Seth Godin wrote a book called Purple Cow “Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable”. In short the story of the purple cow goes like this.

Seth and his family were on a road trip and his kids were in the back doing what kids do, fight, and his wife was zoned out. As the road stretched on they came across some cows and suddenly the fighting sounds ceased. Seth looked in his rier view mirror to see his children starring at some cows. Then just as quickly as the punchfest ended it began again. Seth then asks the readers why this happened and what would happen if those cows had been purple instead of normal old cow color. He says not only would the kids stop fighting and stare, but he would have pulled the car over. The whole family would have gotten out and many photos would have been taken. They would have most likely jumped the fence and petted the purple cows. Those cows would have been remarkable. In other words they would be worth speaking about again (re: marking).

What about our faith, our church are they remarkable? Are you a purple cow? If you take the whole marketing thing away and apply it to our faith it really does take on a whole new meaning. Our faith is worth discussing, it seems our “leaders” are remarkable as of late, unfortunately. Eastgate is remarkable! The people that fill the big room and corner every Sunday are genuine and loving, and that, to me, is remarkable. You are remarkable, if you choose to love others more than yourself. If you don’t think Jesus was remarkable consider this, more books, songs, poetry, and speeches have been written about Him than anyone else who has ever walked this marble. I would say that makes Him ultimately remarkable.

What about Jesus, Christianity, Eastgate is remarkable to you?

Hollywood has been pimping people for a hundred years. They have chewed up and spit out hundreds of thousands of wanna be actors and actresses and then wiped the corners of their collective mouths and let slip a satisfying burp.

Now they are ready to pimp the church.

You see it’s the job of film execs to make sure that a film will be well received by the public. They want sex, and they want violence because that is what sells! There has never been a consorted effort to advertise to ‘Christians’ because the truth is, Jesus lovers all over the world sit in movie theaters chalk full of scenes we are supposed to abstain from just like everybody else … so why advertise to us any differently? Enter Mel Gibson and the The Passion of the Christ, and everything changed.

Exec on Rocky: “I want to pimp the Christians, and make them put our banners on all of their blogs and websites, but how do we go about that?”

Marketing Guy: “Just add one line about faith and they will jump all over it”

Exec: “BRILLIANT”

It’s not that I am not excited about this movie coming out … I am, as a matter of fact I almost got into a fist fight earlier in the week when a friend of mine started making fun of Sylvester’s age, but c’mon. You can’t add some clever tag line and think we will jump all over it, oh wait yes they can, and yes we will. CRAP .. I want to be Buddhist.

(disclaimer: Rocky execs: I am sure you didn’t use the word pimp | Everyone else: please remember this is my knee jerk reaction. I will be back, at some time in the future, (probably after seeing the film) and I will bust out my thought out, prayed about thoughts.)

The facts are these.  1. Our purpose is to love God + 2. Our purpose is to love others.  Everything else that comes with our faith are just details.  You may be a Christian who chooses to live in the details or you may decide your life is better spent just trying to master the first two purposes.   If your like me loving others ‘as much as I love myself’ is about as difficult a task as they come.  I believe that God knew how difficult it would be for us to love each other, but He also knew that His beautiful sacrifice would be the example that would stir men’s hearts to action.  His love for me, the King of the unlovely, has stirred my heart.  It is now my hearts great desire to love those that the world deems unworthy, unspecial, and unlovely.  Today I was able to speak to the ministries director at the Panama City Rescue Mission about having our youth ministry help with some of the programs that they are providing.  I pray that the youth of Eastgate will see through clear eyes the love that God saw when He looked down at us from His heavenly perch.

Yes this is a shameless plug, and I will concur that his may not be the correct venue, but since I write on Monday’s I get to do stuff like this.

The youth of Eastgate are amazing! I am sure you were already aware of that, but for a few minutes I would like to explain to you exactly why.

I believe youth are a wonderful example for the church. They are enthusiastic about our faith and dive in head first to whatever study we are currently in. They are hungry for truth, and show up to every bible study, youth meeting and worship service that is offered. They also show their faith with actions. At least once a month they are serving the church, or the community in some tangible way. You probably don’t know this, but they once cleaned up after a wedding and then picked up all the garbage that had sprinkled the ground at the Panama City Rescue Mission, just because they were asked to! They are both hearers and doers of the word, and that makes me excited, but where I think they shine ever brighter is in their love for each other. They have had more than one conflict, cried together and for a moment wanted to annihilate one another, but in the end, love prevails and they are back, stronger than ever. We really can learn something from these young people. We can learn to love our brothers and sisters.

Hey, isn’t there even a verse about that or something? (wink, wink)

Click Here to See More Photo’s From Last Nights Operation Christmas Child Event.

While working on a sermon awhile back I was once again struck at the awesome love of God. I am floored at how God chose to extend His loving hand toward us, his broken children. It’s an easy equation really. One that shouldn’t require much discussion. God loves us like crazy, Sends Jesus to show His great love, Jesus is a perfect example, and then we are told to love like Jesus. Pretty simple right? WRONG! There is nothing easy about love, and right when you think you have it all locked down Jesus throws in ‘Love your enemies’! The wonderful thing is though, we do have His example. Without it Love would have no definition.

When have you felt his daddy arms around you?

As a photographer one of the things I love about digital shots is the ability to immediately erase any shots that are blurry, too dark, or just plain messed up.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our lives had that delete button? Earlier in the day I was discussing television shows with a group of people I respect a great deal. At one point in the conversation the most elderly of the group brought up the fact that his wife enjoys watching the ‘Ellen’ show. After allowing this info to sink in for a second he immediately followed it up with, ‘Well, she thinks she’s funny. We don’t condone her lifestyle or anything’. It was in this moment I wish I could just hit delete and walk away.

As Christians we don’t need to make statements like that. I don’t believe it’s necessary. I mean if my friends were talking about how much they like me and then said ‘Dustin’s a fun guy to hang out with, but I don’t condone his thoughtlessness’ I would feel weird. Sin is the absence of our Lord and Savior. We [Christians] need to face the fact that we are all infested with it. It should make our hearts heavy when someone lives a life apart from the King. We shouldn’t be more worried if others think were condoning sin. The religious thought Jesus was a condoner of sin, but He was instead sent to demolish it. Some talk, some love .. I want to love.

There have been many moments in my life that I wish I could hit the delete button. Many times I have put my foot in my mouth, showed disrespect to another, or was just plain rude. One of my favorite promises is that when we ask for forgiveness God tosses our sin as far as the east is from the west. God has the ultimate delete button. Ever have an incident where you wish God would hit it?

Sometimes words dance. Sometimes they go together like peanut butter and chocolate, sometimes they don’t. Church & Marketing are two words that simply don’t gel. Unfortunately many churches gauge success by numbers and dollars. When the numbers dip, they run an ad in the local paper in order to get butts in seats, and dollars in plates.

I believe that church marketing starts with you. You go to work or school everyday and you have hundreds of interactions with others. You choose to love those around you or act like a jerk. You have the ability to be a very real example of Jesus to those around, that to me is the greatest billboard for Christ that exists.

For more info go to www.ChurchMarketingSucks.com

What examples of church marketing bug you?