Experiencing God in Marketing

I’m so excited about what God is doing here at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary. It’s everything I thought it would be.

I got a chance to meet with Dr. Blackaby yesterday morning, where we talked about a range of things for about two hours. He seems really interested in investing in my life while I’m here, and trying to be there as much as possible as a sounding board to bounce ideas and frustrations off of. He’s a president with quite a long leash, and I’m so thankful for that.

While it offers tons of opportunity, it’s also kind of intimidating. Really, I’ll sink or swim with my own arms. I’m responsible for what’s happening here, and I’m praying for a sensitive ear so that I’m hearing the Lord clearly on what He wants to do through this office, and at the seminary.

A Marketing Plan

It was amazing to hear what God has already been doing at the seminary. With no brochures, no real advertising initiatives to speak of, or any other targeted marketing, God has seen fit to multiply the number of students at the school each year. In only the last couple of years, the school’s enrollment has almost doubled. God is definitely at work here.

Knowing that God has given this seminary a concrete vision for it’s future, I decided to work on a broad picture, which suggested a few things that we should be doing well. Since the seminary will be the equipping arm of the vision, it not only has to become a place where pastors and churches want to send their students, but a place that continues to help church planters in the field, encouraging them and helping them where they are.

A lot of what I’ve proposed is to try and position the seminary as a church planting institution. After all, it’s what God has called us to do, and seems to be a large part of the way He wants to reach Canada for himself. Of course, larger Christian institutions think we’re either crazy or bold beyond their comprehension for doing this, but we believe (and believe rightly) that God has already selected the person who will plant the 1,000th church in Canada. We just haven’t met them just yet.

I can’t include the whole document here (the leadership team hasn’t even seen it yet), but I can give you a few ideas we’re working on.

The first and most foundational is to create some sort of publication geared at helping alumni (church planters and other ministers) where they are in the field. It would be a great way for us to keep contact with them (asking them to contribute articles and the like) as well as to keep in touch with what’s going on in their churches. Furthermore, it would go a long way to show them that we’re partnering with them in ministry, and that they can come to the seminary with their questions and concerns.

I’m also trying to find ways that we can sponsor classes, workshops and the like across Canada. We don’t have an official Continuing Education department, but offering such ministry helps across Canada is a must in serving as an equipper to church leaders. Ministry in the Eastern part of Canada is so completely different than ministry in the West. It’s like the difference between doing ministry in Georgia and doing ministry in a place like New York.

We’re also in need of some more recruiting practices. I’m thinking of asking the seminary to sponsor targeted missions weeks here at the seminary that would double as seminary visitation weeks, where students would not only minister (preferably helping church planters, since that’s our vision), but also get to meet faculty and staff and hear from students about what God is doing here at the seminary.

As I said, those are just a few of the ideas, but the “big picture” of what we’re doing will always be the church planting vision to which God called us.

Experiencing God

When talking with Richard, it was really cool to hear where God has brought him. I know that I can seem idealistic about God’s sovreignty and how He is the one who ensures the success or failure of a marketing plan, but talking with Dr. Blackaby, I know I’m not alone.

He really wanted me to think in terms of God’s activity around me, and respond to that in all of the seminary’s publications and media. We’ve got another meeting on Thursday where we’ll discuss our positioning statement and the key messages of the seminary, but just hearing his heart about God’s work here in Canada was so encouraging.

“We’re interested in what God is doing here,” he told me. “We’re not in competition with other schools. We just want to respond to God’s activity here, and focus on that.”

He, too, has been thinking a lot about God’s sovreignty in this and every other work. God has a plan that HE is bringing to fruition, and my job is not to “give him hands,” it’s to respond to what He’s already doing. That may mean a brochure that gives a synopsis of God’s work in Canada, or it could mean simply praying for a student who comes to Canada for a mission trip.

The main thing is, however, that we listen to God and never assume that a brochure is going to do what He won’t or can’t.

It’s all about perspective, really.

Wow…this is a long post. I’ll end it now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2003 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Experiencing God in Marketing”
  1. Darren Rowse Says:
    September 28th, 2003 at 10:09 pm

    This isn’t completely relevant to what you’ve posted - but the idea of Marketing and the church is one I’m interested in….

    My first ever essay at bible college was about how we could apply ‘marketing strategies’ to the church. My lecturer almost had a fit I reckon. He was most disappointed and strongly disagreed. I couldnt work out why - it just seemed to make sense.

    However now after a decade or so of being a minister I’m not so sure I was right. I mean marketing can be helpful and I’m not dead against it - but I wonder what would happen if churches spent as much money on resourcing their people to have relationships with their friends, workmates, families etc as they do on marketing.

    Sometimes I reckon we get so caught up in the whole ‘corporatising’ of the church and forget to get back to basics….

    not sure where that came from… :-)