You need to sell your church! In fact one of the key roles of the senior minister is to be the chief salesman for your church. Now I know that when you hear the word ‘salesman’ in the context of the church you instinctively withdraw, rightly not wanting to be like the colgate-smile Televangelist, nor wanting to “sell-out”! But you need to sell yourself and your church because you have a brand to sell.

Every church has a brand, and the likelihood is that you’re well overdue a rebrand! What’s your brand? Well take a look around, it’s your church logo, website, notice board, news sheet, vision statement, church building and your reputation in the local community. All these things and more are part of your brand, how you view yourselves and how you want to be viewed by those around you. Surely then there is an obligation for your church, part of the visible expression of God’s Church to present yourselves in an attractive manner.

Consider for a moment what the following things say about a church; a news sheet full of typos, a notice board with peeling paint, the use of clipart and wordart, a website last updated over a month ago, a church logo designed by a well meaning amateur, no presence on social media websites. Let me suggest two things that these say about a church. It cares little about how it presents itself to the world and consequently it actually cares little about those it’s trying to reach with the gospel.

When God created the world he sat back, looked at it and said “It’s good”. Have you ever thought what the great designer might say when he looked at your church website? There was a time in the 1990s when poor design was excusable, when we were ignorant in our extensive use of Time New Roman and Comic Sans – if you’re sell using those fonts please stop. But today there really is no excuse for churches to brand themselves poorly.

Three Design Principles

Here are three design principles that any church can use to improve their brand and the way they sell themselves to those they’re trying to reach:

Simple – Branding should be like Ronseal (“does exactly what it says on the tin”). How often does a church fall in to the trap of using a confusing name and unhelpful jargon, tell the world who you are and what you do, don’t complicate it, use the KISS principle: keep it simple stupid.

Consistent – How many fonts do you use in your church resources? How many variations of your logo or mission statement do you have? Churches tend to have lots, often presenting mixed messages. Limit the number of colours, fonts, logos, slogans you use and you’ll present a much clearer, consistent message.

User-Centric – The design of websites and resources should be focused around the needs of the user, after all they’re the ones who need to access the information. It’s been said that the church primarily exists for the benefit of it’s non-members, whether that’s true or not is not the point, but when we think about making our church websites user-centric, that must surely include the user who is not a church member.

In the last few years I’ve helped two churches successfully rebrand themselves. Consider the case of St. Mary’s with Emmanuel, Hailsham, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue does it? In this situation the biggest need was a new name, which was changed to the perfectly legal “Hailsham Parish Church” or HPC for short. Changing the name of your church sounds radical, but it could be very simple and very effective.

Since I began blogging about 7 years ago I’ve seen how easy it can be to be driven by the pursuit of traffic, links on blogrolls, retweets, shares and follows. My moment of fame came after successive awards when I appeared for about 30 seconds on Radio 5 Live!

Sometimes I think it would be great to make a name for myself [see Genesis 11, that kind of thing doesn't go well]… to get on TV and radio, to have Twitter followers in the thousands, to be published in real print (not just Lulu)… the justification is that if I make a name for myself it’s a platform to talk about Jesus. Of course the true motives of all of us are never that pure…

Maybe I’m being a little unfair… But… there are some who claim the label “Christian”, but who use the label simply to advance their own fame and personal political agendas. This group seems to be ever increasing, Christians who are out to promote controversy and who have become self-appointed spokespeople for Christianity. Sadly, some of the spokespeople for the church are Media Whores, who sell out on their faith and sell out on the rest of the church for the sake of a newspaper column and their TV/radio appearances.

To be honest I don’t care what Lord Carey says about Christians in the UK being persecuted, and I care even less that Giles Fraser disagrees with him. Here’s a radical Easter message for all you Christians who are craving some media coverage… Jesus. If you need something to say this Easter you don’t need to talk politics or bash other Christians you could just talk about Jesus. Simples… Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again… talk about that this Easter!

Brothers and Sisters, please don’t be Media Whores. Please don’t sell your faith for the sake of making a name for yourself, for the sake of getting an invitation back. You may or may not get media opportunities as a Christian… don’t seek it, because you’ll only be seeking to promote your own name… if it comes, talk about Jesus.

I like Christian conferences. I’ve helped run them. In short there’s generally good teaching, opportunity to meet with friends, meet new people and leave feeling encouraged to keep going as a Christian. I might even attend multiple conferences.

So far this year I’ve been encouraged to go on conferences or day events about; the gospel, church planting, pastoral care, preaching, sexuality, prayer, the CofE, evangelism, leadership, youth ministry, music ministry, student ministry, urban ministry, rural ministry (no doubt suburban ministry is next) not to mention the larger events like New Word Alive, Bible by the Beach and Keswick. Now these are just some of the Christian conferences/events represented by Conservative Evangelical Christians in the UK.

In broader evangelicalism in the UK there are plenty more conferences… Spring Harvest, Soul Survivor, Momentum, New Day, New Wine, Youthwork Conference, Youthwork summit, HTB Leaders, EA… and many more that I’ve never heard of. Yes I know each conference has it’s distinctives, different flavours and emphasis, but young get the feeling there’s a lot of replication going on.

Do we need all these conferences? Could we not work together? I love the idea behind Together for the Gospel, an Independent  Charismatic, Presbyterian and South Baptist working together for the sake of the gospel and to serve the church. Can we find any similar unity in the UK? I was encouraged when New Word Alive began… there were all sorts of people there and support from Newfrontiers and Soul Survivor… they don’t seem to be there any more, why not?  Show me something that comes close… I doubt whether you could find four leading Conservative Evangelical with different approaches to ministry who would work together on something like this… let alone anything broader!

Why do we seem more in to empire building than kingdom building?

Why do we seem more concerned with our names than Jesus’ name?

Why do we find it so hard to show our unity?

It’s Crazy!

* The flyer pictured is only representative as it was the latest one I received. Not a particular verdict on that event.

I wouldn’t say I’m especially generous, but we knew that we wanted to do something practical by way of using this gift to help others. Previously I’d done a couple of trips to Malawi where we’d worked with Area 50 Baptist Church, a small church in the capital Lilongwe.

Although they are a passionate, growing church one thing they really desired was a keyboard. They were teaching the Bible faithfully, witnessing in their community and discipling new believers, but many younger people wanted to go to the bigger churches in town where they had more flashy music (a familiar problem). They had a genuine desire to improve their music ministry so they could grow the gospel work in their area.

One of the Deacons who ran a second hand clothes business had already pledged about £50 (serious money in his context) but the church were unable to make up the rest of the money. So I was able to give them £200 to make up the difference and they could buy their keyboard. This wasn’t spectacular generosity on my part, it didn’t leave me out of pocket, and I’m not writing this so you all know what a generous soul I am… but nevertheless it was exciting to see how God could use the money he’d given me to benefit Christians around the world…

Today I received the pictures of the keyboard… It had taken a while for the money to transfer, for the purchase to take place and for photos to be emailed over… but worth the wait to see something that I didn’t really need used for God’s glory in Malawi. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that giving is itself a gift… I think this is partly what he means, when you see something like this is makes you want to give again!

What went wrong it FTT? Apart from that this is a pleasing report on Hugh’s seventh year. He is clearly making good progress in most areas and showing himself, despite his reticence, to be an able boy. Let ‘active participation’ be his watch words next year and then this good report will be an excellent one. At the same time however I do hope he doesn’t loose his subtle, dry sense of humour (and eye for the faintly ridiculous) that makes him such good company! – Hew Wright

In a scribble my grandfather attributes this ‘humour’ to my mother… let’s hope I don’t loose it!

In 1999 I was 13 years old. I suspect by this point I was at the very least skeptical about the role of Santa in Christmas, however this did not stop me making a comprehensive Christmas list! A list which was feared lost forever, until my Aunty recently found it in a clear out. So here is the list…

Christmas List 1999

Rushden & Diamonds football shirt – £30

Midtown Madness (microsoft) – £20

Now Dance 2000 – £15

Jennifer Lopez CD – £5

Blackadder 3 (video) – £15

Sony Walkman – £60

Sony in-ear headphones – £20

Weights set – £15

Lime Green & Sky Blue theme for decorated bedroom

How quaint. I never knew I was in to dance music, or Jennifer Lopez for that matter, it was a long time ago, please forgive me. Sad that my once beloved football team is no more. Evidence of life before DVDs and it only just occurred to me what we did before the internet… the list reveals an extensive knowledge of the Argos Catalogue!

On the topic of Santa… don’t forget to check out the Anti-Santy Ranty…

a) That God is Trinity, three persons who are equal

b) Galatians 3:28, there are no longer any distinctions between male and female

So are they right? Do these two simple retorts demolish the headship argument? Well… no, not really.

Of course we agree… the persons of the Trinity are equal (John 10:30… and many more) and as Galatians tells us men and women are equal before God, as does Genesis 1:27, men and women are equal images bearers, yet note that they are also distinctive.

Consider what Revd. Sam Wells of St. Martin in the Fields said in light of the recent vote…

“God the Holy Trinity is three persons without subordination and without discrimination; to imitate God, human life must be the same.”

Or what about this Tweet, picking up on the words of the Bishop of Liverpool at the General Synod…

Brilliant! +Liverpool brings insight of unity of Trinity into understanding of ‘headship” not as subordination.

People seem to have a problem with this word ‘subordination’. There are two basic definitions of a ‘subordinate’:

1) of lesser order or importance

2) under the authority or control of another

There is a genuine heresy called Subordinationism that would teach that the Son and the Spirit are suborinate to the Father in having a lesser nature, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. A complementarian doesn’t believe in the first definition of subordination, either in the Trinity or between men and women. The Son is not less than the Father, neither is a woman less than a man. However, the second definition is a fair belief, that the Son is under the authority of the Father, the Wife is under the authority of the Husband…

But this position does believe that children are under the authority of their parents, churches are under the authority of their elders,  wives are under the authority of their husbands, and Jesus the Son is under the authority of his Father God. We don’t seem to have a problem with the authority of parents, most see little problem with the authority of church leaders (I’m sure +Liverpool doesn’t), yet we struggle when it comes to Husbands and God.

Let me show you from the Bible why this is true:

Wives…

On three occasions the Bible calls on Wives to submit to their Husbands, ie. to come under their authority… (Eph 5:22, Col 3:18, Titus 2:5, 1 Pet 3:1). Wives are encouraged to make themselves subordinate to their husbands, in the same way they make themselves subordinate to Jesus.

Jesus…

Jesus although equal with God, makes himself subordinate to his Father. He forfeits his will (Luke 22:42), he forfeits his equality (Phil 2:6), he forfeits knowledge (Mark 13:32). The Father, the Son and the Spirit are perfectly equal, perfectly united, yet they do different “jobs” and willing submit themselves to the will of the Father and the glorification of one another.

Husbands…

Of course it must be pointed out that husbands are equally called to submit to Christ, and to church leaders. In regard to their wives they are repeatedly commanded to love and to respect their wives. Ephesians 5 gives two standards of love, as they love “their own body”, and as “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”. The standard of love is HIGH!

Let me conclude with this question… how does one become subordinate?

Two ways… 1) You are subjugated by the one in authority… or 2) You willingly subordinate yourself to the authority of another…

Which did Jesus do? He was not forced into submission by his Father, but rather willingly submitted to his will. What about wives? Again, they are not to be forced, but rather are to willingly submit themselves to the sacrificial love of their husbands.

My point in all this is that it’s easy to dismiss “subordination”… it doesn’t sound very nice… but it’s what we’re all called to do… it’s what Jesus does… and it’s what wives are called to do in respect of their husbands. It’s a pattern that God has given to families, to his church and is given to be a picture of Jesus to the world!

Life Changer certainly comes from the mind of a genius. The life of Jesus told through distinctive ‘cartoons’, which are intriguing, demanding closer attention and wonderfully draw the viewer in.

From the start this little book is targeted at the seeker. These aren’t semi-amusing ecclesiastical sketches, they’re creative cartoons which aim to introduce people to Jesus. We go from Christmas to Easter to see the life of Jesus unfold, a life which transformed the world. The clever illustrations, repeated symbols and simple text explanations make this perfect for younger people, non-booky people or really anyone who wants to find out more about Jesus in a creative way. Each story includes the Bible references, so you’re able to take things further if people want

This is a thoroughly helpful and unique resource for the church to give away to the world and I commend it to you. Why not give one as a gift this Christmas, or have one on you to help explain Jesus in a visual way.

Find out more about Jason and his work… at SaamVisual.com and on Twitter @jasonramasami

Get LifeChanger from the Good Book Company… just £3.99!

1) By a simple majority it was a clear YES, but the vote didn’t receive a 2/3 majority in the House of Laity

2) Although I supported a NO vote I was genuinely surprised it didn’t pass given the campaigning and vocal support of old and new Archbishops

3) Today’s result is not a ‘victory’. It’s bad news all round and only prolongues the process.

I understand that many in the church are saddened by this result. However that is no excuse for the bitterness and vitriol doing the rounds on Twitter. Attacking traditionalists and disputing the role of the laity highlights the concern that many had over the level of ‘respect’ that traditionalists could expect.

But the simple fact is that it should never have got to this point. From the outset their has been clear and sustained opposition to the motion from both Conservative Evangelicals and Traditional Anglo-Catholics, two important traditions in the Church of England. While their has been talk of numerous alternative solutions that would be workable, a proposal that was deemed to fail was tabled.

This highlights a fundamental flaw in Synod and that is the lack of representation of Conservative Evangelicals. Around 1/4 of Diocesan Synod members voted against the measure, while more agreed that they wanted to see proper provision for traditionalists. In this General Synod vote 1/3 of the laity voted against the measure. However among the Bishops only 6% voted against this measure.

Two things strike me here. 1) The Bishops have been unable to lead, with an overwhelming majority of Bishops and Clergy voting YES but seemingly unable to carry the Laity with them. 2) The views of traditionalists are not represented among Bishops. It’s been noted today that there are currently no serving Bishops who could be called “Conservative Evangelical” or who hold to a complementarian understanding of gender. With no one of this ilk having been appointed in the last 15 years it sadly shows a bias and concerted effort among senior clerics to remove Conservative Evangelical voices from the highest ranks in the church.

The vote today is not “No to Women Bishops” as will be reported. Synod has already agreed to Women Bishops in principle. Today was a no to the provision on offer, it was no to the militant campaigning on the issue, it was a no to the lack of respect and debate on the issue. The vote was lost not because traditionalists are over represented in Synod, but because many who agree in principle with the ordination of Women to the episcopate could not in good conscience vote on an unfair and divisive piece of legislation.

Women will be ordained as Bishops. But it’s going to need some better legislations and a little more grace and respect for it to pass through Synod.

Unfortunately the level of debate has been pretty base. There is no doubt that in the wider CofE there is popular support for the introduction of Women Bishops, albeit combined with general ignorance about the measure and implications for traditionalists. Through Social Media, anonymous commentators, blogs and interviews the Yes Campaign has sought to misrepresent and overly simplify the postion we find ourselves in.

Now I’m about to simplify the position of the Yes vote, for the sake of brevity. Two of the key arguments of the ‘Yes’ campaign are:

1) Women Bishops are Biblical

2) To vote no would be ‘Missional Suicide’

Maybe I’m being unfair, but it seems the whole Biblical case for Women Bishops, and even the whole egalitarian position ultimately rests on one verse from the Bible – Galatians 3:28 – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” For me this seems problematic for two reasons. a) Why should this verse abrogate what Paul says elsewhere about the role of women in the church, and b) the context of this verse is clearly talking about the equality of all humans in regard to salvation, it has nothing specific to say about leadership in the church.

There is a lot of talk about relevance. I found it ironic today that you could go on TV and talk about relevance while in clerical dress. Now it is fair to say that a ‘no vote’ would be bad press, however there is a strange belief that somehow appointing Women Bishops will be good for mission, I don’t see the logic. Mission is not about aligning your ecclesiology with the prevailing view of a particular culture, it’s about offering people Jesus. My experience is that some of the most missional and relevant churches are those who adopt a complementarian postion. Go figure.

In a church as broad as the CofE it is unthinkable not to have women bishops, particularly as the theological argument was already lost with the ordination of Women as Priests. The question now is not Yes or No, but How and what provision for traditionalists. The time is not now, while many still believe the provision is not adequate.

Suggestion… Read This… and Watch This below…