Bulletin Issues

This morning I went to a church and received their bulletin. In reading it two places jumped out at me and a couple questions came to mind. The quoted parts are altered to protect the guilty, innocent, and others. A little background. This is a large church, not sure if “Megachurch” is the proper term, but one of the largest in the area, at the same time they have more people watch the service streamed online each week then who attends a service live & in person.

One Church, Two Locations

The <Church> is one church meeting in two locations – <location 1> and <location 2>. Both campuses of the church are fully staffed to serve you, with a wife range of ministries for all ages available on one of both of the two campuses. The overall ministry is led by Senior Pastor <really great preacher guy who rocks> (also our primary teaching pastor) with <another pastor> serving as the Campus Pastor in <location 2>.

What about the thousands of “meetings” around the world due to the web?

Small Groups

Groups meet throughout our region and are comprised of 7-12 individuals who desire to enjoy the friendship of other Christ followers, to develop a dynamic faith and to share life together. If you would like to be a part of a Small Group:

<location 1> Campus – Come Wednesday nights at 6:30 p.m. to a Small Group Connect Event (beginning January 7)
<location 2> Campus – Mark the connection card or call the <location 2> office.

What about the people outside these two areas? How should they find people?

General Thought
The general thought goes back to a presentation that a great pastor once presented on the growth and changes of the church:

the whole focus was to get people to come to a campus
the whole focus was to get the members to go out to bring people back to the campus
the whole focus was to enable people — to help empower and transform them — so they could go out and be the church where they are

For some reason, it seems like this church, which is where I saw this presentation, has forgot the focus, or at least is missing the biggest area of growth potential to achieve their mission.

This church already has people who drive to it each Sunday from as far as ah hour drive away … you are not going to get those people to your campus on Wednesday, not to mention the thousands of people who watch the services online. This church should be commended, they do a decent job with providing the services online in a streaming format and MP3s of the sermon portion, yet they are still missing the next step — really podcast it, with show notes.

With show notes, when someone has a question they type into a search engine that was covered in a sermon … there is a good chance it will come up and that person will be helped. With the current format, only people who already know or learn about it from a person.Â With podcastingÂ it, the people can automatically receive updates.

The other question is “why limit it to just the Sunday morning stuff?” Why not record other meetings and discussions? Record everything, heck, you could even have a group of musicians (if a church has a number of good ones) who could work on songs together and then release those, but don’t just promote “Hey we have a CD …. CD … did you hear me ?? CD CD CD CD” … tell the stories. Let the artists talk about what they were thinking, feeling, and considering when they had the flash of brilliance. Then promote that, not “NEW CD, give us money!!!!”.

Sorry, that was not related but due to another thing I have seen a church do … same or different does not matter, the point still stands.

Your promotion efforts and your achievement of your mission is and should be the same if your mission has anything to do with “teaching” “proclamation” “development” “education” or “transformation” and Jesus Christ.

Last Thing
As the lines in a great song goes:

Iâ€™m not trying to be a nuisance.
I just think we can do better than this.
That was simply my two cents.
You can, you can, take it or leave it.

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