If you are a church in a coastal city, you may want to consider sand advertising. Leaving an imprinted message in the sand is a great way to build awareness for your church in a memorable way. There are two ways you can do this.
- Beach’n Billboard
Currently only servicing the New Jersey coastline, Beach’n Billboard can imprint 3,000-5,000 advertisements in the sand for your church. One beach imprint zone is roughly a half mile long by 250 feet wide with advertisement dimensions of 12′ x 4.5′.
- Imprint Sandals
These sandals have a diecut in the outsole that leaves an impression of your church’s logo or website address in the sand with every step you take. Check out FootPrintsUSA or Right Sleeve Marketing to get your own.Â
If your community spends most of their summertime at the beach, sand advertising offers a great opportunity to reach them.
What is tryvertising?
According to TrendWatching.com, tryvertising is “a new breed of product placement in the real world, integrating your goods and services into daily life in a relevant way, so that consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not your messages.”
Could it work for the church?
Free trials and samples are a great way to spark continual use of something, but how does a church offer a sample experience of their service without people in the community actually having to visit the church campus? Perhaps we can learn something from Nike.
What Nike did.
Nike created trial vans. Throughout select areas of Europe, Nike is sending vans stocked with over 1,000 pairs of shoes to meet people where they run and offer them the opportunity to test a new pair of Nikes. By strategically showing up at popular running spots and athletic events, Nike can bring their experience directly to the people who need it the most.
What if churches had trial vans?
What if churches fed their live Sunday worship feed via satellite to trial vans with big screen TVs that could strategically show up at the places where non-church goers go on Sundays? What if these trial vans gave people in the community an opportunity to “experience” what church can be? Most people tune out traditional church marketing efforts, and even when advertisements are noticed there is little guarantee that these people will “try” your church. These trials vans eliminate the two steps of creating awareness and getting people to church.
Of course, there are a lot of ways that these vans could be done wrong. A few essentials would be:
- The Look
It needs to look appealing, non-threatening, and able to communicate that something special is going on. Presentation is everything. The van will probably need custom graphics (think of radio promo vans); anything too normal will just look like a van with a big TV in it.
- The People
Representatives from your church could act as the greeters and information center for the experience. The right team could make or break the success of your trial van. They need to be well educated on every ministry in your church.
- The Literature
Keep the van stocked with any literature a first time guest would be interested in.
- The Service
Your church service will actually have to be good for this concept to work. The sad truth is that only a small minority of churches can pull this off. Average will not do.
- Permission
Be sure to well research your community’s laws and requirements for this type of activity. Get permission for everything. Consult your church’s lawyer to evaluate any problems.
If your church tries this or something similar, be sure to let me know how it works. For now, it is simply out of the box food for thought. We must never stop considering new and innovative ways to reach people with the gospel.
[via CoolBusinessIdea.com]
The Linked Word Project is a free online Bible study resource that links words and phrases from the entire King James Version of scripture with the pronunciation, origins, and definitions of the original Hebrew and Greek words. It is an excellent resource courtesy of Bob Jones University.
Tutorial Blog has created the ultimate list of free Photoshop brush sets. Particularly noteworthy are:
Share the wealth. Tell your designer friends.
In a recent study, the Harvard Divinity School investigated “How religious are America’s college and university professors?” What they discovered was:
- 23.4% of all professors describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics.
- 36.6% of professors from the 50 best doctoral-awarding universities describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics.
- 61% of all psychology and biology professors describe themselves as either atheists or agnostics.
In contrast, only 5.2% of all Americans are atheists according to the Baylor Religion Survey.
[via The Tufts Daily]
Are you looking for a good seminary? Dallas Theological Seminary offers a helpful seminary comparison tool on their website that lets you compare over 25 different seminaries based on living factors, school data, and degree costs.
With Valentine’s Day 2007 almost upon us, it has come a long way since its creation in 496 AD by Pope Gelasius. In fact, The History Channel offers us the following glimpse of what it has become in American culture:
- 188 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, making Valentine’s Day the second-most popular greeting-card-giving occasion. (This total excludes packaged kids valentines for classroom exchanges.)
- 50%+ of the U.S. population celebrates Valentine’s Day by purchasing a greeting card.
- 50%+ of all Valentine’s Day cards are purchased in the six days prior to the observance.
- $2.6 Billion worth of jewelry was sold in February 2006.
North Point Community Church (Alpharetta, GA) is offering a free behind-the-scenes look at their administrative culture including free downloads of many of their administrative documents. The site is called Nside Admin, and it explores the inner workings of North Point Community Church’s
- Church Government
>> governing documents
>> leadership committees
- Human Resources & Accounting
>> north point ministries general organization
>> personnel
>> budget
>> financial reporting
>> childcare reimbursements
- Facilities
>> general information/layouts
>> events
>> maintenance
>> safety & security
- Information Tech & Web
>> it operations
>> database management
>> internal website
>> faq
If your role in ministry is church administration, be sure to take the time to learn how NPCC does things. Learning how other churches do what you do will often teach you new ways to be more efficient and effective. Never stop learning.
[via Monday Morning Insight]
