Outside The Box Ministry

Today Campus Crusade for Christ had a national Call to Prayer for the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  You can find out more about specific prayer requests and join in an praying for the students that were impacted by this tragedy at the Campus Ministry website.

The other day I discovered a book written about The Starbucks Experience. There are five principles that transformed the company that can be beneficial to any church or ministry. They are:

Principle 1: Make It Your Own
Principle 2: Everything Matters
Principle 3: Surprise and Delight
Principle 4: Embrace Resistance
Principle 5: Leave Your Mark

How would you apply these principles to your situation (i.e. church, ministry or business)?

I wanted to let you know that I have started another blog about church and ministry video tools. Many churches, perhaps your own, are incorporating videos into their services, classes or ministry events.

This new blog takes a look at videos and tools that have been produced and were you can get them. You can search for videos from multiple video download distributors all in one location. It is my desire to do regular reviews about church and ministry videos, presentation software and special offers available. Check it out at ChurchVideoReviews.com.

Story of the Soul (SOTS) is an interactive outreach experience connecting students to a story you like to share – the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

SOTS is a conversational journey in a coffee house-like setting. The Gospel is shared after considering stories the soul of man has been telling for eons through:

“Film” “Music” “Classic Literature” “Pop Culture – Poetry” “Artwork” “History”

SOTS is sweeping university campuses worldwide, and is being used in many different contexts, venues and ministries.

SOTS will equip you to use 10 different “Story of the Soul” outreaches and help walk you through our creative design process. You will soon be able to create your own outreaches relevant to your audience and culture.

Find out more at StoryOfTheSoul.com

Thanks to Cory Miller for pointing out a great resource for designing or redesigning a logo.  Check out these examples from some Web 2.0 based websites.

I haven’t personally read this book, but have read some rave reviews about it.

Click here for more information
Video Preview
Click here to purchase

by Mark Joseph

On the heels of the Weinstein Companies decision to jump into the faith-based film market, and a disappointing box-office showing for The Nativity Story in December, 20th Century Fox’s new Fox Faith division recently released two new films Thr3ee, and The Last Sin Eater, adaptations of popular Christian-oriented novels made on shoestring budgets. Both opened to severely disappointing box-office turnout and are prime examples of the problems facing the Christian-oriented film industry.

Fox Faith was created after 20^th Century Fox missed a chance to distribute The Passion Of the Christ theatrically, but picked up home video rights. Seventeen million copies later, it has turned out to be a cash cow for the studio. Fox didn’t intend to miss out on opportunities like this in the future. Thus, the creation of Fox Faith, which aims, according to its website, to distribute “faith-based” films.  To be part of Fox Faith, a movie has to have overt Christian Content or be derived from the work of a Christian author.  As part of what looks to be a growing trend, the Weinstein company also recently jumped into the faith-based film market.

Foxs creation of Fox Faith has been met with mixed reviews by many observers in the film and faith community. Some see it as a step forward, getting faith-friendly fare into the studio system. Others see it as a step backward, one that will result not in faith-driven films going mainstream and reaching a broad, values-driven audience, but rather in the creation of a steady stream of cheaply produced, second-rate products that will then be marketed exclusively to religious Americans as “Christian films” and will not be widely available to more secular moviegoers.

Before studios rush to create faith-oriented divisions to handle mostly Christian-oriented films, they should consider whether such a move is wise and whether they desire to make films to be viewed only by those who want to see their faith in the films they watch or also by a broad, values-driven audience.

After spending years studying and writing about the formation of the Christian music industry, it’s clear to me that the mistakes and successes of that industry have much to teach the burgeoning community of devout filmmakers. While the creation of the Christian music industry was heralded by some as a chance to bring Christian-themed rock music to the masses, in reality it became little more than a subculture of sometimes interesting, sometimes derivative music that was exclusively marketed and distributed to religious Americans, outside of the mainstream system. It wasn’t until artists like Switchfoot, P.O.D., Sufjan Stevens, Flyleaf, and Cold War Kids went outside of that system and signed with mainstream labels that they began to have the kind of impact they are today having.

Artists, including filmmakers, like to have their art viewed and heard by as many people as possible. But the Christian music model makes artists work accessible only to those in the habit of shopping at religious music stores or listening to religious radio stations. If Fox Faith, the Weinsteins, and other similar efforts follow this model, filmmakers who work with them can expect to reach only a limited audience.

So, for the faith community, the creation of Fox Faith and the foray of the Weinstein Company is a good news/bad news scenario, one that could either lead to a steady stream of interesting faith-driven fare like The Chronicles of Narnia, The Passion Of The Christ, and Luther, or sub-par works like The Omega Code, Seven, and Left Behind. Some fear it may be the latter.

Tellingly, there’s the name, Fox Faith, which presumes a number of things about this country namely, that the U.S. is a secular nation, hungry for secular entertainment divorced from morality and faith, making faith-oriented fare somewhat of an anomaly deserving of its own division, constituting just another niche market.  This was readily acknowledged by a Weinstein Company spokesman, who noted, “This deal fits perfectly into our strategy of acquiring and producing films that target niche audiences.”

There would be a logic to creating a Fox Faith brand if we were living in highly secular countries like, say, France or Japan. But the U.S. is one of the most religious nations on earth, where 92 percent of the people profess a belief in God and 84 percent call themselves Christians. So perhaps Fox should consider mainstreaming Fox Faith, folding it into 20th Century Fox, and instead finding a really smart, secular Hollywood-type to run a new division called “Fox Secular.”

It’s not that Americans who aren’t particularly devout shouldn’t be able to enjoy films, or that Fox shouldn’t produce them. But Fox and the Weinstein Company have the equation backwards: The niche market is comprised of a rather small group of highly secular Americans who want a high wall of separation between faith and film, in contrast to the millions of Americans who hunger for entertainment that references, or at least isn’t ignorant of, their deepest spiritual beliefs and impulses.

A reshuffle of the deck at Fox could look something like this: The newly minted studio, led by an executive who has a better understanding of the massive faith and family market, could produce and distribute dozens of faith-friendly films, beginning with a film version of The Purpose Driven Life (a book with sales of more than 30 million copies), which was published by Fox’s sister company Harper-Collins. A nice $75 million budget and some A-list actors, complete with a Passion-style marketing campaign, could very well turn it into the biggest blockbuster of all time.

Fox Secular, on the other hand, could also make an important contribution by reaching its niche audience, continuing to produce and distribute important films that speak to more secular Americans. A Borat sequel would be a good candidate for Fox Secular, as would have been Kinsey, a film celebrating the life of America’s best known sexologist, released last year by Fox. Perhaps other important secular biopics on important historical figures like Charles Darwin, Dr. Ruth, Frederic Nietzsche, Marilyn Manson, and others could be brought to market on a limited number of screens. Secular Americans deserve to have inspirational stories in their local theaters, and Fox Secular would be there to meet that demand, releasing films on, say, 400 screens nationwide and focused on blue states. Occasionally, some of those films may even cross over to the wider values-driven mainstream audience outside of the secular niche. After all, there may very well be some churchgoers who enjoy watching Sacha Cohen play tasteless practical jokes on suspecting Americans or who want to see films that feature secular American heroes.

Such a move on the part of a studio like Fox would send a strong signal to millions of heretofore disenfranchised traditionalist Americans who have, for various reasons, either never or rarely attended films in the past 50 years. The sudden appearance of many of these first-time moviegoers in theaters was one of the key reasons for the success of The Passion of the Christ.

In 2004, shortly before the film’s release, the Los Angeles Times predicted the film would take in $25 million at the box-office opening week. When the dust had settled it had instead earned a whopping $115 million meaning that somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million people who were not in the system (that is, those who rarely or never attend movies) had supported a film they were finally interested in.

Of all the studios, Fox is best positioned to understand this dynamic, having launched the Fox News Channel in 1996. In so doing, executives like Roger Ailes understood that America was basically a center-right nation viewing center-left fare simply because nothing else was available, even as it hungered for programming that more closely reflected its values. When Fox finally figured this out, they doubled, and in some cases tripled, CNN’s audience. If and when Rupert Murdoch and company realize the same lessons are there to be learned in the film world, it’s entirely possible that they will realize unprecedented profits and discover a new and far larger filmgoing audience.

Mark Joseph is the author of Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll, editor of Pop Goes Religion, and founder of the MJM Group. He has worked on the development and marketing of films including The Chronicles of Narnia and Ray.

*Used by Permission

I posted this before, but here is some updated information about this year’s Internet Evangelism Day.

Summary
New online self-assessment tool from the Internet Evangelism Day team enables churches to develop and improve their websites. And this year’s web evangelism focus day is set for 29 April 2007.

“Does your church’s website communicate to outsiders as well as to the members?” asks a new web resource. A church site is the congregation’s ‘shop window’ to its community. To fulfill this function well, it must be enticing, people-centered and easily understood by outsiders. Unfortunately, many churches are unsure how to achieve this vital mix.

So the Internet Evangelism Day team has produced an online self-assessment tool. It leads a church through a series of questions, to highlight areas of their website which may need development:InternetEvangelismDay.com/design

This questionnaire can also be easily added to other webpages using an insertion code.

A church site which has been prioritized for non-Christian visitors can be remarkably effective in reaching the community. “Week in, week out, more visitors turn up at our church on a Sunday because of the website, than anything else,” writes one growing church in London.

The Internet Evangelism Day (‘IE Day’) site also explains other types of online evangelism, such as outreach websites, video clips, blogging and podcasts. There is even a free conversation starter) screen-saver to download.

Holding a focus day The IE Day team also encourages churches and other groups to hold their own ‘web awareness’ focus day on (or near) 29 April 2007. The IE Day site provides downloadable video clips, drama sketches, posters, handouts and a PowerPoint presentation, making it easy for any church to create its own IE Day program. This can as brief as a 2-minute spot within a worship time, or an entire themed church service, seminar, or midweek meeting.

Churches that have already held their own focus day are enthusiastic. “It was a real eye-opener for many,” writes one in Muncie, Indiana. “We held a midweek evening presentation of 90 minutes, for other local churches,” says another from Dawlish UK.

A Canadian church leader comments, “I used a 10-minute presentation that focused on how anyone can get involved in reaching out to the Internet community. I also added a section on using our church website as an evangelism tool, as some of our members have already had great success with it.”

“I pray that Internet Evangelism Day challenges more to become involved for this expanding harvest field,” says Keith Seabourn, Chief Technology Officer for CCCI.

Internet Evangelism Day is an initiative of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, an umbrella group of major interdenominational Christian groups involved in Web ministry, of which CCCI is an executive member, and has a number of teams directly involved in a wide range of web evangelism and discipleship ministries.

www.InternetEvangelismDay.com

Interviews available: InternetEvangelismDay.com/publicity
Photos available: InternetEvangelismDay.com/photos
Recommended photo for this item: InternetEvangelismDay.com/churchphoto
Additional articles – ready-made material and MP3s: InternetEvangelismDay.com/articles
Leaders supporting IE Day: InternetEvangelismDay.com/supporting

Over the next few months I will be launching another blog. If you work as a media director or associate for a church and produce or use videos during your services, I would like to hear from you. I would like to find out about your experiences and how you are using these videos in your church. Please contact me with your name and e-mail address through the contact page. Click the above link.

Thank you for your patience if you have experienced any problems with the website over the past few weeks.

I have had a bad experience with the webshosting that I was using. Their server kept doing strange things and then somone got into their server and released a virus through iframes on the index pages. I have moved to a new host and pray that I don’t have any more problems.