weiss tells us that "UPS—which hires up to 50,000 part-time and seasonal workers per year and relies heavily on young workers to fill many of those positions—is using social media tools to recruit new hires. Matt Lavery, managing director of talent acquisition at UPS, realized that to reach a larger group in the prospective employment pool, UPS needed to go where those between 18 and 25 years old were looking: Facebook and Twitter."

In this week's news, McDonald's is spending a billion dollars (according to Forbes) "to make its stores more appealing to its customers." They want their customers to hang out in their stores, like in Panera and Starbucks. This is another example of how corporations ride current trends (the success of the community-friendly atmosphere of Starbucks) in an attempt to attract and retain customers. (The difference is, Starbucks/Panera doesn't have a PlayPlace or serve greasy fast food. This is an entirely different customer, whom you are not going to win over with pleather seats and soothing, earthy green and dijon paint colors.)

Every leader must choose which trends are useful for their market. Will a coffee-shop atmosphere attract new people to your church? Will social media? Will either keep people there for discipleship and accountability? Are we riding a trend because it works for someone else, or because it will help us to creatively community the gospel in our context?

Just for fun (and a bit of truth), watch this video: What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable

27 Square Inch Bag

I wrote a post about creative communication.  Then I read Andrea Swarthout's blog posting from Japan, and she did a much better job of demonstrating creative communication than what I had written.  In 111 words, she told a story, caused reflection, and pressed for action.  That's creative communication.

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27 square inch bag

Tomorrow is the 2 month anniversary of the earthquake in Japan.

Tonight they had a story on the news about families who lived within the danger zone around the power plants. They were finally allowed to go back to their homes today by a caravan bus. They were only allowed to take out what they could carry in a 27 square inch bag (about the size of a small garbage bag). They were given 2 hours. So what about you? If you had been removed from your home for 2 months, and were given 2 hours, what would you put in your bag?

Please remember to keep Japan in your prayers.

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Through a Mirror Darkly

"When a team works together in an other-centered manner, it mirrors the creativity and mutual regard that is derived from God himself" (The Leadership Bible: Contemporary Leadership Principles from God's Word, p. 383).  


Most of us would not say that our teams are perfect reflections of the Trinity.  We are a dim reflection of the unity and creativity that God created us to be in His image.  How can we become more like that image?  In what ways can we be more other-centered to bring our team to a true reflection of God's "creativity and mutual regard"?

Helping People Become Quitters for the Kingdom

Jon Acuff of Stuff Christians Like has published a new book called Quitters.  Here's a great video introduction to the thoughts behind the book.


I, and some of my friends, are quitters.  We were once employed in 'the real world,' but someone said something that made us realize that the someone who God created us to be needed to be let out to do something for which only we were created.  We may have been asked to volunteer at church in an area that seemed less like work than our 'real' jobs (thanks, Donna).  Then we may have been asked to work at the church in an area that was way more work for way less money than our jobs (thanks, Dave).  Somewhere in the process the someone that we were supposed to become got to do the something that we were meant to do, and we quit.

Pastors, think about how many pew warmers could be setting the Kingdom on fire for God, and ask God how you can help.

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Leaders, find that something in people that they are not being asked to give in the workaday world and offer to let them do it for Him.

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Quitters, stop dreaming about what you would rather be doing and figure out how you can do it and become the someone God created you to be.

Free Creative Communication Stuff!

I love coupons, discounts, and sales, but I love free even more.  Here are a few resources where you can get free stuff to help your church communicate creatively:

http://www.creationswap.com/

http://www.worshiptogether.com

http://open.lifechurch.tv/

http://www.churchleaders.com

http://wesleyansermons.com/

http://www.youtube.com/WesleyanHQ

Do you know about other good, free resources?  Share them with us!

What we've got here is a failure to communicate

Near the end of Cool Hand Luke, when Luke says, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate," he is mocking the captain, who delivered a similar line to Luke and the other prisoners two escape attempts earlier in the movie.

The captain had an idea about communication as a uni-directional passing of information. He was the boss, and what he said was the only thing that mattered. It was the job of the follower (in this case, the prisoner) to listen and obey.

Luke communicated through his rebellion that he understood but was unwillng to follow. The sarcastic irony of the repetition of the line by the follower to the leader highlights the problem with uni-directional communication. Luke completely understood what the captain was saying through his speeches and his discipline, but the captain had no idea what Luke was saying through his escapes and rebellion. Luke was right; what we've got here is a failure to communicate.

At this point you may be thinking, I'm not a prison warden, so what does this have to do with me and my creative communication?

In the creative communication process, sometimes we lose sight of the nature of the person we are communicating to - that nature which Luke confesses to just before delivering this classic line. Luke knew who he was, but the captain didn't, and so the captain's communication to Luke was lost.

When you create communication that is going out to your community, do you write it in the church's language or in the language of the community? Do you offer unchurched people fellowship with a missional body of believers based in the Word? I hope that is who your church is, but do you realize that a rebellious generation doesn't understand what that means? 

Think about an unchurched neighbor or co-worker. If you just walked up to them and started talking about what you did last Sunday, how would you define it? What words would you use? Now, use those words as you are writing the invitation to your church. Use those words on your webpage, enews, bulletin, and whatever creative communication media you send out to the community.

Creative Storytelling

Lately, books, blogs, conferences, and articles have instructed us to change our communication style, because this postmodern generation learns through story. This is reported as breaking news, as if it's a new phenomenon just discovered in this millenium. 

Aristotle said, "It is metaphor which most produces knowledge."

Storytelling is not a new concept (Aristotle wrote Rhetoric over 2300 years ago). The call should actually be to a return to storytelling that is meaningful; to the use of metaphor to produce knowledge.

In the church of my youth, the sermon exposited the gospel reading of the day, explaining what it meant during the time that it was written. I learned a lot about Bible history, but never connected what was written on those pages with how I should live my life. Even when Jesus used metaphor, the story was explained as to what it meant then, not now. The metaphor was not transferred to present day, to aid me in diagnosing my own sinful condition as compared to the holiness of God and prescribing a cure.

Church communicators who translate this postmodern generation's desire for storytelling into a need to show YouTube videos that are funny (http://bit.ly/1ahoiS) could be missing the mark. If you can fit a trunk monkey into your series promo or sermon to illustrate truth, go for it. But if you play it just for laughs, you haven't told a story - you just added noise to the communication process that potentially blocked people from hearing the truth.

When you are creating your church's promotional collateral, announcements, worship set, and sermons, do you think in metaphor? Do you consider exactly what word/picture/video/song would best communicate truth and produce knowledge to this generation?

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Application: In John Mark McMillan's song How He Loves, one line says "So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss." When David Crowder Band covered the song, this line was changed to "So heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss." In an interview (full text found here: http://bit.ly/1ihiHj), Crowder said,

As the band researched the song, they found that churches had been put off by the term "sloppy wet kiss". David says that some found nothing appealing about it. Others thought that the word "sloppy" should never be associated with a God who is so precise and engaged in the lives of His people. As a band, they had a decision to make.
"I was disappointed in this," he confesses. "It’s a shame that many church settings are missing out on this because of those words. It means that the metaphor didn’t work for some people. Those who love the song already have it and have experienced it. So it was a no-brainer. I’m very careful with what we put in front of people that gives [them] an understanding of who God is what He does, how He interacts with earth, and this is one place that I would not assign sloppiness."

No matter how you feel about the lyric, it's the thought process behind the metaphor that is important. You need to know your audience and what metaphor will best communicate truth in your environment.

Tonight I'm Gonna Manage Like It's 1999

This is a bit academic (because it's taken straight from my posting to a classmate in Organizational Theory and Design), but there's an application after the academia, so please read through:

Eisenberg, Goodall, and Trethewey (2007) define communication in organizations through the lens of historical versus modern organizational theories. Classical organizational theory would define effective communication as "top-down clarity and the cultivation of an authoritative style" (p. 285). If the employee followed the bosses' instructions well, communication had been successful. The human relations theorists would argue that effective communication might be measured by how the employees felt about the communication. Employees were not just the passive receivers of communication, they became active parts of the communication process. Moving into a postmodern era requires that communication take into account the cultural, social, economical, and political environment in which the communication takes place.

What this is saying is that how leaders communicated to employees during the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries didn't cut it in the Mad Men era of service organizations, and the good vibrations of the 1960's and 70's don't resonate with employees in 2011.  Are you trying to communicate to the next generation of leaders in yesterday's terms, with old-fashioned manager-knows-best top-down directives?  Today's generation needs you to understand the environment in which the communication is taking place, what the symbols of language represent to them, and how important a collaborative style is to them.

Eisenberg, E. M., Goodall, H. L., Jr., & Trethewey, A. (2007). Organizational communication: balancing creativity and constraint (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's.

And the award goes to...The Set

Last night's Academy Awards ceremony was a reminder to communicators about how important environment is to the communication process.  Based on the evening's Twitter feed, the most impressive element of the Oscars was the creative visual environment.  The producers created an excellent environment for the broadcast, with funny videos, enormous screens, great lighting, holograms, and music.  (I especially loved the way videos were shown on massive, arching screens.) 

These elements were impressive, but they competed with, and stole the show from, the communicators.  No one was tweeting anything positive about James Franco.  The tweets about Anne Hathaway were nice, but left you feeling like Paula had just told her how pretty she looked before Simon told her never to do this again.  They did not interact well with the environment.  They seemed to be in competition with it, and the set won.  Hands down.

As the communicator, your message can be enhanced as you interact with the visual environment.  Every element of your services should move toward one idea, and your communication should be the apex of the idea.  Do not rely on cool sets, graphics, videos, and music to communicate your message for you. 

It's not a good thing if people are complimenting the creativity, instead of the creativity complementing your message.  At the end of the day, you don't want to hear people say, "That (fill-in-the-blank creative element) was so cool!"  The reason for creative elements in church services (and awards shows) is so that people will say, "That (fill-in-the-blank creative element) really helped me understand what you were saying."