A Long, Thin Tightrope.

I'm always on my toes. I tread the fine line between morally-oblivious marketing as propagated by corporations, and the hackneyed, rough-and-ready existing methodology from the church. When I see a Christian piece that is a direct rip-off of an innovative commercial strategy, I cringe. When I see dusty, traditional Christian marketing efforts, I shudder. Both provide constant reminders that we don’t have it all figured out just yet.

This is the challenge: our metaphors need to be entirely reworked. We cannot afford to be aligned with money-as-sole-goal corporate institutions, and yet we need something newer, fresher, better than what is out there now. The story we’re offering is the same one it’s always been, it just needs to be be told in "the parlance of our times".

We need to reduce the program to its elements. Those individual fragments must be linked to a specific need, and after each is examined carefully, they must be assembled into something new to match them. It’s a risky, scary process, because what’s currently available works for some. And for those whom it’s working, it’s working quite well enough, thank you very much. And the new model certainly won’t be perfect. But the imperative remains. It takes new to attract new.

This of course is familiar to all people, perhaps especially Christians as we straddle the immediate and the infinite. However, not all are as aware of the struggle as those on the front lines – those whose vocation it is to lead culture. Culture by itself cannot be trusted to form an accurate way to address its own needs. It needs input, guidance and encouragement. And, with all that I am and have, that’s what I’m trying to do.