December 14th, 2009
Stop Trying to Reach Most People
A Lesson in Tribal Focus - The Sixth Post on Take Seth Godin to Church
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OK…I’ll repeat my comment here too!! Like the new blog…lighter colors help the design.
Provocative and useful, Will. May I suggest you doing a follow-up post with some examples? I think the concept is hard to grasp (especially for those unfamiliar with Godin’s general perspective). Shaping some examples may help the dialogue that needs to go on for many of us in our churches.
Thanks Joe- I appreciate you re-commenting on the new blog. I think examples would be great and I will work that in some follow-up posts. My home church is a great example. We design everything around effective communication to a 35-year old male. Your church is another good one at Covenant Pres- the fact that over 50% of your church is connected to Purdue. As Presbyterians your strength is represented in the vision of being a center for arts and ideas from a Christian perspective. That kind of clarity is a powerful filter for decision-making to avoid the “most people” trap.
Dear Will, I discovered this post while visiting your site today. I must say it really struck a nerve wiith me. I am the board chairman of a small (<600) church in Minneapolis MN. Last year our leaderhip worked on a focused value statement. We included a statement about our family focus in ministry. All of our leadership and ministry staff are part of a two parent intact family. We have staffed to focus on children's ministry, it is the area where we see the most growth and where our reputation in the surrounding community is strongest. We are strategically located near two public schools. But the desire of some not to "exclude" singles caused us to abandon that line in our statement. We have few singles in our church, and most of them are attracted to the multi generational family atmosphere. There is another church two blocks away that has a brilliant singles ministry, yet we go on kidding ourselves that we can do singles ministry too. Your post makes me want to revisit this, I sense that God has something great in store for us, if we will embrace it.