Sunday, February 26, 2006

Finding the Remarkable for Church (a.k.a. The Purple Cow!)

I've been reading some marketing books lately - specifically 2 by a guy named Seth Godin (The Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars) and I've been impressed by the simple idea (but difficult to generate) called the 'purple cow'. Basically, if you've seen one cow, you've seen them all UNTIL you see a purple cow - now that's remarkable and worth a second look. How can a church find it's own unique 'purple cowness'? That's what I've been kicking around. When I was a teenager trying to figure out my understanding of God and church (and hair metal bands), a friend of mine took me to some Christian youth rallies (more like a church pep rally) called Purple Rallies (held in and around Portland, OR). The idea was that if, when we are baptized into Christ and become followers of Jesus, the water turned us purple, we'd sure act different. We'd be hard to miss and we'd stand out. It might even make us more careful about our language, our actions, our 'witness'. It was an intersting idea...being purple. What if local churches found their uniqueness and let the word out? Could church become so remarkable that the average person in a community would say "Wow, I've got to check this church out!"

No comments: