Okay, this will just be fun for a Friday.  It's pretty much officially Christmas season.

What's your favourite Christmas music? I'd love everyone to weigh in one:

• Your favourite current Christmas CD

• Your all time favourite Christmas CD

• Your favourite Christmas song to sing on Christmas Eve

Here's mine:

• Current: Relient K – Let it Snow Baby, Let It Reindeer
• All Time:  Charlie Brown's Christmas (love Vince Guiraldi)
• Church: O Come All Ye Faithful (O Come Let Us Adore Him) – Passion (as in Louie Giglio) version

There we go.  Can't wait to hear yours.

I have loved the comments on the blog this week. I wanted to highlight this comment from Laurie, who was responding to the post on adding value to people's lives this month. 

Why is it we can treat strangers better than we treat the people we know best?  Likely because we haven't judged them yet.

That's why so many couples find the early years are the best years – no long history of judgment there.  What if we lived every day with our spouse like it was our first date?  What if we gave everyone we knew the benefit of the doubt – the same courtesy most of us would extend to strangers?  What if we forgave the past in a way that allowed us to be truly alive in the present?

That's my challenge today.  Got a full day to embrace it.

It's early this Wednesday, but you and I are already writing our story line for the day.  Your story line is that narrative that you and I bring to every day we live.

I was tempted to complain about the snow today.

In my view, it's about three weeks too early. It snowed a bunch last night, just like the night before.  I had to fire up my snowblower. The snow from yesterday was still inside the chute and intake system (what's that thing that scoops up the snow called?) and it froze up, so I had to hand dig all that frozen icy snow out of my snowblower.  Then after five minutes of snowblowing the snowblower ran out of gas.  The cars were frozen over too, so I had to chisel them out….

My guess is that reading the paragraph above didn't energize you, it drained you.  That's the point.

Complaining belongs in the circular file – cross shredded and even burned. 

Complaining is something I want to banish from my personality.  So I'm writing this post to remind myself that it's just not helpful in any way.  It's not.  Stop.  Cease.  Desist.

The trees were gorgeous this morning, did you see that?  Ice and snow.  Kind of looks like Christmas.  I love that.  Bet I could get the car cleared off for Toni if I went out there now….

Much better story line.  Besides, the people who see the opportunity and the possibility often are the ones who seize the opportunity and the possiblity. 

What's your story line today?

Last week, we talked about why we stopped a lot of outside marketing at Connexus in 2008 and asked some questions about when marketing might be helpful.

Yesterday we had one of our final 2009 budget meetings.  We had $5000 budgeted to market a parenting series we're doing in February of 2009. The problem is, you can't reach many homes with $5000 when your ministry area has 200,000 unchurched people in it.

So here's what we decided: we'll try to do more for less. We cut the marketing budget by several thousand dollars and decided to focus all of our marketing on putting invitations for friends into the hands of people who already attend Connexus. What we mean is things like cards and invitations our attenders can share with friends and family, or even gift cards for meals out for people who come for the first time. That's less money, but we hope it's more impact.

Here's our thinking:

• $1000 designed to produce resources regular attenders can use to share with their friends might produce greater results than $10,000 or $20,000 randomly distributed in neighbourhoods.
• It will help us stick to our belief that growth happens best when people invest in relationship with friends who don't go to church and invite them to come with them.
• Viral growth is always the best kind of growth. Buzz generated by people who love something is always compelling.  That's how the early church grew.
• People who come in on the invitiation of a friend have a friend to guide them through their spiritual journey.

So in 2009, no external advertising.  Just a few well made resources in the hands of attenders who can share it with friends.

Would love your thoughts, reactions and ideas.

For the last six months, I've been asking myself this question: What can I do to add value to the lives of the people I'll be in contact with this week?"  I've actually been praying about this quite regularly for a few months.  I want to leave a positive impact, mainly because I think that's mostly what God does when He interacts with us. 

But that idea can get lost in the hyper-spiritual.  What does 'adding value' look like with skin on?

I've especially asked the question on Mondays as a way of focusing myself before the week hits me and eats me for dinner, which kind of happens if I'm not careful.  And it's a live question because if I don't fight the drift in my life, I can easily become absorbed in what I'm thinking about or preoccupied with and not make anyone's world even somewhat better.

I realize that unless you lock yourself away in a room, all of us are going come into contact with dozens or evens hundreds or thousands of people this week. 

Here are some thoughts:

Adding value to interaction with strangers:

• Smile
• Hold the door open for them
• Strike up casual conversations with people who work in stores

In a closer relationship (and at work and home):

• Listen to people
• Encourage people.  Catch them doing something right.
• When faced with a problem, ask a question rather than make a statement. It avoids judgment and keeps everyone engaged in the solution.
• Assume the best.  Most people are trying to do the right thing, even if it doesn't seem that way.
• Learn something new and use that learning to help equips and empowers others.
• Forgive quickly.  Judge slowly.

That's just a short list of things I've been thinking about.  What do you think about that?  Helpful question?  What would you add or subtract from that list?

Most of us don't sign up for tension in our lives.  But tension is the way we grow.

Muscles grow only when they have tension.  Elastic bands don't do anything unless they are tense.  Same deal with the belts in your car (or around your waist).  Suspense grows in a movie plot or book plot when there is tension. 

Frankly, you're probably only interested in a story line when there is tension. 

That's why I love the new series we start this weekend at Connexus: Revolutionary Love.  We are going to attempt to be more generous to the poor than we have ever been.  In four weeks we are:

• Going to cram an ambulance full of non perishable food and toys
• Try to purchase 1500 mosquito nets to save 1500 African children's lives from Malaria
• Build a health clinic in Guatelmala and bring jeans, socks and underwear to the kids there
• Raise money to pour into the local mission of Connexus for a strong 2009

The issue?  We planned this series in the summer, before the economic downturn started and the economy headed south.

The tension?  We decided not to downgrade our goals by even $1, believing the community needs love more than ever before.

So we head into this weekend attempting to be the most generous we have been this year while the economy sputters.

What I love about that recipe is I believe it is going to stretch me and stretch our congregation more than we've been stretched in a while. 

Think back to the stories you know in scripture:  was there ever a story without tension?  Ever a time where God grew a person or leader without stretching them.

These is an exciting, dramatic and uncertain time.  I think it could be a great opportunity.  What do you think?

So yesterday I blogged on the downside of marketing in response to Tony Morgan's post about why churches should stop marketing.

Really grateful for the questions/comments Nick and Dan offered in regard to yesterday's post, so here's a little more.

• To me, starting a church is as much as question of narrow-casting your vision as broadcasting it.  While all church leaders want numbers, I think it's better to have 15 core leaders who share the same heart and strategy than 100 people who have competing strategies sitting around the table.  If I was to market, it would mostly be only to get the right people around the table. I think that can be done relationally in start up or through carefully targeted marketing. (North Point started with no marketing, but some partners use them.)

• Once you have your core, and the DNA of your church has gelled, marketing can be a friend when it empowers your team to more effectively invite their friends.  Rave cards can help alot and we are constantly putting materials into the hand of our regular attenders to help them share the message (for example, starting with our next series, anyone who asks gets a free CD of each message). 

• I think the best application of marketing, if a church is going to do it, is to connect with unchurched families over parenting. The average unchurched parent doesn't lie awake at night wondering what some senior pastor is going to talk about next…but they do lie awake some nights wondering whether their kids are going to be all right. Most parents just don't know the church can help them.  If a church has a great family ministry strategy, some marketing can help make the connection.  Since helping families win at home is the heart of our mission, and the only money we really have set aside in 2009 is to market a series and strategy aimed at parents we have planned for February and March 2009.  But we are going to deeply encourage our regular attenders to get their friends to that series, so it's a way of supplementing our strategy.

Overall, I think the withdrawal from spending tens of thousands of dollars on marketing has been healthy.  It has

• Refocused me on ensuring that personal connections between people and Christ and people and people are being made.

• Given us a more accurate read on what's really happening at Connexus.  No 'fake' growth.  Any growth is from buzz that people give to people.

• It has better focused who comes to our church.  There has been a little less church shopping and more personal connection.  For me, that's a win.

Other thoughts?

Tony Morgan, New Spring Church guru, wrote a great couple of posts
on why churches should stop marketing.  He makes a good argument that
marketing can push you away from your true mission.  I'd love to hear
what you think of it.

I wanted to share my reflections on it too.  A year ago I might have disagreed with him.  Not so much any more.

In the church I was with before Connexus,
we had done a lot of marketing (at least for Central Ontario).  We did
flyers, billboards, radio ads and more to invite people to church.  We
always said the best way we wanted to grow was through personal
invitation, but we marketed anyway.

Without a doubt, people with
no church background came to church because of our marketing, and some
of them came to faith.  That's awesome and I wouldn't trade it for
anything.

We have marketed less since starting Connexus. 
Frankly, we didn't do an ideological shift.  We just stacked up our
first year expenses and an easy thing to not spend money on was
marketing. So we cut it.  We've done a couple of small flyer drops and
one full page ad (last Christmas) – hardly enough to register one drop
in the ocean of material people see.  Other than a weekly radio show we
do, we don't spend any money on marketing regularly.

Being a year with almost no marketing though, I think I've learned some of Tony's lessons and a few more. 

• When you don't market, the only way to grow your mission is to have people invite friends. 
  When you rent theaters half a day a week to host church, you gain
  little profile. People hear about us now because someone who is excited
  about Jesus and the environments at Connexus tells someone else.  Only
  now, a year later, are we starting to get any recognition by reputation
  in the community.

• Once we cut our marketing, we realized fewer people were telling
  their friends about Connexus or what it meant to follow Jesus than we
  had assumed.  It's given us a chance to cast vision far more clearly with our folks.

• When people don't invite their friends, one of two things has happened:
  • You're not doing a good enough job in realizing your true mission as a church.
  • They've been in a Christian bubble too long and have forgotten what it's all about.

• Not marketing made me and others reflect on our purpose. 
  Jesus said
  we would be known as his followers by our love, not by our image. But
  it's easier to promote than to really love.  I hope our next series (Revolutionary Love)
  might begin to put our toe in the pond on loving the wider community
  unconditionally.  I hope in a year we are known by our forgiveness,
  love and grace.  You don't need to market that.  It sells itself.

• We realized that marketing really attracts church people. 
  Is it that they want to be associated with successful churches?  But we
  are keenly aware that our mission is not to suck other churches dry,
  but to suck the malls, beaches, hockey rinks and ski hills dry.   Not
  marketing helps us NOT attract people from other churches.  That's good.

• I think in the end, we stopped asking people to "be" the church.
  If you look at the early church, they grew because Christ was with them
  and they loved and gave radically.  They didn't mail people flyers. It
  makes me ask whether we are bold enough to actually be the church in
  our culture, to love as radically as Jesus loved.

I don't want to come across as owning all this stuff yet.  It's a
growing edge for me.  I want to be more radical and bold in my faith,
not less.  And if this portable church is going to impact a community,
word of mouth is a great way to go.

I know at both our campuses people show up every weekend because somebody told them about Connexus.  That excites me. 

Maybe we are becoming the church. 

I have found myself almost unable to express how grateful I am for our volunteers lately.  They are off the hook amazing. 

So I'm asking myself, why is my gratitude at an all time high?

I think there are several reasons. 

First, people have never served so wholeheartedly. But sometimes people throw their hearts into things and people are not grateful.

Second, I think the last year has forced me to drop all expectations around people serving. Portable church is hard.  Every Sunday, heavy gear needs to be
hauled, set up, used, and then promptly torn down. Not just for Sunday
morning, but for student environments and special events.  I have come to a point where I simply realize that to expect anyone to serve like our people serve is ludicrous.  They do it willingly, joyfully and freely.  I had to give up expecting the kind of service we've seen at Connexus a long time ago. 

So because I don't expect any of this from anyone, here's what I experience instead: I see people's kindness, their willingness to give.  I see their goodness.  I see them as a gift.  We don't deserve any of their goodness. And that makes me grateful.

The best thing I can do to increase my gratitude is to drop all expectations of people.  Try that at home: if you expect someone to take out the garbage and they don't, you resent them.  If you expect them to do it and they do it, you're not grateful.  But if you don't expect them to, and they do it, then it's a gift.  You're just grateful.

If you're looking to increase your gratitude, try this: just drop your expectations. Anyone tried that?  How's it working?  Does this resonate?

I have loved the opportunity to connect with leaders on the Orange Tour this year. We get to talk about family ministry and leadership, two subjects I love.

But as I sat down with lead pastors in over half a dozen cities, a few things became clearer for me.  We often talk about being aligned on vision as leaders. I know I talked about it for years with leaders.  But this fall it became clear to me that maybe it's a bit of a false discussion.

Here's why: just about every follower of Jesus I know is reasonably aligned on vision.  We love God and think Jesus is who He says He is.  Think about every church vision statement you've seen.  How many have truly been off base?  Some are written better than others, but have you ever really disagreed with one?  They're pretty much all restatements of the great commission.  Mainline…evangelical…non-denominational.  We all pretty much say the same thing.

Here's where we differ: not on vision, but on strategy.  One church prefers a hundred programmes.  One church prefers all things to be directed to groups. One church prefers cutting edge music, the other like blended worship.  One church defines a particular strategy for family ministry, another simply let's various strategies arise.

When you can begin to separate out vision from strategy, it does several things:

• It stops the discussion from being personal or "moral".  We agree on the mission and vision, we just have different approaches to accomplishing it.
• Narrowing the issue down to strategy allows a team to become more aligned.  It's far easier to unify a team around a common strategy than even a common vision, because a strategy is specific.
• It allows us to celebrate differences.  Do I love our strategy?  Completely!  So does our staff and leadership team.  I think it's great (not perfect, but still great).  But I don't have to disrespect another church's strategy to celebrate ours.  After all, we share the same vision – we're just taking different routes to fulfilling it.

There's more to say on this, but I wanted to throw this out there to see if it resonates at all with you. Is this a helpful way of thinking about this?  What benefit to leaders and staff might come out of thinking through things this way?