Tony Morgan announced that a free airplane is available. Granger Community Church used the crashed plane as part of a set design for a sermon series that they had last fall. They gave it to New Hope Community Church who is now finished with it.

The airplane is looking for a home. If interested in obtaining such a rare resource, check out Tony’s blog for more details. But hurry! There’s only one plane available.

Writing a marketing plan can become a rather cumbersome task. The art of understanding the necessary scope of details can be overwhelming.

At least until now.

Last month, Kelly O’Dell introduced The World’s Shortest Marketing Plan. No, it’s not a ground breaking cure-all solution, but it does simplify much of the process. In essence, the world’s shortest marketing plan is a grid of 24 questions. One side of the grid addresses the “Who”, “Why”, “When”, “How”, and “How Much” of the marketing process. The other side of the grid addresses the traditional four P’s of marketing - “Product”, “Price”, “Place”, and “Promotion”.
[Download your own copy of Kelly's plan.]

It gets better.

About the same time that Kelly was posting his micro marketing plan, a [More]

I just posted February 2006’s Church Relevance newsletter to the articles section of our site. It discusses the importance of creating a ministry that is marketable before investing time and money into marketing your ministry.

If you want to find out what the four biggest areas of your church’s marketability are, read Marketability First.

We will be posting articles from Church Relevance’s newsletter a few months after we send them to subscribers. If you would like to receive the latest issues of Church Relevance’s newsletter as soon as possible, you may sign up to begin your free monthly subscription to our newsletter.

Christianity Today has a good article on seven ways to measure your church’s ministry. The article states that “that most people rate church atmosphere within the first 15 minutes of their first visit.” The below seven areas will most likely contribute to how people rate your church’s atmosphere on their first visit:

1. Sensing the presence of God. “Experiencing the supernatural dwarfs everything else as people rate a church’s atmosphere.”
2. Others-centered. “An others-centered church is immediately interested in new people, what they need, and how the church can help.”
3. Understandable terminology. “Healthy churches tend to speak in terms everyone can understand.”
4. People who look like me. “Our level of comfort can be high or low depending on how quickly we find someone else who looks like us.”
5. Healthy problem handling. “What makes a healthy church is not the absence of problems. It’s how problems are handled.”
6. Accessibility. “High ratings go to churches that are ‘barrier free’ in every sense of the term.”
7. Sense of Expectancy. “Most healthy churches are hopeful churches.”

If interested in reading more about the seven ways you can church, I encourage you to read the full text at Christianity Today.

David Armano at MarketingProfs:Daily Fix wrote an interesting article on creating an effective online experience. I particularly enjoyed his three truths of effective interactive marketing:

1. Draw the customer in - get their attention.
2. Reward them with meaningful interactions that somehow influence their lives positively.
3. Provide them with valuable experiences they want to use and are inclined to share with others.

Although created for the Internet, these guidelines may be applied to the church growth as well.

1. Draw people in. Get them to come to your church.
2. Influence them positively through meaningful relationships with the congregation, but most importantly, a meaningful relationship with Jesus.
3. Provide a valuable church experience that they share with others and invite and bring new people to church.

Making a personal connection with people is a key factor to success. It is important in the corporate world, and it is important in ministry.

Teenage alcohol problems are nothing new to youth ministers, but this research is. The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding highlighted several interesting links in their recent Youth Understanding e-Update. One featured link is The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth’s 2005 Status Report on Underage Drinking in the United States (full report). Some noteworthy findings are:

• “More youth in the United States drink alcohol than smoke tobacco or marijuana, making it the drug most used by American young people.”
• “Every day, 5,400 young people under 16 take their first drink of alcohol.”
• “In 2005, one out of six eight-graders, one in three tenth-graders, and nearly one out of two twelfth-graders were current drinkers.”
• “Girls are binge drinking more, according to all three federal surveys, while boys are bingeing less or increasing their bingeing at a slower rate than their female peers.”
• “According to a national study released in 2005, more than 60% of eight graders and over 80% of tenth graders said it was fairly easy or very easy to obtain alcohol.”
• “Every day, three teens die from drinking and driving” and “at least six more youth under 21 die each day of non-alcohol related causes, such as homicide, suicide, and drowning.”

Ironically, nearly two-thirds of teenagers favor the legal drinking age according a poll conducted by ICR.

Another interesting article is WebMD’s article on the influence of alcohol-branded gear on teen drinking.

USA Today published an article this morning about the wave of anger building over gas prices in the US. It’s nothing new. We experienced the same high prices last summer which were aided by Hurricane Katrina. Last year, Wal-Mart reported their customer base being affected by the high gas prices, and many people dramatically changed their lifestyle to cope with the rising costs. Did last year’s pricing influx jar society enough to get them prepared for this year’s surge or will we continue to see people making dramatic changes to cope with this summer’s gas prices?

According to a survey by USA Today and Gallup Poll, “more than 70% of respondents said they would make adjustments in their daily life if gas prices remain high.”

Could this affect the church? Potentially. 33% said they would cut back on driving, and 9% said they would stay at home. Of course, at this point, it is all talk. There are a good number of factors involved in the “if” and “how” and “to what extent” rising gas prices will affect each church. I recall hearing about a church last year that gave away gas cards as prizes during a special event.

How did gas prices affect your ministry last year? Have you or do you plan on doing anything special like gas card prizes in response to gas prices? Feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

I saw this on Boing Boing, and it seems so useful that I thought someone in the church could really use it. However, I am not sure how many church maintenance men visit our site.

If you are interested you may buy your very own measuring tape tape at The Museum of Useful Things for a current price of $8.00 for 50 yds.