What’s buzz? What’s worthy? What’s buzz worthy?
Tim Stevens
Tim joined Granger Community Church after serving nearly 10 years in various leadership positions, including executive management with Life Action Ministries. With a desire to make an impact in the local church, he develops the church’s vision and values and helps plan for the future.
He is instrumental in handling the day-to-day operations, hiring staff, completing major construction projects and developing Granger’s nationally recognized Children’s Center. You can hear Tim weekly on The Simply Strategic Show. He has also co-authored three books, including Simply Strategic Growth.
Tim’s blog.
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Buzz happens when you have a product people talk about. Buzz is people connecting. Buzz is what happens when normal people talk to others about your church and what you are doing without the approval of the board or elders!
The Blair Witch Project is a prime example of buzz at work. It profited over $248 million, purely on buzz, people thinking it was real.
Buzz is created by things that are unusual, outrageous, taboo, hilarious remarkable, or secretive. Anything rooted in emotion.
Tim talked about things that have created buzz this year: Warren Buffett giving his money away; Hezbollah; Mel Gibson’s DUI; the British terror plot. We all buzz about things.
Buzz simply lends momentum to the opportunity.
Tim talked about Granger’s PureSex series and buzz that was created throughout their community concerning what some thought was an edgy subject for church. ((Sidenote: my favorite part of their media coverage was when the reporter was asking a guy who he thought put up the billboards promoting the series, and when she told him it was a church he said, “really… which one?))
Granger’s average attendance prior to the series was around 5,000. The first weekend of the series (thanks to the buzz) was over 7,000! They figure they had a net gain of about 500 people as a result of the series.
Tim talked about the flywheel of buzz and the parts it’s made up of: IMPACT, LANGUAGE, BELIEFS, which ultimately lead to BUZZ.
The problem with many of our churches is that we aren’t making an impact.
Tim shared a gripping story about when he was growing up in Iowa and some boys triggered an explosion in a military bunker that was holding over 25,000 pounds of dynamite. The impact was physically and emotionally huge.
To have an impact means to have an immediate and strong affect on something or somebody.
Where is the church that’s impact is so loud that people can’t deny it?
How different would our communities be if our churches didn’t exist?
How are we helping the down-and-out’s out of poverty and the up-and-outs with busyness and issues with parenting and family?
Who is educating? Who is helping to create the values and morals?
We need to be thinking about the people in the community, not the people inside the church.
Is there an undeniable impact in our community that our church is making?
Impact only happens if you speak the right language.
Tim used an illustration from the movie National Treasure. The map looked differently depending on what filter they looked through.
Filters are important because we all have filters in place in our minds. People have filters when they come into our churches.
There is a filter that is strong in today’s society and throughout our entire culture and it’s the filter of pop culture. Pop culture is the language of today. We live in a media-driven world. TV, movies, music, books and everything else are forming people’s ideals. We need to leverage the language of pop culture to reach people.
Every church has a choice on what they do with pop culture…they IGNORE it, and say, “let us pray…” and create a safe haven, a church separate and ‘safe’ from the world. They SEPARE from it, and say “come ye apart from the world” and become rule-generators. They CONDEMN it and say, “go forth and boycott,” and create a militant political force. They EMBRACE it, say, “let’s party!” and they are no different from the world. OR, they LEVERAGE it, they proclaim, “Jesus is alive!” and they are effective.
We find movement through pop culture. If you look at TV, movies or music you can see that people are filled with a great spiritual hunger that is communicated through art.
Our challenge is to become cross-cultural missionaries. We need to be missionaries who indwell the culture around us and use the signs and symbols of our culture to reach people.
”The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” – John 1:14, The Message
Jesus lived in the culture of His day and used its symbols as an in-road to the message and built a bridge. We can’t afford to be out of touch with pop culture. Its impact on our communities is far-reaching.
We need to look at it and find out what it reveals… and use people’s response to it to connect people back to God.
1 – We need to use pop culture to appoint people with stories from the Bible.
2 – We need to look for pop culture examples to illustrate Biblical truth.
3 – We need to use secular images or songs to raise deep life issues to the surface of people’s thinking.
Using pop culture isn’t watering down the Gospel. We know that the Gospel is the Gospel; the truth is the truth. Truth produces life change and we need to use what people connect and relate with to bring out spiritual truth and ultimately, life change.
People don’t listen to us sometimes though… people can’t hear us because (1) there’s too much noise, (2) they don’t trust you because of other people’s failures, (3) and because they are connected…they have everything the need.
Buzz only happens if we are making an impact. Impact only happens if you are being understood and are speaking their language.
You can’t fake what you believe at you core.
Granger’s billboards added fuel to a buzz that was already there. Their own people were already talking about it. They were a tool to spark conversations.
Buzz will do nothing if you don’t deliver and don’t sustain it. It’s about doing effective ministry and introducing people to Christ. It’s creating services for people who don’t like church.
We need to focus on our core – it affects our language. Create the changes that make an impact and buzz will start.
It all boils down to us communicating to people that we care and that they matter… to us and to God. People can’t hear you unless they feel you care for their needs.
