Obama’s lessons for church marketing

This isn’t a political post…but it is about a politician. Obama has taken the elections by storm, here’s a man who on paper would never have a chance to be on the ticket…and yet people are paying attention. For the first time in my adult life I have watched the DNC…and I’m not a democrat. Now while you may not agree with all of Obama’s positions (at least I hope not) he has caused people to once again believe and take part in politics.

Why? And so what?

How did he pull this off? Sure he has charisma, he’s a brilliant speaker, but it’s more than all that. We’ve seen that before. Obama has a story to tell. He has personality…and it’s all his own. He’s found his story and he’s telling it well.

If your a pastor, a leader or simply want to bring change you need to do the same.

Pastors, learn from Obama. You can be a brilliant speaker, you can have charisma…but when you find your story, bring your personality into the mix you’ll reach a new level of preaching and leading. Don’t try to be Stanley, or Warren, or Bell…be you and be it well. Rehashing the same old techniques simply isn’t working any more, it’s time that pastors rise up and take notice. It’s time you find out who you are and help people once again believe and take part in the church.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under growth . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • I love speeches. No, actually, I hate most speeches, I love great speeches. That is why I watched much of the DNC this week. I was on the lookout for great use of language.

    I am blogging about it on my site tonight.

    We saw two great speeches this week -- Bill Clinton's and Barak Obama's. Skillful phrasing, great word play, and an ability to deliver well crafted words with passion.

    As Phil Cooke often says, "the world tells bad stories really well, while the church tells the greatest story really poorly."

    My take-away from all this: be excellent. I can't tell you anything about Hillary's speech or Biden's speech, and my God, don't even bring up Al Gore... all well trained, highly paid professionals, who should be inspiring. What a waste.

    How often does that happen on Sunday morning?
  • That is so true Archie...there's not only one place to preach. In fact we need to preach less on the pulpit and more on the streets and in our own daily lives. I do give credit to the church for jumping on board, fairly quickly, with podcasts and online sermon content. We're starting to see blogs, haven't heard of much use of twitter, facebook is getting some traction.

    Too often we're a step behind. I was joking with a music pastor who just signed up with Facebook...and said, "oh, I didn't realize Facebook was on the way out."
  • Yes, he has a story, but what I was commenting on is how the use of channels can reach, impact and carry that story/personality to places it hadn't been before. As a church leader one needs to understand the mediums in which your personality can be carried best and where it is most easily understood, ie twitter v a trad. blog.
  • Again though, this isn't about Obama...it's about learning from Obama. I could end up writing a post about what Obama can learn from church marketing : setting expectations and following through.

    My point of this post was to encourage church leaders to look at the story they are telling and to make sure they realize the power, like Greg said, to tell their own stories and show how great God is.
  • Absolutely! I think what we're seeing is a candidate who both has a story and is reaching out to those typically forgotten by both parties (younger adults). Having Don Miller pray at the DNC? Using twitter to post update and SMS to announce his running mate? By resonating (or merely acknowledging they exist) with the younger crowd and having a story I think Obama is going well beyond what either political party has done in quite awhile...
  • I didn't see it but you are right. Obama tells a great story. His wife told his story from the 3rd person viewpoint two nights ago.

    Telling our own stories, to those on the inside and those on the outside, is so important. To those on the inside, it refresh, renews, and deepens our faith. Out stories are part of God's meta-narrative and those on the outside can begin to see themselves as part of God's story as well.
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