Christian Leadership Alliance
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Brand Innovations
Ensuring your ministry's long-term relevance.| Outcomes, Winter 2009
A bad economy is a golden opportunity to do the things you know you need to do but have avoided. It's time to get the right people on the bus, decrease overhead expenses, increase talent, and reposition the organization. It's time to take the risks you were meant to take when the ministry was birthed, when relying on God was all you had. Do you remember those invigorating days when paying for envelopes was a stretch?
But all too often, organizations get caught up in thinking they have accomplished something and stop being creative and innovative regarding how their brand communicates to people. A ministry leader gave me a memorable analogy. He said many large ministries start like a young rock climber with vinegar in his blood, willfully taking risks because he can't see anything but the top. It is as if he is flying on the wings of an eagle.
But as the rock climber ages, his focus on the top is replaced by the fear of a painful fall and the knowledge of the agony of defeat that many around him have experienced. Once dependent on the Holy Spirit, this climber now slips into caution. He hesitates when approaching peaks he once overcame. He moves more slowly. The prize of reaching the top, the destination, has blurred. His purpose is now simply climbing. He is lost in a fog of one foot in front of the other, and past moments of trusting God to do the impossible have faded into a dream he lived long ago.
If you can relate, maybe it's time to take up bungee jumping. Can you remember when you used to overhear people in the streets talk with excitement about your ministry? When decisions erred on the side of faith? When people sacrificed early-morning sleep to cry out to God for an opportunity to effectively labor in his harvest? Can you remember the voice of the young man who just accepted Christ as tears of excitement rolled down his face? What does that feel like? Does it feel like alignment? Like standing in the perfect will of God? If you are like me, you long to live in this place.
The Problem
I believe that many large ministries have become wealthy Goliaths who live on past successes. Thirty to forty years ago, when these ministries began, they inspired action. Their voice was adopted by their generation as its own. Many may still be well known among the 50- to 75-year-old age group, but for those under 30, they are relics of a bygone era. The next generation sees their brands in the past tense.
What does this mean? It means that such ministries will be able to ride the financial loyalty of its founding generation only until their donors die. The leadership remains bound to the style and preferences of that population of givers. Even though the next generation needs the same message with different packaging, many old-line ministries, like that wary climber, are unwilling to change and take risks.
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