10 Mistakes the Church Makes in Media

These are my notes from one of the breakout sessions at the National Outreach Convention a couple weeks ago. The session was 10 Mistakes the Church Makes in Media with Phil Cooke. I thought it was good enough to share. Not all of this is directly from Phil Cooke, some of it was added by me, but since I'm writing this off of my notes I can't really remember which is which.

1. Lack of Creativity. We don't come up with our own stuff, instead we just rip off what everyone else has already come up with. We steal logos and make them Christian, or have Christian versions of certain products, or even certain phrases. Only we like those kinds of things, to the rest of the world we just look stupid.

2. Bad Writing. We try to write Christian movies and most often just fail. When is the last time you saw a really great Christian movie? I know there are some like the Chronicles of Narnia that do really well, but most are just sad. I'm thinking of movies like Fireproof, Left Behind and Hangman's Curse. These might be good movies, but are any of them box office hits? Instead of good Christians making movies, we need more Christians making good movies. These movies don't have to be "Christian" they can be just good clean movies.

3. The Lingo. We speak in a completely different language then the rest of the world. With Christianeze words like salvation, grace, and redemption. Sure most people understand the general concept but they still don't really understand us. Some definitions of these Christianeze words can be found at www.marilavell.com as she works her way through the alphabet.

4. Media is a two way conversation. We think that media is all about telling people things or pushing an agenda. But we forget that people can communicate back to us with by either responding or not. If we pick up on this communication we can see what actually works and what doesn't.

5. Everything communicates. When a visitor walks in, everything makes an impression: the paint, the bulletin, the music, the people, the bathrooms, the chairs, everything. So we should look around and see what we can find. Have a spot where the paint is chipped? it may look harmless to you, or you've just gotten used to it, but to a visitor that leaves a small impression that says "they don't care." If you have bulletins that are folded crooked, you may not notice, but visitors will see that and think "they are lazy, they don't care."

6. Understand the power of the name. All you have to do is go to Google and type in "funny church names" and you'll see why. Even if its traditional to include the name of whatever town your in, think about how it sounds when you say it. Also think of whatever alternative meanings could be taken from your church names.

7. We don't speak the language of design. Unless you're in a mega church who can afford to hire a media designer, you're bound to end up with poor designs, or cliches. We need to make sure our media design reflects our congregation. Cooke says there are four images we need to avoid, simply because they are used too often. These are Flags, globes, doves, and flames. I would add Lighthouses to that list, but maybe that's just because I grew up near the coast.

8. Understand the power of a niche. Instead of trying to appeal to every single person on earth, we need to find a niche that we fit into. Appeal to a single group of people and do it well.

9. No brand unity. There are churches where the bulletins show one logo, the screen shows another, and the decor is an entirely different logo. This shows a lack of brand unity. You want to be sure that everything you produce (bulletins, newsletters, stationary, website, powerpoints, and business cards) has the same basic design and logo. If people can recognize your logo easily, they are more likely to remember you church in the future.

10. Understand context. Make sure your sending the right message to the people in your group. For example, you don't want all you media to represent older retired couples if your church is entirely young singles.

11. (my own) Not looking Professional. I find it very annoying when you can see misspelled words on a slide, or bad grammar, inconsistent spacing, etc. I also don't like when you can see what the person on the computer is trying to do. Like when you can see the cursor on the screen, or if they are showing a video and have to drag the video window from one screen to another. There are programs you can download that will help you look professional. If you don't know how to do this, then get in contact with the media department from a larger church and ask them.

Update time: we played our last intramural football game today against off campus and apartments. They dominate every year simply because they are all older, and the ones who show up are usually more athletic. We lost 12-20, which is a lot better then I thought we would do. It was lots of fun though, and they will play in the finals in two weeks. I'm hoping they win so we can say we lost to the best team.

Supposedly I will have a job soon, I applied for an online job that was posted to the school website, and was told to fill out a bunch of forms and such. I thought that I pretty much had the job and was just waiting for the go ahead, but I haven't heard anything from them in over a week even though I've done everything they asked.

A lot of people have been talking about Thanksgiving plans this week. I really don't have any plans. My dad is having surgery the day before, and me going home would probably not be any help to him at all. So I'm going to be staying in the dorms. Most people feel sorry when I say this, but it may be nice to have only a few people in the dorms for a few days. I figure I'll catch up on homework, and sleep, watch a bunch of movies, maybe even read a book (thinking Dawn Treader since that movie is almost out). One of the professors here opens their house to students on thanksgiving, so I figure I'll go to dinner there.

I guess I'm not interesting/ San Diego.

I was recently challenged by the lovely Keshia Witthuhn (checking with her husband if I have permission to call her lovely :P) to be more interesting. (yes I got permission) This all started with me apparently not being very comfortable with who I am. Even though I've been in Church and been around encouraging people my whole life, and I've heard all the cliches about being yourself. I guess I'm not really being myself. I try to excuse it with saying "I am being myself", but one point she brought up is to pursue what I'm really passionate about. And it got me thinking, "Am I really passionate about sitting around on my computer all day visiting websites that are only mildly amusing?"
In all the spiritual gifts/ talents/ personality/ etc. papers I've had to write here at Northwest I've said my passion is for media. So why aren't I doing anything media related (aren't? am I not? hmm. grammar confusion). So what I want to do is start making videos. I don't know what for. I could do a Vlog (video-blog, for those non computer generation people), but that would probably depend on if I can even keep up this blog on a regular basis. My only issue with videos is I don't have a camera. But that's just an excuse, If I really wanted to I could use my computer's web cam or I could borrow a friends camera. So I will see what I can do in the video department, and if after a while you don't see some sort of video from me, I give you ALL (most likely it will be Keshia) permission to yell at me.

Ok, now update time. I did go to San Diego last week with one of my classes for the National Outreach Convention. The way I put it was that it was a bunch of famous pastors telling other pastors how to do outreach. I think our group of college students were the only ones below the age of 30 there. I discovered a few things while I was there, lets see how long the list becomes.
1. I like the sun!
2. I really don't mind dressing up (casual dress up) as long as its not hot enough to make me sweat (in this case there was AC)
3. Christian comedians can actually be funny. Seriously, I have seen some Christian comedians who were just bad.
4. At most conventions (comicon, PAX, E3, etc) they give away shirts and samples and stuff (called Swag). Well the Christian version of Swag is books. I came home with about 15 books, one of our guys came home with 51 books, all for free.
5. Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff (highly recommend) may be a humorous book, but there are still lessons to be learned in it. stuffchristianslike.net
6. They apparently have a New and Updated version of the NIV. So its a NNIV? UNIV? NUNIV? Anyway, I'm still not sure whats so new about it.
7. I would rather drink the hotel's black coffee than what passes for lattes in south California. I even went to Starbucks and got an iced raspberry white mocha (rather then my normal white americano, which I was sure they would screw up.) And instead of the shots being bitter or burnt, it was waaaaaay to sweet.
8. Whenever I go to the beach I feel like I'm covered in sand even if only my feet touched the sand.
9. The only difference between Children's ministry majors and Youth ministry majors is that youth majors don't like kids. Both youth and children's majors are people who don't want to grow up.
10. No matter how many times I write it I always want to spell it Sand Diego, or San Deigo. Or as Micheal Anderson would call it, the dirty waffle. (wait for it, say the name slowly, or fast, until you get it.)
11. I like flying, except for the being stuck in a metal tube in tight seating for long periods of time.
12. There was a lot of emphasis on outreach being a lifestyle, not a program. One of the booths was www.notafan.com which emphasized not just being a fan of Jesus, who sat on the sidelines and cheered. But being a follower who got out on the field and worked with Jesus. This seemed a big theme through the whole conference.
13. I attended a session called "10 mistakes the church makes in media" that helped me realize how cliche and stupid some of our stuff is, maybe that should be my next post. hmm....

At this point I could go on but this is already a longer post than I thought it would be. So I will wrap it up here and say goodnight.

PS For those who still don't get number 10, it's San Diego= Sandy Eggo= Dirty waffle.
PPS (PSS?) I really should proofread my posts. I've edited this five times now and it hasn't even been an hour. (make that six. now seven).

bad communicator

I realize I'm not very good at communicating with people unless I see them constantly. In one of my previous posts I mentioned I was interning at Redmond Assembly with the youth group and my mom commented saying it was the first shes heard of it. The same thing happened last week when I mentioned I was going to California (more later) this week. I hadn't even mentioned this to my parents at all. My parents aren't the only ones I do it to. I realized that I hardly ever talk to my best friend, Richie, who is currently working in Pullman and waiting to get back into school there. I think. I don't know, when the semester began he wasn't even in Washington. I hardly ever talk to my siblings either. So I think I will try to work on that over the coming months.

Ok, California. This week my youth outreach and evangelism class, along with the children's evangelism and outreach class, is going to San Diego to volunteer at an Outreach conference. I guess normally they go to the LA Dreamcenter, but this year the outreach conference is going on and since that's our class subject they decided we should go to that. Other then the conference I'm not entirely sure what we are doing there, I heard mention that we would be going to the beach but who knows. Anyway it is 10:30 at night and I have to be up at 5 AM to catch the plane tomorrow so I am going to sign off.