Young Adults and Word-of-Mouth

On another blog, I have been musing about word of mouth, young adults and how to promo events. This year, I made a decision to NOT do a print brochure for a young adult event that I have been chairing for a couple of years. It wasn't particularly popular with the Baby Boomers who help to facilitate the event, but I was (and still am) convinced that the cost-to-benefit ratio for a full color glossy brochure just didn't justify the brochure.

Then Michael sent me this post from an unrelated-yet-related blog, with this quote, which was quite insightful:

MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."

If the conclusions drawn by these high-powered, high-paid "gurus" is correct, we have some homework to do, in order to understand how to get the "word" out about events for young adults. What do you think is the way to infect the word-of-mouth machine with info about new and upcoming events and the like?

A good belly laugh in the morning....

Today, I saw a funny YouTube clip that Paul put on his Facebook account. I clicked on one of the related links and got a real belly laugh out of this one! Have a look!



hahahahaha.....I hope you enjoy as much as I did this morning!

Genealogy in the comics!

Some of you would know that I have Genealogy (Family History) as one of my hobbies. Erika, my 11 year old daughter, has also taken a fair interest in my research as well. A fellow genealogist made note of the above "For Better or Worse" comic strip yesterday. I enjoyed reading it because it reminded me of the enjoyment that Erika and I get out of doing genealogy together. :-)

Like the family in the comic strip, I find that far too often there is more than we can fit in a day. It is really encouraging to have something that Erika joins in with me, and says, "That's OK, Daddy. I've got time."

Nostalgic for WA already -- the mourning process...

I had my last concert today with A Cappella PRAISE and have started to feel quite nostalgic about our life here. We are mourning the fact that we are going to be leave Western Australia, and it is really coming home to me of late! This morning, at the concert, the Director asked me - on the spot - to introduce a song.

It was "Ride the Morning Winds", and it was fitting that I should introduce the song because of all the upheaval in our lives right now. I cried right through the song, having introduced it based on our situation at present. We have so many things to do before we hand over the keys to our house in late October....so many unknowns, so many goodbyes, so many plans to make....well, it is overwhelming at times. Most times, actually. The song talks about the fact that regardless of WHERE we are or WHAT we are doing, we are not alone, God is there with us. ("I can ride the morning winds and you are there, I can sail the farthest seas and you are there...I can never be lost from you.")

Well, as I said, I was feeling nostalgic, so this evening, I asked the family if they would like to go watch the sunset over the ocean. We rode out to Coogee Beach (the one on the WEST coast, for you Sydney-siders!) and watched the sunset. It was so beautiful, and it is one thing I will DEFINITELY miss! It was neat because Erika -who tends to live in denial at the moment - said, "Can we do this a lot more before we leave?" It was a special time for us, and we look forward to doing it more because we will be HOURS from the coast in Virginia, not minutes! ...and it will be the East Coast too, so we won't get any sunset over the ocean.... I wouldn't say that sunsets over the Blue Ridge mountains aren't spectacular, but we will sure miss the Indian ocean!

An interesting thing happened while we were on the end of the jetty...like the people in the photo. A guy came up from the lower deck to speak to us. He wanted to give us an invitation to his church. I think it is probably the first time we have had that happen in our time in Australia! He was very personable, and didn't shy away at all from the "unique" nature of his church. He talked about the miracles that happened there all the time. The brochure they are handing out is a bit overboard about the supernatural, but I would be interested to know how many people respond positively and end up a part of the church. The guy gave a very positive reflection of the church, I thought. :0)

Who Am I? v.1.0

OK, I had seen so many other people do it, that I decided to join in. I cruised on over to mypersonality.info and did a personality test. (No! I didn't fail!) The trouble I have with Meyers-Briggs is that, about halfway through, I feel like I want to answer BOTH answers on some of the questions! :-) Ever felt that way? Maybe I am just a confused person...

Kinship Project

I just finished a kinship project for my Anthropology class. I was to chart my family back at least to my great granparents. Since genealogy is a hobby of mine, it wasn't so much work to come up with the data to work with. The hard part was working within the space constraints that I was allowed. I had to fit the whole chart on a single 81/2 X 11 sheet of paper.

Now...for the clincher. I had never counted the number of my first cousins before. When I finished the chart, I counted the cousins and came up with 53! That is just my 1st Cousins! No wonder it was so hard to fit them all on the page.

Is 53 cousins a lot of cousins? How many do you have?

Mind Dump: 12 August 2007

Wow. Yesterday was a pretty full day. I spoke at two churches, and facilitated a "Speed Dating" event to help my church get to know the couple who are serious candidates to take the role of Interim Pastor. It was a lot of fun, and I was feeling so good last night, about the way the day had gone that I didn't want to go to bed. :-)

In the morning, I spoke at our church. I spoke on something that runs deep in my veins. Ephesians 2 talks about the work that God does in us to prepare us for the work He wants to do through us. I don't know what everybody else got, but I was quite moved by what the passage had to say! :-)

Charles Dickens penned the words, "Marley was dead; to begin with." as the opening line of "A Christmas Carol". What a funny way to open a novel that will go on to become one of the best known of his writings! A significant character in the drama is dead in the first sentence of the book!

Well....Ephesians 2 opens by saying something very similar. Only the opening line of this chapter is, "You were dead." HUH?! I really enjoy the jolt of the paradoxes that Paul lines up in this chapter. You were dead...but God made you alive. You were an object of wrath....but God loved you so much he showed mercy. You were going in a direction 180 degrees away from God's plan for you.....and he chose YOU as the one to continue His work in the direction He is going! Is that not ironic?! Fun stuff!

God brings stuff across your path that He either plans to use to prepared you for the work you were designed to do, or because it is the work you were designed for in the first place! There is something about being told that God has chosen--in advance--something good for you to do that is quite motivational. Especially when you realize that this means you are a unique part of the work that God is doing in this place. What if you are the ONLY one who could play that role?

Think about Noah, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob...etc... There are times when God seems to be unwise in His choices because He narrows the plan down to the point that it depends on the obedience and faith of ONE person! Awesome thought!

So. That was my topic on Sunday morning.

Immediately after the service, we played A Game Similar to the Game from 'Fill in the Blank Network -- Who Wants to be a Millionaire?". (PHEW! Avoided the copyright infringement issue there....I hope!!!) We had 10 questions. 5 about the couple we were getting to know, and 5 about our church...and we answered them about each other. It was a fun way to approach a serious task. I think it helped to "defuse" the possible tension over the whole matter of finding an Interim. I had fun anyway... :-) (BTW, I found a GREAT Powerpoint Template if anybody needs one for an even, I can give you a pointer to it... )

Sunday afternoon, I crashed for an hour or so, in order to have some of me left for the evening service where I was to speak.

Sunday night, I spoke on Romans 10, at a church where I knew some people, but had never attended. The message was very well recieved, and I think it helped them to think about mission in a whole new way. I use an illustration for the whole series of events that Paul outlines, and put a chair at the "end" of the series. So it is Sending > Preaching > Hearing > Believing > Calling on the Lord....and sitting down. The PROBLEM is that Paul wouldn't put a chair at the "Calling on the Lord" position like we do. He would make it a cycle, I believe.

Who better to fan the flames of those who are passionate about reaching out than those who have just been reached with the message?! And that will sweep them into the process as they learn to share their faith, and the cycle runs again. This is not a linear process....though we often tend to think, "The Gospel is about me not going to Hell." No, the Gospel is about me coming into relationship with God, and bringing others to that relationship!

So...you have had the "opportunity" to sit through two sermons of mine back-to-back! Exhausted? I know I was, but it was a very good exhaustion. :-)

GO! Reachout 2007!

For the third year running, I am involved in the day-to-day operations of GO! Reachout. GO! Reachout is a special mission event for young adults in Western Australia. I enjoy the event, but I must admit that some days, dealing with the logistics of day-to-day planning and the occasional "committee-style" meetings can be grueling. What I *LOVE* about GO! Reachout is the opportunity to spend time with Young Adults who just love Jesus and want to find the opportunity to serve him to the fullest! This year, we are also going to be the Premiere Opening event for the "Voices Tour". I am looking forward to the event, and to how it can be used to encourage young adults to consider their response to the Great Commission. Drop by the website and have a look! Let us know what you think... Thanks!

Want traffic bad enough to pay $2500???

Bloggers will go to great lengths to get traffic to their site. Ashwin is will to pay big bucks! Ashwin is offering a contest where the winner will receive $2500 for simply posting a blog entry about the contest. So...if you have a blog, cruise over and see if you want to help "relieve" Ashwin of $2500!

Have a read here:

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

Enjoy!

...we now return you to your regularly scheduled entertainment....

Do we need vocational missionaries or laymen??

Hi Y'all. I was reading this morning and came across this, which I enjoyed reading, but it tweaked a thought for me. Why do we always chase after some extravagant or extreme and miss the nuance in our understanding of ministry. I really enjoyed reading that article, but I was bothered that they felt it necessary to sort of put down the idea of trained, professional missionaries in order to raise the profile of short-term, layperson centered mission work.

I am not one to advocate the importance of "professionals" as more highly valued than "lay people". I don't make that distinction very strongly at all. However, it isn't necessary to go to the other extreme either! You don't have to devalue career missionaries in order to make the amazing potential of short-term lay ministry visible. Each has their place. Neither will function as it should without the other being a part of the picture.

The other thing that bothered me about this article was when Bob Roberts, Jr. seems to be taking a stab at "Business as mission" and summarily dismissing it as "an insult to the businessman". It would seem to me that either Mr. Roberts doesn't understand business-as-mission, or at best has been given a misunderstanding of what business-as-mission is.

In my experience, it is the business people who are EXCITED about business-as-mission, because it validates their role AS A BUSINESS PERSON in the whole mission endeavor. It doesn't leave them in the position of "financier" that they have been relegated to for so many years. It welcomes them to the front-lines of ministry. Why would that be an insult?

There are many things I don't understand. I try not to dismiss them based on my lack of understanding. I wish Bob Roberts, Jr. would have done as much in his treatment of business as mission. I wish that we could develop a vision for mission that would embrace the value of career missionaries without devaluing what laypeople can bring to the picture. Can we also raise the profile of short-term and lay-involvement without devaluing the career missionary?

I agree HEARTILY with Dr. Roberts that the Great Commission was given to the WHOLE church! We each have our role to play. Let's not make it a competition.

EDIT:
I need to add something here. :-) It is funny how you can write something and create (or be the victim of??) a tone that you never intended to inject into your own words. It seems that sometimes Dr. Bob Roberts, Jr. is misunderstood. I guess when you make a seemingly negative statement regarding a "time-honored" institution, emotion charges forward and the backlash can be unexpected. I found this post on Dr. Roberts' site that reads like a script for what was running through my mind when I wrote this post earlier! So....Dr. Bob....we agree, I think. :-)

What should church look like?

WOW! I just finished reading something for my Cultural Anthropology class that was a wakeup call! I have been baffled for some time about the issues facing "small churches" as I have been a part of MANY small churches and the only thing that changes seems to be the nametags! :-9 The issues seem to transfer from country to country, denomination to denomination, and only the actors playing the different roles change.

Today I was reading Charles Kraft and some words lept off the page at me! Here is what he said:

When large extended families are a major part of the local society, as in many parts of Latin America and elsewhere, any given church may appropriately be made up largely of a single family. In rural United States, we often have churches comprised of associations of families. In urban areas, where our associations tend to be more of individuals or nuclear families, our churches reflect this. This is right and good, for there is not a single pattern for churches in all parts of the world. God uses whatever the culturally appropriate practices of groupness may be to provide the social basis for His local churches. This is the point of the so-called homogeneous unit principle that has been a part of church growth theory from the start

What do you think? I KNOW I should have seen this AGES ago, but I guess when you live in the forest, you don't pay much attention to trees. I grew up in a church that is basically an association of families. We always denied it because we thought it was bad. But maybe it is OK?
The bigger issue is that the population growth in this traditionally rural, farming area tends to be people from a more urban perspective, running from the ills of the urban society they came from, for the "peace and safety" of rural life. Is it possible for this rural church to have an influence in the development of another church more appropriate to the urbanites who are moving into the area? Or does it have to be a whole new organism...grown from scratch?