Conversing with the Mission Market

 It's always great to be reminded of a powerful book or idea long forgotten.  Recently I was reconnected to The Cluetrain Manifesto (TCM).  TCM is one of those classics that left heads spinning.  The fundamental premise is quite simple.  The market is a conversation.  That has become a inescapable reality in the Internet age.  The time when companies could hold forth with hyped and pompous monologues is over.

Some businesses may get that. The church, by and large, does not.

Just to clarify...Not a conversation

When I work with congregations in planning mission, here's the hardest point to communicate.  Talking with each other--that is, with other members of the congregation--IS NOT MISSION PLANNING.  Most of the time, planning groups spend hours of meetings, reams of paper, and gallons of ink collecting input from the people who are already present.

These personal preference surveys do nothing more than tell us that what we want is really, really, really what we want.  The dialogue is completely internal.  So as far as the market (the world outside the church) is concerned, it is a monologue.  As Reggie McNeal reminds us, no one out in the world is waking up in the morning worried about whether the church is going to succeed.

They don't care.

That may be because they think we don't care.

That may be because for the most part, they're right.

The market is a conversation.  That is even more true for mission.  One of the most powerful things a congregation can do--if the congregation is serious about local mission efforts--is to engage in community leader interviews.  There's nothing new here, but this suggestion is almost always a revelation to church folks.  Go and talk to the community.  Have a dialogue.  Find out what's what.

The congregation I serve did this as part of the development of their congregational mission profile.  This is the document they develop as they get ready to call a new pastor.  Folks from the congregation asked community leaders three simple questions:

• What are the three most pressing needs facing our community?
• How might our congregation help to meet those needs?
• Who else should we talk to?

No one from the church had engaged in such a dialogue with the community before.  What the congregation found was that the community needs them to be strong, healthy and unselfish.  The community is counting on that congregation to be a major factor in responding to the challenges of the future.  It was an exciting dialogue.

Now the congregation factors that into its leadership selection process.  That dialogue has impacted the formulation of congregational vision and values.  And the community believes, at least a little bit, that the church gives two hoots about the world outside our walls.

Mission is a conversation.  Otherwise it's just maintenance.