I was then going to impress you (or at least try) by telling you that I received an advanced copy from Seth.

Then I was going to bribe you with my extra copy of Tribes to help solicit comments (because you all read the blog, but seldom comment). You know, leave a comment and I’ll choose one randomly for their free copy.

And Seth beat me to it. Well, nearly.

While I was pre-ordering the book and receiving my advance copy from Seth Godin himself…he was giving the audio version away on iTunes for .98 cents! Sometimes the early bird does get the worm, but sometimes the bird that sleeps in gets the same worm for less. Hmmm…

Anyhow, do yourself a favor go download the book and listen to it and then come back here and let’s talk about the tribes within the church. And when you leave your comment, let me know if you’re interested in the relic version we call a book and I’ll give away one of my copies (or maybe even both since I also bought the iTunes version).

Not for a community in Pheonix, AZ.

For many people living at the Stone Oaks apartment complex church means block parties, poolside socials and Saturday morning breakfast. For this group church isn’t so much about the order of service, it’s about building relationships.

“As a society we relate well where we work and play but don’t relate very well where we live. We pull into our garages and never come out to get to know our neighbors. It’s a very segmented, very private world,” Louis says.

I love this idea not matter what your Sunday morning routine is. We used to know our neighbors, and then we moved our front porch to the backyard and called it a deck…we’ve disconnected with our neighbor. Hard to love your neighbor when you don’t even know their first name. Imagine if we as the Church embraced an idea like this…I’d bet that your invitation to church on Sunday would be met with much greater acceptance.

If I’m wrong, I’ll make you breakfast.

Tony did a Q&A with him as part of the promo for Catalyst and to talk about Seth’s “new” Triibes.com. I put “new” in quotation marks because quite honestly, I’m a bit surprised at the lack of ingenuity from Seth on this one. He started with genius…create a barrier to entry causing everyone that should be there to want to be there. But…then he used a boxed solution (ning.com) for the platform so when I log in I see what I see on every other site. Eh. Hopefully he will surprise me…so far, other than the fact that he’s narrowed down who’s involved which is nice, I’m not overly excited.

Then wander on over to Seth’s blog for a great post about n00bs….but the n00bs part isn’t what caught my attention this did:

Great design is intuitive. Great design eliminates confusion. But not for everyone, not all the time. The words and interactions you use often have a sophistication that will confuse some portion of your audience.

It supports my ranting about design being about more than the prettiness (yep that’s a real word), it’s about communication. In fact I am no longer calling what we do church marketing…Holy Cow Creative is a strategic church communications + design studio. We will always take it in that order 1. Communications 2. Design.