When Who You Are = Who You Say You Are = Who Others Say You Are, then congratulations — you’ve achieved coherence.
- Who You Are: Your history, mission, stories, language, traditions, relationships
- Who You Say You Are: Your marketing messages online and off, colors, logos, apparel, etc.
- Who Others Say You Are: Understand misperceptions, and what others think of you.
Who Are These “Others”? Examples of A Church’s Audiences:
- Members
- Regular Attendees
- Occasional Attendees
- Neighbors
- City locals
- Local affiliations (seminaries, Bible colleges, recording studios, Christian businesses)
- Denominational or network affiliates and leaders
- Blogosphere
Obviously some of these categories are more important than others. Some will change in degree of importance over the life of a church. For instance, for a season you may feel that the Holy Spirit is especially leading you to devote your prayers, time and resources to member care. Later, the focus may become more evangelistic, particularly to neighbors.
Member care and evangelism are always priorities, naturally, but I’m sure you can remember or imagine times when one takes on even more urgency than normal. Regardless, it’s important to know how you are perceived by people in all these categories.
Are you a friendly church? Do others even say you’re a friendly church? Yet, does the design of your website, for instance, indicate that you’re not a friendly church:
- perhaps you require people to have a login/password before they can even see anything beyond the home page?
- perhaps the only photograph on your site features an imposing building facade, with no people?
- perhaps your “Church Discipline Guidelines” are displayed prominently, but visitors have to hunt for your location/service time info?
Then you’re failing to achieve coherence.
For more on achieving coherence by focusing on these three questions, get Richard H. Bailey’s insightful Coherence: How Telling the Truth Will Advance Your Cause (and Save the World).
Photo by Tom Branch, from Sojourn Church, Midtown Campus