I received an email a few days ago with a concern about my February 6, 2008 post that our the scope of who we are trying to reach was too limited. I think that post deserves some followup for the sake of clarity.
The truth is, we want to reach all of Michiana for Christ, all of India, and really, the entire World. However, rather than trying to program our services for all the different people in our community, we try to make our service helpful and relevant to a smaller, subgroup audience; our focus audience (marketers would call that a target audience.) So, when we program the weekend, we try to consider how a 35-55 year old, entrepreneurial, cutting edge, “I don’t need Jesus,” man would feel about the service. He is the "up and outer" as opposed to the "down and outer" (the Church has traditionally been quite successful reaching the "down and outer." )We feel this person is the hardest to reach because he already feels successful by the World's standards but is still far away from Christ. He needs a savior, but doesn't realize it. We feel that if we reach this person, he will plug in to the mission of the Church; bringing all of his talents, influence, and resources to help us reach the rest of the World for Christ. So, if we focus on him, he better enables us to reach the rest of the World.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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1 comments:
Great clarification. I know what you were trying to say.
We have to have our "target audience" established. Of COURSE we're not going to turn any one away but pure marketing experience will tell you that if you try to target EVERYBODY you're going to be interesting to NOBODY.
We don't want to get stuck in a rut of turning our churches into marketing machines but there are principles that will help us establish ourselves in our communities and best reach as many as we can.
Brad Ruggles
www.bradruggles.com
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