WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE
--
In an era dominated by consumerism, social media, and the constant pursuit of happiness, churches find themselves facing new challenges in maintaining relevance and connecting with their communities. As attention is pulled in numerous directions, the need for churches to adapt and engage with their audience in the digital realm has become more crucial than ever.
In today's episode of Modern Church Leader, we are joined by Church Communications expert, Mark MacDonald, as we discuss the importance of making the church relevant.
To learn more about Mark, visit BeKnownForSomething.com
--
Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at tithely.com
WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE
--
In an era dominated by consumerism, social media, and the constant pursuit of happiness, churches find themselves facing new challenges in maintaining relevance and connecting with their communities. As attention is pulled in numerous directions, the need for churches to adapt and engage with their audience in the digital realm has become more crucial than ever.
In today's episode of Modern Church Leader, we are joined by Church Communications expert, Mark MacDonald, as we discuss the importance of making the church relevant.
To learn more about Mark, visit BeKnownForSomething.com
--
Tithely provides the tools you need to engage with your church online, stay connected, increase generosity, and simplify the lives of your staff.
With tools like text and email messaging, custom church apps and websites, church management software, digital giving, and so much more… it’s no wonder over 37,000 churches in 50 countries trust Tithely to help run their church.
Learn more at tithely.com
All right, hey guys, welcome to another episode of Modern Church Leader. I am here with my buddy, mark McDonald.
Speaker 1:Mark, good to have you on the show, man hey it's really always good to talk to you and they don't get to like participate in what we just did because we just bandered back and forth about all kinds of different topics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I can't help myself from asking about AI For anybody I talk to right now. So you know, it's just I kind of need to see what people are thinking and doing and it's a fascinating world. So that's the pre-show.
Speaker 1:It is, and the thing is is, AI could probably take up a great portion of this, mainly because it creates content, and that's what we're all about, and I know that that's what you're about as well, I mean, I am an AI bot right now doing the show.
Speaker 2:It's not a real human, it's just a video.
Speaker 1:Maybe I should ask you some prompts then.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's the thing that's going to happen. You're going to have like right. I mean, I've had some really interesting conversations with pastors where they're like oh yeah, we're going to take all the material and we're going to like translate everything into, like my voice, me preaching same sermon, but it's going to be like in 20 languages.
Speaker 1:Well, did you see, though, like I think it was last week, I think, in Germany that there was a congregation of 300 that was led by an AI chat bot, and it led them through worship, scripture and then actually did a short sermon, and I mean talk about, and they knew it, they like these people knew this. They knew it, they showed up for it and probably many of them said that's the best service I've ever been to, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know about that. Yeah, okay, maybe we should edit that we're also trying to figure out where to draw the line and I don't know that might be one when the AI bot is literally doing the whole service.
Speaker 1:Well, and I don't know about you, but I've tried various prompts to see how evangelical, how Bible believing, like, how you know how close to what I believe and I kind of believe what chat GPT believes almost every single time is like really, and I've even tried different ones because I know some people have asked and they've gotten awful answers, but I can't get an awful answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely the experimentation time, like I even think Google their version Bard has it tagged as experiment. Like this is the Bard experiment. Like it's early days You're going to get a bunch of garbage, but you're going to get a bunch of useful stuff too, right, it's just this mix of like you're not quite sure, but it is. It's pretty powerful stuff.
Speaker 1:And it's. Yeah, I think Bard added that after the big international launch of Bard and it actually did have some information that wasn't quite exactly right on accuracy.
Speaker 2:Like look, google wants to be known for something. Okay, and it's not inaccurate information, so they're being very careful to know. So call an experiment and they're good. Now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you wonder if a church relied on a chat bot to actually deliver a sermon, was there somebody there to just double check along the way and then at the end say, okay, well, there's a couple of things we need to correct. Who knows?
Speaker 2:We need to keep the humans in the building. He egg. So you're a church comms guy. You've been around for a while doing this. You wrote a book. It's behind you. Look at that, be known for something. Oh, and on the desk, it's everywhere. That's the revised. That's the post COVID edition. So that's the revised, updated version. Now you're going to need to start the next one. It's going to be called the AI edition. So, just start working.
Speaker 1:I'll get Bard to write that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Tell us where does be known for something come from? What's the core of what that's all about for you and your help with churches and ministries?
Speaker 1:It all started 30 some years ago when I was working for a big agency in Canada. I was senior creative director, working with million dollar projects. And what I realized along the way? I'm a graphic designer by trade, so that's what my degree is about. And the more I move my way up into the ladder of the agency world, the more I realized it really isn't about getting everything right in the design, but it's really just how can you be helpful and how do you become known for it.
Speaker 1:So if you know a group of people who have a need in their life, we always talk about needs, concerns and goals. So it's like, whether it's a need or concern that needs a solution or a goal that somebody just needs, come alongside of me, you know the way there and help me get there. So if you can become known for a solution to a need or concern or a goal, then you can be known for something that's relevant and needed. And oftentimes in the church world, oftentimes we look up and we wonder is anybody paying attention to the church anymore? And I think that we need to somewhat gravitate towards okay. So if you're trying to be known for too many things, you'll really be known for nothing. And that's where the church finds itself oftentimes and gets to a point where maybe we should just start calming some messaging that's happening in the church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think about like the local church. Just, I mean, how do local churches get known for something? Because, you know, I just there's big mega churches and there's Big denominations and there's, like you know, there's lots of big things, but like the local church, like I don't know, there's 320,000 of them, 300,000, there's a lot of them, and you know what. What have you seen or what have you done or how have you helped churches that are, you know that, that local church there, 200 members, 300 members, 400 members Serving their community, like how do they get known for something? I can't walk us through your process for helping a church, kind of get to the other side.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I mean we have a process that thousands of churches are using, and I mean it's spelled out in the book and Ultimately, what it comes down to is effective communication.
Speaker 1:If you want to communicate with someone, it rises them falls On how well you know your audience.
Speaker 1:So if you know who your audience is To a point that you actually do know what their biggest concerns and needs and goals are, then you can you can actually Get their attention by being a pain expert. So, so you become a pain expert and and that's there in lives where authenticity with the church, we we're all inflicted with this sin nature that everybody in our community is too. So if we can authentically say you know what I, I've been ravaged by sin or I've you know I, I tend to go back to my sin nature, but here's how I've created a solution, if you can become that pain expert To the point that you can get their attention and then suggest a solution. You know that's where that's where the you know the money is. Because the thing is is that you, you want to get people to just to look up and and right now, the, the church, I mean there's so much church apathy in the community today where People drive by churches every day and they have no concept at all of what happens in that church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would probably most of them. Like you know, like there's a lot of churches in the area I live in Southern California, I mean I drive by churches all the time.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that you know you can drive by a Costco and if you've never had a Costco membership, you don't pay attention to anything. That happens at Costco is like you look in and it's wow, there seems to be a lot of people in there. What's in there, costco, okay, and then they, you, just, you just ignore it all. And then if someone tries to explain it to you, it's like yeah, so you can go there and buy something and Pay money so that you don't have to pay so much for your individual. It's like, it's like the concept it just doesn't for a lot of people. It's like just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:But people drive by our churches every day and it just doesn't make sense because you know, I talked to a lot of people on flights and, and you know, in the community and do focus groups for churches and and people like incredulously say so, you go to church every week, like every Sunday, and there are people who you know, the, you ask and yo, yeah, I attend church, but they would never think about going every Sunday, right, and so More and more people are just losing the relevancy of why do I go to church? And and the church has got to figure out when do we? Where do we draw the line so that we actually start telling people why they need to go to church and what they're gonna receive when they come to church, and then in with that controlled language? What you end up doing is you. If someone doesn't experience your church on a weekly basis, they say I'm missing that in my life and and you know good. Getting back to the person who's driving by your church all the time you know the Humorous, pithy statements that are put out on church signs is not a good reason to go to church the church sign man.
Speaker 2:So that's a classic. I just got to keep using them. I still see them.
Speaker 1:Who came up with that and they thought that's the greatest idea ever. It was probably.
Speaker 2:In its day. I bet you in its day. It was awesome, though. It's marketing, right, it's like that. You got to sign out, you got to say something. You got to draw them in. I bet you it was for a while.
Speaker 1:We fast forward to the person who has to come up with the social media content, and it's like I don't know what should we do? Just put up stupid memes and it's like that. There I filled my duty and the problem is that we're putting out content that really doesn't matter. It just becomes throwaway content. And we are the church. We have to control our messaging to a point where people are building on the knowledge of who we are, so that we become known for something that they actually need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I like to kind of make it really practical for people listening and topics like this, because I think it can just get really like. I'm already confused, I'm not sure what you're actually saying, right, like if you don't live in this world, so like maybe you can just walk through the process for, like a local church, like a local church that've been around for 50 years, they hear about what you do. How do you help them get known for something Like what's that engagement? Look like.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. The effect of communication rises and falls on how well you know your audience. So define your audience, figure out who you have, that God has planted your church in the middle of this community and how do you do that Like?
Speaker 2:what does that mean? Right, I'm in the community. What do they do to know your audience?
Speaker 1:So here's what we would recommend instead of just saying, oh, it's probably about a five mile radius, Instead of that actually plot on a map, and you can actually you can go to your CHMS and get your database and you can download your database of all your families and then take that database, take it over to Google Maps and then you can upload that database in and it'll.
Speaker 2:In Breeze. You can just look at the map. I mean that's another way to do it, Just absolutely, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:There's some way you need to see a map with all of your family units around there.
Speaker 1:And what you'll probably identify quite quickly is that there's main clustering and then there's some outliers. So unless you know that the community is kind of growing towards some of those outliers, I would remove those outliers and just create a tight polygon shape around the main clustering and then fall in love with that area. That is your reach area. Birds of a feather flock together, so if they're coming to your church they are living close to other people who are also in need of what your church has to offer. So do whatever it takes, whether that's a demographic study by hiring somebody like us, or whether you can get demographic information from just your Chamber of Commerce or Googling your area just to try to figure out. So who are the people in your neighborhood? That's like a street sign.
Speaker 2:And like besides demographics, like okay, great average age is this? Blah, blah blah, that seems kind of boring or maybe not that useful. Like what should churches try to understand about their area?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So demographics tell you an awful lot and what you need to kind of do is you need to realize so what is a large group in our area that have similar psychographics as well? So sometimes demographics help you understand the psychographic, but other times, like the demographic studies that we do, it gets into so what are their biggest needs, what are their concerns that they have in their community. And it's crazy, but most times you won't get. You know, the spiritual is not very high on the list, and that's where you know Jesus did it really well.
Speaker 1:The woman at the well walked up to him and wouldn't engage with him Like why would she at that time? But instead Jesus could have talked to her about anything and you know a lot of pastors would say, well, he should have preached the gospel to her. But instead he, he didn't talk spiritual quickly, he immediately went to water and when he brought up water she was. That's what she was there for.
Speaker 1:And so we need to figure out what is our community actually looking for in their lives, what's weighing them down or the things that keep them up at night. And if we can speak those things into our community, people would, will look up and then, like Jesus did, jesus said so what if I could give you water that you never thirst again? And then she said tell me more. And the problem is is that our churches speak really strong spiritual messages and people say tell me less, don't want that, not interested in that. Instead, tell them something that they're actually looking for, that's a solution to a need or concern, or a path or a goal. And then have them say okay, I didn't expect to get that from a church, but that's what I need.
Speaker 2:Right. Right, so you figure out, kind of your area you know your people are at and you figure out like how you know what's the area really need, like what are some of the things you know? Like again, I'm trying to think really practically, like what do you figure out? Like, oh, my area is big, like where I live.
Speaker 2:I just from living here I know there's a big sort of people move into this particular area for the schools and the sports, right, like I'm sure there's other reasons too, but I know that for sure is a big reason like this area attracts young families that want their kids to be in the school system and sports kind of comes next and that kind of stuff. So if you're a church, you know, and you kind of know that you could think along those lines, like what other things do you learn from these studies that you know churches go? Oh, I should really like these are the kind of this is my people, this is my audience. Now, how do I go find them? Where do I hang out with them? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Well, exactly so we. It's called a persona, group and or persona, depending on how, how you, how you say it. But you need to stereotypically describe the group of people. That is enough. In your community, that is a hopefully a growing group. But then you also want to compare it to make sure that you have some people like that in your church. Are there in the building? Yeah, but because you built your polygon shape based upon the families from your church, they're in that group.
Speaker 1:So oftentimes what we hear from pastors is oh yeah, I, you know, you know Frank from so and so you. And then, like, all the leadership goes yeah, yeah, that's who we're talking to, that's the group that that's represented by the persona. And then try to describe them in a story fashion. You know what are, what are they? Typically? Are they? Are they defined by their kids? Are they defined by their occupation? Are they defined by where they live? I know that we just worked with one church who the highway was kind of the marker. They were close to the highway and on the other side of the highway it was in Florida, was closer to the beach, so only certain people could ever live on that side of the highway. So what they defined their group, as was the people who wanted to live on the other side of the highway.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But they couldn't afford over there, so they built over here. So in their life, all they're, they're trying to become upwardly mobile. So how? How do how do we get better at life? And if you can start talking about it in a story fashion, then you can start saying so, what do we have? That would be a solution. That that they might say that's interesting, Tell me a little bit more about that. But because we're the church, we don't want to just help them on that level, on the temporal level. Instead, we want to connect that temporal level engagement where they say, tell me a little bit more, to the Scarlet thread of Jesus Christ that's drizzled from Genesis to Revelation.
Speaker 2:Right, right, yeah, I love that. Okay, what's next you gave us? I think step one, maybe two. Yeah, that was step that's step one. Step one yeah.
Speaker 1:Just figure out who you have to deal with. So it's like who? Who has God placed in front of you? How would you describe them? That's your persona. Then.
Speaker 1:The next thing is so, based upon what you have currently in your church, what are some of the ministries that you're doing that could come alongside of them, and they probably need them already. And oftentimes you just have to look and I mean we tend to vote by our attendance so the things that are really taking off in your church, those are things that you need to start thinking. So that's what's being successful in our community. What can we create? How can we create a thread, that one, three to five word statement that starts defining that area? Yeah, it's kind of like thinking about. You know, everyone always says stay in your lane. Oftentimes the church has no idea what their lane is, and so when you're trying to stay in that lane, how do you define that, that lane? That's called a brand positioning statement. We call it the thread. You know we help churches discover that thread.
Speaker 1:Basically, what you're trying to say is if all of the churches in your area were lined up on one street and somebody across the street woke up and said you know what? I think I probably need something from a church. And they look across the street how would they choose what church to go to? And a pastor usually says well, fortunately we're not all on one street, but we are all on one street. We're all on Google Street, right? Because the people in your community, if they're getting to a point where they want a church or they want something to help them in life, we all go to Google. And if they're looking for a church in your community, all of those churches got lined up on that first page and you have a very few amount of characters that you've got to tell people why you're different from everybody else. Yeah, and it's really about what you concentrate on, and that's all based upon the persona.
Speaker 2:What are some examples Like? Can you give me three examples of, like, different types of churches and what they focus on? Yeah, I'm sure you've seen a zillion, but I'm just trying to kind of okay, yeah, there could be three on the street, all on Google Like. Okay, like, how do I know?
Speaker 1:See, and I'm going to have to actually call up on my website, just because if you go to beknownforsomethingcom slash portfolio, you can actually see all of the ones. Well, not all of them. A lot of the ones that we've done, yeah, that's great. We put full case studies there. Let me just grab one here.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there was a more progressive church who took a look and said so, how can we become known for something totally different?
Speaker 1:And when we started discussing it, the whole idea of free to wonder came up, and so the ability you can come here and we want you to wonder out loud. And the moment that we started talking about that, there was a large group of people in the leadership and they were like, oh my goodness, we just want the community come and ask, like, because oftentimes the perception of what the church is is that it's heavy handed and we only believe these things, and they all think somebody probably came up with those things. But instead, if they were just asked the questions and asked out loud, then we can show them in scripture how. Here's the reason why we believe scripture and then here's what scripture believes. So free to wonder was a great thread that a church that we worked with, came up with, oh, and I should probably add so there's a lot of times that churches say I think we've come up with one and it'll be the one that is used by hundreds of other churches, the better together, that type of thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Go and make disciples.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and so we would strongly urge you to try to get it as unique as possible, and the standard today for uniqueness is can you buy the URL? So if our thread is Discover your Thread, if you go to discoveryourthreadcom, it redirects back to be known for something, mainly because if somebody remembers your thread because they've connected with it like the woman at the well is like who is that man that talked to me about water you would remember water. In the same sense, your community might remember only your thread, and you need to make sure that that leads back to your church.
Speaker 2:I love all this. I also know that you cover all of it in the book, so I don't want to give it all away, so we do want people to go to the website beknownforsomethingcom and check out the book. Obviously Is there any just maybe a couple kind of closing questions here as we get through it. But like, what have you done in all of this? You worked with a customer, you helped the church and you were just blown away by like the impact or the results or what you saw come after it was done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's interesting. We just worked with Jacksonville Baptist Association and anyone who knows the SBC world Baptist associations have been one of the struggling groups. So it's like they used to be known for one thing and then things shifted, so a lot of people are wondering about their relevancy. So they came to us, we walked through with them a name change, so they became First Coast churches and out of that we started talking to because you know one of the guys.
Speaker 1:So I do two crazy things. One thing is the mystery visit where the church flies me in. I get to act like a total visitor from the demographics. So we usually do demographics and so that's that. I just I love giving that feedback, but also focus groups where we sit with demographic groups, and what we heard back was you know what?
Speaker 1:The BEPs Association? I mean they just do a lot of stuff and it's like so why do you come? Like what is the one reason? And like no one could really put their finger on it, and that therein lies the problem with churches and associations. You know, just trying to figure out if someone can't use controlled language to say why they like something. You're not known for anything and they'll just choose whatever they can Google.
Speaker 1:So what we heard over and over again was how lonely it is to be a pastor, and so we came up with the thread of Don't Pastor Alone, which is a cry for help, but it's also a great solution yeah, yeah, something to rally underneath. And so don't pastor alonecom goes to First Coast churches. But they, they launched this new thread and people actually came forward afterwards and like wept openly just to say, finally, I feel like someone's listening to me. And that's what happens when you come up with a thread that somebody actually needs, and especially if it's unique and different enough so that people hear it, and then they say, wow, I finally feel heard. And that's where the church needs to say to their community we hear you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, I love that. Okay, we could talk forever. I don't want to go forever because you know we want people to check out the website and all the things, but we'll do. We'll do like round two. But a couple few questions before we jam Sure Rapid fire. First one what? What's a book, besides being known for something that you just think everyone's got to read this?
Speaker 1:Oh man, and I? I'm one of those guys that doesn't necessarily read whole books. I read a lot of a book.
Speaker 2:You get the chat GPT summary of the book.
Speaker 1:now I you know, and there's actually on Chrome Google Chrome has a plugin called gimme summary and it'll actually summarize everything on the page. But that's what I need for a book, yeah, but, but how to lead when you're not in charge by Scroggins? Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. So good, play Clay Scroggins. That's. It's a great book.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, be known for something, of course absolutely Second, what's a podcast that you're listening to right now?
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Well, I mean everyone needs to listen to the modern church leader podcast by a high league Yep absolutely. And you know, and it we're working side by side with 1230 media. Carl Barnhill, yeah, and he has making Sunday happen podcast that. That's probably the last one that I listened to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very cool. Is there any non Christian podcast that you just love business history like you know anything in those?
Speaker 1:none that I can say that would like peg me, because I always stay away from all politics. How's that?
Speaker 2:It's too good, too good the non answer. I love it Exactly. Well, dude, this is awesome Again website, so everyone can go check it out.
Speaker 1:Sure, it's be known for somethingcom and if they go to slash, subscribe, you can subscribe. I've written over 800 magazine articles and every time that a pup I get one of my articles published, we send that out by the email and then we get a whole bunch of tips and tricks and stuff so they can do that that's super cool.
Speaker 2:I mean, look, I think what you do and the concept of what you're doing to help churches is really cool. Like every church should figure out how to be known for something, right, Like I. Like it just makes like logical sense, you know. So I know we only teased out a few things, but figuring out that, like figuring it out for your local community, to where people like they know you guys, like you know the community knows you, they, you know, you're not just some random church on the corner, but you're kind of known in your community and you're known for doing something awesome and serving the community well, like that's really powerful, you know. And if more churches can figure that out, I just think more churches will be more relevant. You know, instead of instead of dwindling in size, you know, maybe we'll start growing again.
Speaker 1:Well, and I mean, the sad truth is that if left uncontrolled, it'll always go back to perception, and worldwide perception studies of what the church is all about is what we're all against, and Jesus called us to be known for love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100% Well with that, it's a great ending. Mark, thanks for jumping on the show today. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, thanks for joining us guys. We'll catch you next week on another episode of Modern Church Leader, See ya.