Mistake #1
Not planning for something great.

Seth Godwin calls it the Purple Cow.
Tom Peters calls it the WOW principle.
George Lois calls it the Big Idea.
----- Seeking a change of scenery, you drive a new route through the countryside. The first cow you pass draws attention. If kids are along, they practice mooing and laugh. Everyone watches for the next cow. Yet after an hour of cruising along pasture fences, who notices anymore? Not that the cows have become any less effective at being cows. But to a passing motorist with passing interest, all those cows begin to seem familiar and ordinary and nearly invisible.
----- The only thing that would get new attention and strong interest would be a purple cow.

----- "WOW" outreach?
----- Purple Cow churches?
----- A Big Idea for Christmas?

----- Why not? We live in a world of extraordinary things. The mistake often made is to settle for the ordinary, the habitual, the comfortable, the inexpensive, the status quo, the familiar. Familiarity does not always breed contempt. But for church outreach, especially at Christmas, settling for the ordinary and the all-too-familiar may breed something else.

----- Invisibility.

----- ...and inertia.

----- Invisibility among the unchurched, invisibility in the community. And inertia among your own people. Too many brown cows.
----- This is not about being bigger or more spectacular or more outlandish. But it is about breaking through to your community with a creative and imaginative message conveying something truly remarkable and unexpected.
----- You don’t need to outdo the church famous for its two-story singing Christmas tree. You don’t need to sponsor top-dollar TV ads on Christmas Eve, or reserve every billboard in the county for a Christmas message. And you certainly don’t have to give up now because you didn’t start way back on Labor Day to plan something incredible and beyond your resources.
----- The Big Idea does not necessarily mean big budget, or big staff, or big splash. Small can be remarkable (for one example, see story in Mistake # 9). Churches without large resources, or churches without a long tradition of doing the unusual, or churches without a lot of lead time for planning, can still be creative and fresh and forward-thinking. Start by applying the "Big Idea" principle to…

----- Big ideas are not ends in themselves. Big Ideas breed unforeseen opportunities. Big Ideas often lead to something new and powerful. They can elevate opportunity beyond the original strategy.
----- Over time, Big Ideas spawn more big ideas, until being extraordinary and having an extraordinary impact has become an exhilarating reality. Big Ideas have a way of leaping beyond limits (even budgets) to transform the nature and focus of a church, or of a community.
----- The Incarnation was one of God’s Biggest Ideas, a WOW if there ever was one. When ever, if not at Christmas, should a pastor and church nurture Big Ideas?

Mistake #2
Doing little or no outreach during Christmas.

----- Christmas is clutter. That’s a fact.
----- With all the messages crowding for attention, all the competing distractions, all the busyness and demands for time and focus, it’s not difficult – when it comes to outreach – to decide not to try anything special during Christmas.
----- Of course, in an outreach context, almost no church completely sits out the season. Every church will expect and welcome visitors during Christmas. Every pastor will share with visitors the message of God’s love at Christmas. And if any visitors happen to be unchurched, most every pastor will follow-up.
----- But here’s another fact. Visitors only visit churches they are aware of.
----- It’s hard to get around this detail. Awareness is the most basic – and most overlooked – underlying factor for attracting visitors. Unchurched people in the community who decide to visit a church, visit a church they know about.
----- Even word of mouth (expecting your members to invite friends) can be exponentially more effective if the people they invite are already aware of the church, if people have a top-of-the-mind awareness of the church that is positive, attractive, even unique.
----- Here’s a corollary fact. It’s not just that unchurched people only visit a church they have heard of. Unchurched people motivated to attend a service (say, at Christmas or Easter) are almost certain to choose a church that has captured their awareness at that particular time.
----- -- Pass up public outreach at Christmas, and who will you be reaching at Christmas?
----- -- Pass up reminding the community of your presence at Christmas and you cede to other appeals the single season of the year when the unchurched in your community are most open to thinking about and visiting a church.
----- To maintain high awareness, a church needs to have a strong community presence during the strategically important Christmas season.

Mistake #3
Planning outreach without a plan.

----- An outreach plan for Christmas does not have to be time-consuming, comprehensive or complicated. Just don’t overlook the basics.

---------- “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard
----- ----- people say, "People will find us. We don’t
----- ----- have to promote what we offer because it
----- ----- is good quality and just what they want."

----- The comment is from Joyce McClure, who coaches community organizations nationwide that promote local use of solar energy. Her advice has surprising crossover value for church outreach:
-
----- ----- No idea, no product, no service, no belief
----- ----- was ever successful without a strong
----- ----- communication campaign. Unless you
----- ----- tell people what you’re offering, very few
----- ----- will ever "find" you.
----- ----- And if you want people to know about your
----- ----- offering, you need to make a plan – a strategic
----- ----- marketing plan – that will serve as a roadmap
----- ----- to reach your goals.

----- 1. What are your broad outreach goals for Christmas? (The first answer may not simply be a number.) The answer may be to communicate with every household in your key neighborhoods (that in itself is a Big Idea). Or to reinforce overall awareness of your unique image within your community. Or to use the Christmas season as a first step to introduce a better-defined image.
----- 2. Does your plan match the scale of your goal? See Mistake #4
----- 3. Who are you trying to reach? Think long and carefully about your intended audience. It is critical to determine if the image and message you are communicating is both relevant and genuinely appealing to the people you want to reach.
----- 4. What path of responses do you seek? Work back from your end results to what you hope will happen first. Do you want people to go to your web site, experience an event, participate in a community project, visit for Christmas worship, ask for something that will build a relational connection and help them remember you, bookmark your site for later reference? Is there a strategic path to your final objectives?
----- 5. Have you considered timing and schedule? If your goal is to motivate unchurched people to visit on Christmas Eve or Christmas Sunday, inviting them earlier in December may be a waste of effort. The unchurched who do think about attending church on Christmas, think about it a day or two or three before. It’s largely an impulse decision. Time your invitation or reminder to arrive accordingly.
----- 6. Does your plan fit your budget? Or in the other direction, does your budget need to be re-examined in light of your Big Idea?
----- 7. Have you pre-evaluated the true cost of your strategies? See mistake #11
----- 8. How will you track and evaluate results? You will eventually want to evaluate not just the immediate results, but also residual attendance, the increase in community awareness, image perception and appreciation, and each preliminary response step. (Don't get discouraged if you don’t have a system for all this now, it will come).
----- 9. Are you planning within the larger context? Because outreach communication works in the larger context that surrounds it, you will also want to plan and evaluate every other factor that can affect results. If your outreach is specifically designed to bring people to an event (or Christmas service), you will also want to plan for creative and thoughtful follow-up and post-event momentum-builders.

Mistake #4
Breaking the Law of Large Numbers.

----- Here is a powerful principle of church outreach. We call it Norm Whan’s Law of Large Numbers after the man who, for over 30 years, has repeatedly demonstrated it to be valid for churches.
----- It’s fact. In any region or large community, during any given Christmas season, a small but definite percentage of the unchurched population is open to your message and unique image, and is in fact open to connecting with or visiting a church just like yours.
----- The actual percentage varies widely depending on many factors, but the underlying principle holds. If your church communicates the right message and image to enough people, with the right support strategies, a definite percentage are out there ready to respond. Now. This Christmas.
----- The key is finding them – and you can. Here, the statistical Law of Large Numbers must be applied. If you sample 20,000 households, you may uncover 1% to 3% who are receptive now. That represents 200 to 600 households – finding and reaching them could have significant impact for your church.
----- But distribute 100 flyers (or hope your members do), or mail out 500 "impact" cards, you may not find any of the prospects you are seeking. That is because prospects are never evenly spread through a small population. The smaller your total sample, the more random and accidental your chances of connecting with the right people.
----- Conversely, as Norm Whan has repeatedly demonstrated, the larger your scale, the more likely you are to find the prospects who are immediately receptive.
----- Economy of Scale. This is related to the Law of Large Numbers. In almost every scenario, the larger the scale, the less unit cost for each impression. Consequently the cost of each actual response decreases as quantity increases. Finding a way to think bigger almost always improves cost effectiveness.
----- Saturation or Large Net Marketing. When the strategy is direct mail, covering every household in a given area dramatically enhances cost effectiveness because of the way postal rates are discounted for saturation. Saturation is also measured in readership. Direct mail enjoys almost total readership, even if only a glance. The person receiving the mail always looks at the outside to decide whether to open or toss it. With a well-done postcard, the outside is the message. For full saturation, other media strategies can’t come close. And done properly, saturation mailings to entire neighborhoods, zip codes, or communities will cost far less per unit than almost any other method.
----- EXAMPLE: Postcards at the maximum size allowed for lowest postage rates, with research-based image and message creatively customized to your church, using full-color on both sides for maximum effectiveness, can cost as low as 16 cents per home reached, postage included.
----- Done right, direct mail has the best impressions-for- cost ratio.

Mistake # 5
Trying to do too much.

This one thing I do... (Phil 3:13)

----- It is much easier to be complex than to be simple.
Marcello Serpa, a Brazilian famous around the world for creative marketing ideas that succeed on the simplest essence, offers advice so plain it’s tempting to skim past. The key, says Serpa, is "having an objective and trying to reach it with minimum resources, getting there by the shortest route, with minimum energy."
----- For church outreach, this applies equally to the plan and to the message.

----- Your Plan. Within any given timeframe, you can only do a few things well, and only one thing very well. In outreach planning, it’s a mistake to implement every good idea you have between now and late December. Decide which ideas can keep until later and which have limited shelf life (things you can’t do the same way in January because the window of opportunity will have passed). Then evaluate which idea most authentically represents you and your church, will have the most long-term impact, and is most likely over time to be transformational.

----- Your Message. Whatever strategy you choose, avoid information dump. It’s tempting to cram everything in, but too much information invokes the Law of Diminishing Returns. Say one thing, say it well, and you are more likely to be heard.

----- Your Long-term Impact. Relating this to the longer-term, the "one thing" your plan and your message should do is support the "one thing" you are – that one unique, authentic image position every public impression should seek to build and reinforce.

Mistake #6
Sending a Christmas Message.

----- During Christmas, probably the biggest mistake is to send a Christmas message. Let us explain.
----- This does not mean ignoring Christmas outreach, that would be a bigger mistake. This mistake is doing what everyone else is doing, or doing what people would expect a church to do – relying on a typical Christmassy look, oft-repeated themes, and well-established Christmas sentiments.

----- That’s like fighting clutter with clutter.

----- Doing what’s expected. Doing the expected is based on a rational urge to play it safe. But in outreach communication (at any time, but especially at Christmas) there is nothing more costly than playing it safe. You can be safely lost in the sameness of the pack, mostly invisible to those you want to reach.
----- Consumers in Western nations are bombarded, even pummeled with marketing messages every waking second. In defense, people have adapted highly-effective coping capacities inside their brains to filter messages.
No matter how beautiful or season-appropriate, the familiar messages that look like everything else are essentially invisible messages.
----- Invisibility is death, when it comes to outreach communication for the unchurched.
----- The solution for a church is not to withdraw from the public marketplace of ideas [see mistake #2]. The solution is to rise above the clutter by being remarkable, simple, and relevant.

----- What to look for. The Edelman Company, a global PR firm, completed a study on what types of messages make it through people’s internal filters. What characteristics will cause people not only to notice an outreach communication, but actually welcome it?

----- Respect
----- Emotion
----- Genuineness
----- Empathy
----- Engagement

----- Michael Newman, a creativity guru and author of Creative Leaps, concludes all great communications "have an element of novelty (they do the unexpected), they generate positive feelings (they are likable), and they have meaning (they are relevant)."

So, what to do. . .

----- 1. Be different – churches think they have to look and speak Christmassy to be heard at Christmas when in fact just the opposite is true
----- 2. Be very intentional about communicating with the heart. The unchurched don’t turn off their basic needs at Christmas, some of those core needs just come nearer the surface.
----- 3. Be relevant. Make sure you are speaking to felt needs (surface needs) in the language of the unchurched and in a way that breaks through to the core needs of their heart.
----- 4. Be unique. If you find an effective image and message that fits with your plan, ask for and insist on an exclusive license, so your entire communication is guaranteed to be uniquely yours in your community. Work with your media team and agency to build on and thread this image through everything (and that means everything) you do.

Mistake #7
Always trying something new.

----- Does your church present too many faces?
Being fresh and different does not mean being completely different in every way every time you go out. That would be a huge mistake.
----- We talk a good deal about the power of being distinctive and fresh in outreach communications. But if this principle is misunderstood, it can lead into another very common mistake: promotional habits that lead to "the church of many faces."
----- Your strategy and message and graphic images and ideas should be distinctive, creative, and fresh, but your positioning and identity should remain very consistent. This is not merely "advertising talk," and not about some PR spin to manipulate your public image. It’s really about knowing who you are.
----- In fact, the "identity positioning" concept challenges a basic idea at the heart of commercial advertising – that the primary purpose of advertising is to sell.
----- That’s not your primary purpose. In the words of Al Ries, the man who originally coined the term "positioning", rather than advertising to sell in the marketplace of ideas, your outreach communications should "establish and reinforce a position or identity in the prospect’s mind."
----- Applied to churches. For outreach communications intended to lead to church growth, the goal is not so much to communicate details about the church, but rather to create a unique image position in the mind of the unchurched in your community that in turn, leads to appreciation, a special bond, and an ongoing relationship.
----- The first thing to know is that if any awareness of your church exists, an image position already exists. In the simplest terms, there are three broad position categories the unchurched have for churches:

----- Ultimately, image position is about who you really are. The strongest positioning is an authentic reflection of your true identity. And you can thank the marketplace and the need to reach it for the impetus to discover and clarify your image identity. The market requires a clear and distinct focus.

----- Applied to your church. Without going too deep into the Law of Positioning, here are some suggestions. You may have already done this at least in part, but the first step is to discover or clarify your unique identity and calling. Aside from the first call of every church (we might describe as a call to discover, nurture, and offer as worship the individual "purpose-driven" call of their members), every church also has their own unique corporate call to purpose. There is a distinct role you are to play matched to a special need you're called to fill. In other words you are called to be unlike any other church in your city, not just to be different for difference sake, but to be truly effective. Identifying and clarifying your unique difference--who you really are--can make all the difference in the world...literally.
----- First, ask yourself this...what is it that you do best as a church, what are you especially gifted or equipped for, what passion drives you, what burden moves you, what vision excites you, and to what need are you drawn? Your next step is to find a remarkable and memorable way to communicate your identity within your community’s marketplace of ideas. One way to do that is to ask yourself (or better yet the unchurched) this question: How are these needs continually and deeply felt by the unchurched and how are they generally expressed in their own words? Answers to these two sets of questions form the core foundation for your positioning strategy--your 'difference' in the things that 'really' matter.

----- Audacity. Finding a creative, remarkable, memorable, and sometimes even audacious way to communicate that difference will create the endearing bond that makes every outreach and every ministry so much more effective. It's the difference that will make you stand out even in the blur of the Christmas rush.

Mistake #8
Doing Outreach instead of WithReach.

----- In many ways outreach is no longer working. And in the way we generally do it, maybe it shouldn't.
----- Outreach defines problems (in the lives of the unchurched) and announces answers. Withreach seeks to discover God already at work in lives, and to join God in what He is doing in that life.
----- Instead of "you have a spiritual need, I have the solution," a withreach mindset sees each person as a treasure who has much to give. Withreach seeks out those treasures, to come alongside people, to discover the story of God being played out in their story, and together reach for the purposes of God. In this way people come into the Kingdom naturally and with a better understanding of God's heart and ways, as they work together in the context of real-life community.
----- Outreach tends to focus on locating unchurched people who need God and zeroing in on either immediate conversion or membership or both. Withreach tends to awaken the desire for God through a direct experience of God’s essential nature and ways, such as participation in an Isaiah 58 ministry or by experiencing community first hand. Withreach communicates "We are in this journey together, I’ll come along and help. We both have much to give, we both have much to learn."
----- Examine your Christmas activities, community outreach and ministry, the events, the invitations, the way you connect with visitors, the way you follow-up, the total atmosphere, in light of Withreach thinking.

----- The following comparisons contrast traditional outreach and withreach:

Outreach

Confrontational
Unchurched are nameless faces and numbers
We do good things for people
Transformation imposed from the outside
Monologue
Arrogance
Church speak
Religious jargon
Paternalistic overtones
Impatiently look for quick fix
Seek conversion, have narrow set of goals
Love shown with an agenda behind it
Great Commission priority
We have what you need / you have nothing to give
You cannot contribute until post-conversion
Of the world but not in it
Fearful of differences
Clergy - laity split
Sunday AM priority
Church is the domain of the sacred
Target segmented group
Image of community
What would Jesus do?