Media Outreach

At the moment, today’s Best Practices looks like much of the east coast… cold, unforgiving, and covered with white and not much else.  I hope everyone out there is staying warm as you continue to be hammered by snow. Normally I would complain that it’s cold here, but since I can still see things out my window, I’ll go ahead and shut up.

You might be surprised to learn that I struggle almost every week trying to come up with a topic to discuss in these blogs. Seriously, if there’s ever a topic that you, my loyal reader(s), would like to hear about, please feel free to email about it. Until then though, we’ll be limited to whatever works its way into my brain on that particular Wednesday morning, even though I’m supposed to write these things on Tuesday afternoon.

This week I read an incredible book called, Getting Naked by Patrick Lencioni. I realize that some of you might be wondering what in the world I get up to when I’m not at the office, but I assure you that the book contains no impropriety, or actually nudity for that matter. It advocates, among other things, making yourself completely open and vulnerable to your clients in the workplace, and removing the fear of feeling embarrassed or inferior. I’ve always tried to emulate this in my work, even before I read Mr. Lencioni’s book. However, the more I think about it, the tenets presented in this book should not only be applied to the workplace, but to all aspects of life and society. That includes, dear friends, the church as well. Before you start emailing my boss claiming, “that crazy fool Andy just said we should all get naked in church,” let me clarify.

As you may have guessed by now, I see a church’s website as an incredibly powerful tool. The fact is that, in the Web 2.0 existence in which we’re all a part of, most people will at least attempt to check out your church’s website before they ever set foot inside your church. Therefore, their first impressions of your church are often driven by the content they find on your website.  That’s why it’s so important to make sure that the content on your church’s site is an accurate reflection of who your church is. It’s important for the church to have goals to aspire to, but the overall message of your website should be who you are and what you’re all about. Don’t paint a picture of something you’re not. Be open, honest, and yes, even naked to your visitors. If you do that, you’ll ensure that when visitors do come in your front door, they’ll have a good idea of what they’re diving into.

At this point, most of you are probably thinking, “wow, Andy went an entire blog post without using a numbered list.” I was somewhat impressed with that myself. I certainly wouldn’t want to become formulaic or anything. In seriousness though, despite my proclivities toward jocularity, I do take this blog seriously, and I hope that it is of use to at least some of you.  Until next week then, I hope that everyone is staying warm… especially the east coast snowbound crew. Remember, even though there’s 40 inches of snow outside, that’s no excuse for not Getting Naked, (apologies to Mr. Lencioni, but we all knew there was going to be at least one naked joke here).

Photo By: katmere