Rethink Church is a United Methodist marketing initiative that launched last year. I recently interviewed United Methodist Communications General Secretary Larry Hollon about his vision for the campaign. Be sure to look for the print version of this interview in the Aug/Sep/Oct edition of Circuit Rider magazine.

SHANE: Where did the idea for the Rethink Church campaign and the 10 Thousand Doors seeker website originate? Was it one person’s idea, a group effort, a brainstorming session or the creation of an ad agency?

LARRY: As we prepared to move into the third quadrennium of our advertising strategy, we realized we needed to take this campaign to the next level. As the world changes and the media environment changes, we know that we have to change too.  We began to ask the question, “What comes next?” The past eight years have led us to a new place. And so the idea came about through an interactive conversation that was based upon research, based upon our previous experience with the campaign, and based on the realities that we are perceiving in the church and society that now call the church to look at itself differently and refocus on mission and ministry.  The website, 10thousanddoors.org (“10KD”), is not a campaign in and of itself, but rather a component of the larger Rethink Church campaign; but its origin was really all of those.  We continue to do our due diligence with research and testing.  As an outcome of our findings, we are redesigning 10thousanddoors.org to have greater capacity for interaction and engagement and we will be relaunching the site late this summer under the streamlined URL RethinkChurch.org.

SHANE: In what ways is Rethink Church attempting to build a United Methodist brand?

LARRY: The brand has already been created:  it’s the people of The United Methodist Church—and the brand promise is that you will be received with open hearts, open minds and open doors if you engage with the people of The United Methodist Church. That brand is rooted in the Wesleyan tradition of serving people who are not a part of the established church, but who are seeking spiritual meaning. Rethink Church takes the promise as well as the invitation, and makes it more active. It takes it to the level of engagement and active expression. It presents options that make the invitation to discipleship concrete.

SHANE: How can a local church get on board and experience the maximum benefit from RethinkChurch.org?

LARRY: Churches can begin by updating their Find-A-Church profile with information about what their congregation offers, becoming a designated “welcoming congregation,” and by starting a conversation about what it means to rethink church and engage the community – and returning often keep updating. Their “official United Methodist” profile is the most effective way of sharing the hundreds of ways local churches are engaged in their communities and the world (partnering to help eliminate Malaria deaths, sponsoring special services to recognize community servants, preparing welcoming baskets for new members of the community, hosting a sermon series that would interest the community and/or sponsoring an outreach with the local community around immigration assistance, issues of poverty and homelessness, day care or school events).

SHANE: United Methodist congregations are all over the map theologically. How can both theologically conservative and a theologically liberal (for lack of better terms) congregations benefit from RethinkChurch.org? How can a large marketing initiative cast such a wide net without losing potency?

LARRY: The purpose statement on the site claims: “This is a relevant, open-minded place to explore your spirituality.  Come as you are and discover ways to live with purpose and meaning.” RethinkChurch.org is targeted at persons who are looking for spiritual connections and are more open to finding that through involvement in mission activity.  No one side of the theological spectrum you describe is more or less attuned to that part of our faith than the other. Mission becomes the new point of entry, and eventually as people on this journey look to be more fully a part of the faith community they can decide whether the church’s theology is a good fit with their own faith journey.

SHANE: In what ways can local churches make this campaign their own? With Open Heart, Open Minds, Open Doors, there was some room for interpretation about what that slogan means. Will Rethink Church allow congregations to emphasize their particular strengths?

LARRY: I believe that, programmatically, Rethink Church is really an invitation to participate in a conversation about what it means to be people in mission.  It is an opportunity for us to rethink who we are as a community of faith in this new century. We hear from local congregations across the church who are already re-thinking their ministry and in the fast-changing world in which we live, this has become a necessary part of effective ministry—to re-think in light of new circumstances how we engage in ministry.

SHANE: How are other church agencies and divisions (UMPH, GBCS, GBGM, etc.) participating in and supporting Rethink Church?

LARRY: The United Methodist Publishing House remains a strategic resources partner with the Rethink Church campaign as evidenced by Change the World, an initiative that grew out of our partnership and culminated on the weekend of April 24th with 100,000 people participating in outreach. (See page 25 for the full story on Change the World weekend.) The General Board of Discipleship has been in conversation with us around including Rethink Church and RethinkChurch.org in some of their training modules. The General Board of Global Ministries and General Board of Church and Society continue to work with us as content partners to  feature missions, places where Volunteer in Mission teams are deployed around the world, and social initiatives. More content partnerships are underway with UMW/Women’s Division as well as exploring new relationships such as with UM Young Clergy on Facebook .

SHANE: Suppose someone who has never been to a church encounters the Rethink Church campaign. In their minds, how will the UMC be different from other mainline churches, the Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist or nondenominational churches? According to RethinkChurch.org, what makes the UMC stand out?

LARRY: One of the challenges that denominations typically face is that people don’t really know that much about them. Our research has given us a snapshot of how others see us, and the indication from the first eight years of the campaign is that it has helped to reframe people’s indistinct perceptions about the church into something more positive. The goals of Rethink Church are to change the current perception of The United Methodist Church into one of a relevant, active community of believers; to redefine the church experience beyond Sundays and a building; and to return to the first century roots of the church as one of the original social networks.

The “Learn More” portion of the site offers seekers the chance to explore multimedia content that describes “Who We are” with information about our faith, our history and how we translate that faith story into active service throughout the world.  By further linking the site with Find-A-Church, seekers are able to locate churches in their geographical area with ministries that best meet their needs/interests.

SHANE: What exactly are we “selling” with RethinkChurch.org? An experience? An idea?

LARRY: RethinkChurch.org is not a sales tool but an invitational destination. We invite people to this destination with the hope they will find a way to engage with The United Methodist church in a local congregation or through an activity, service project , mission opportunity, study group, or in some other way  that interests them. “Get Involved” is the section of the site that features a highly interactive map highlighting churches and ministries.  By linking this section of the site with the Find-A-Church database, seekers are able to locate churches in their geographical area with ministries that best meet their needs/interests. And so that we maintain that the site is a place for engagement, not just information, it allows them the ability to leave comments regarding their experiences.

SHANE: What role does social networking play in RethinkChurch.org? How is RethinkChurch.org structured to adapt to the changes and trends in social networking and communication?

LARRY: RethinkChurch.org uses social networking tools to provide site content and to create engagement opportunities.  For instance, six Twitter streams display live commentaries across rotating topics ranging from malaria to homelessness.  At the same time, trending stories on these topics from United Methodist sources and around the Web are imported.  Site visitors can engage within the site uploading their own unique content and comments, and may choose to share content via hundreds of social places such as their Twitter and Facebook accounts.  To that end, RethinkChurch.org strives to facilitate community around its content using social networking.  Because content is at the center of the user experience, and not a single social networking platform, RethinkChurch.org is capable of adapting easily to changing social networking trends.

SHANE: One criticism I’ve heard and made about RethinkChurch.org is that there isn’t enough there about Jesus Christ. Is Jesus Christ the foundation of RethinkChurch.org? How would making Christ the explicit theological foundation of the RethinkChurch.org web site enhance the other material on the site? What is currently in RethinkChurch.org that makes it different from any secular organization involved in social concerns and projects?

LARRY: We know that we must speak in a way that is relevant to our audience’s concerns. It’s a matter of communicating in the language that people are familiar with in the media environment that they are comfortable in and reaching them with concerns that are directly related to their day-to-day experiences and concerns. RethinkChurch.org is an invitation to be missionally engaged disciples of Jesus Christ. It may invite you to become engaged by using some doorway that is nontraditional, but the mission of the church is to make disciples. Therefore, a life of disciplined study, prayer and service following the teachings of Jesus is deeply embedded in the invitation.

The environment changes rapidly.  However, we know from research that religious references frequently block communication.  Therefore, we must get around the blockage to be heard and we must demonstrate an inviting, vibrant, authentic welcome once skeptical seekers respond favorably to our message.  It’s a delicate communications challenge that we must handle with care for the people we want to engage and our faithfulness as disciples of Jesus Christ.  We struggle with this almost daily. In the original design of the seeker site research showed us that the “US” page of the site had the 3rd highest view rate of any other page on the site.  Building on that learning, we have taken great care in the new relaunched site to enhance the section (Learn More) that speaks to who we are as The people of The United Methodist Church and what we believe.

SHANE: When creating a marketing campaign for a church (or denomination), what can we learn from the business world? From other churches and non-profits?

LARRY: I think one of the basic learnings is to do good solid research and to focus on the needs of the audiences rather than focusing on pushing out institutional messages.  You focus on the needs of the audience and how your denomination serves those needs– and then you provide the quality experience that is called for so that we are authentic and true in our offering to people. We’ve heard the concerns of young adults searching for meaningful ways to change the world, and to find meaning and purpose in life with friends who care about them. We want to provide the invitation for people to make that kind of connection within The United Methodist Church. That is a challenge not only to communications, it’s a challenge to the church.

SHANE: How does a church measure the success of a marketing effort? Increased membership? Name recognition? Positive feedback from surveys or focus groups?

LARRY: These are all fine measures, and all can be a part of a metrics strategy for local church marketing. One of our hopes as we promote Rethink Church is that the church as a whole will look beyond what we have traditionally measured – membership, or worship attendance – and begin to explore ways we can measure how churches engage with their communities. How many lives are touched? How many children are cared for, how many people are fed, how many persons are connected to the places where they can find reasons to have hope?

In the last several months we have tied marketing efforts to community outreach activities and have seen wonderful responses from the communities and church members alike.  At one such Rethink Church event on April 11th in Topeka, KA, twenty- two churches partnered together to get out of their churches and into the area parks for a day of clean up.  Over 800 church members participated and they were joined by more than 200 volunteers from the community.  One of the pastors interviewed that day has average worship attendance on Sunday mornings around 50 people, but his church had 66 people participate.  With Rethink Church, we are really measuring engagement.

SHANE: How does a church or denomination decide what percentage of its budget should be allocated for marketing? What do you think is a healthy percentage? Does the UMC invest enough in this area?

LARRY: Marketing professionals continually say that 10-15 percent of an organization’s budget should be designated for marketing. The Rethink Church campaign is operating nowhere close to that.   What we are doing is maximizing all of our advertising efforts through social media channels and connecting with advocates in various arenas who help us share and spread our message.  We believe that the timely and relevance of our message are helping to push it further with fewer resources.  From a secular perspective, the campaign has won two prestigious awards, a Regional Emmy and the Mosic Addy given for the way the campaign promotes diversity and issues related to multiculturalism.

SHANE: What role does church “quality control” play in the success of a good campaign? How do we keep young people who visit local UMC’s from being disappointed and possibly being inoculated against church in the process?

LARRY: If we do not deliver welcoming and hospitality to those folks who come to the church and take that step of being vulnerable by coming to the church, then we have failed in our faithfulness to be a welcoming community. Our welcoming training reminds churches that if visitors aren’t made to feel welcome within the first 30 seconds or the first 100 feet, they are not likely to want to return to that.  One of the reasons for the RethinkChurch.org web site is to provide a self-guided way for individuals who are interested in a new spiritual home to explore the people and work of United Methodist Churches in their area. In every case, we hope that the experience of RethinkChurch.org leads to a person toward finding an experience that is authentic, compelling and the start of a fulfilling journey.

You can learn more about the campaign by visiting the Rethink Church website.