After you watch the video, read 'Top Ten Church Communicator's Mistakes: #8 'Brand Name Overload'. Reising's thing seems to be revising the way the 'Church' presents itself to the community, and he does have some interesting things to say. His subject in this particular post is about the over-naming of all things 'church', which he illustrates tongue-in-cheek with the fictional sign below:
Reising then translates the various 'ministries':
Very amusing indeed.
And, unfortunately, all too true.
One thing that I greatly appreciate about Reising's approach to "'church' marketing" is his assertion that most churches need to look deep inside before trying to reach outside, and that is certainly the case! Consider the following from another entry, "Promotion without connectivity is destructive. I often share with church leaders that most of the churches in the United States should not promote themselves. Why? Simple. If your current membership is not actively inviting people or visitors are not staying, there are reasons why. If you do an advertising campaign, you are asking people to come in your doors only to realize why no one wants to invite anyone to your church. They never come back and leave to tell all their friends what they did not like about your church. This is not good marketing."
With this I agree whole-heartedly.
However...
In looking at the signs above, as – well – nauseating (not to make too fine a point on it) and accurate as they are, the point that most stands out to me is the name of the 'church', "Made-Up Church." Unfortunately – very, very unfortunately – that is exactly what we have all across the land on every corner in every community – Made-Up Church.
Take a close look at either of those signs again. What can you identify there that actually comes from the Bible?
If you were to revise the sign to reflect it's scriptural basis, it would look like this:
I dunno. Maybe you could leave the cross at the top.
This sign illustrates so well the very thing that we have been saying is completely wrong with the 'church'. Supposedly the Body of Christ, we have abandoned the traditions given to the Ekklesias and have replaced them with Made-Up Church. Instead of coming together as a corporate whole under our head, Christ, we are divided up and split into every segment of the populace that you can imagine: children's ministry, youth ministry, young adults ministry, seniors ministry, women's ministry, men's ministry, singles ministry, divorced ministry, Hispanic ministry, etc., etc., etc. – and as if that were not enough we will now creatively enshroud these non-biblical divisions in hip neo-Christianese encryptions.
Brother, we have liberty in Christ to make up whatever churchy ideas you can think of, but we are set free from the legalism of the traditions actually given to us in the Bible by Jesus and His apostles, so don't try to put those chains on us!
Have we lost our minds? Have we really lost our ever-lovin' minds? How on earth can millions of followers and leaders and 'pastors' go to 'church' every week and not cringe at the obvious differences between what we do inside those walls and what the Bible plainly says?
As K.P. Yohannan said in Christ's Call, the American Church confuses obedience for legalism.
Boy is that the truth.
OK, just as one small example; the whole, entire, complete purpose of the 'body' analogy in the Bible is that the Ekklesia of God is supposed to come together in one place, as one body, for one purpose, each contributing what each one has to the functioning of the whole. But we intelligent, educated, industrial,
institutionalized, conveyor beltlings have streamlined and economized it into a crate containing a box of noses, a box of ears, a box of knees, a box of feet, a box of hands...
Why do we keep holding that little book up in the air and proclaiming that it is God's will for us? What on earth do we suppose that we mean by that?
Folks, we can do better. He died so that we can do better. He gave us the Spirit so that we can do better.
It is time to re-examine the whole thing from stem to stern and top to bottom.
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