Will Mancini is a "clarity evangelist" and does his job well, helping ministries and organizations send the right message via effective methods. He recently wrote about how to develop an effective tagline for your church or ministry...
Sometimes conversations that mix marketing and ministry don't go well. In this post, I will not being dealing with a biblical basis of branding or marketing, but I will discuss the biblical integration with one branding tactic- the development of an effective tagline.
HOW TO DEVELOP A TAGLINE
Here are the steps required to develop an effective tagline. Each step has a page with further information and tools.
Step #1: Revisit your vision. You will want to first clarify the identity and direction of your church. Use this tool to assess your clarity.
Step #2: Decide on a gospel-centered promise. Use another tool, developed by Auxano Design, to decide on what gospel promise your ministry best fulfills.
Step #3: Brainstorm many possible taglines based on your promise. The key is more. Follow these steps to make your list big enough.
Step #4: Review taglines from other ministries and competitors. Make sure your voice and message are unique.
Step #5: Reduce your list to the top five taglines. Don't make the decision to quick. Follow some simple steps over two weeks.
Step #6 : Test your tagline with people outside of your ministry. Here is a quick way to test your external audience for free.
Step #7: Make a final decision. Take the ultimate test for your decision.
Why?
For whom?
Isn’t it a shame that we live in such a competitive and commercial world that now a church must be “sold” to the consumer by a tagline?
Why does a church need a tagline? And for whose benefit is the tagline not only written but also publicized? “My church is better than your church because my tagline is better than your tagline!” Just what we need — more competition and more division within the church universal which is already dysfunctional because of its parts’ refusal to unite together in community and in one common purpose: “…to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind; to love your neighbor as yourself; and to go and make disciples of all nations.” And a tagline — the most right and best tagline — is going to do that? “Give me that old time religion” and Spirit-filled and servant hearts any day and twice on Sundays, to accomplish those divine commands, not a tagline.
Let’s see…suppose…”Need a tagline! Need a tagline!” Jesus said one day. “Need to spend the day with the disciples coming up with a tagline. No ‘signs and wonders’ to bring honor and glory to My Father today; just the sitting down with the Twelve and the creating of a short, catchy phrase that will sell The Creator to the created.” Don’t actions speak louder than words? What actions, while coming up with a tagline, would He have neglected that day, that, had He been among the people and not secluded within four walls, could have and would have saved a soul — one at a time — saved a soul for His Father because He “would have been about His Father’s work”? How ’bout the blind man on whose eyes He placed mud, just ordinary mud, so that he could see and others could see the Messiah “if they had eyes to see and ears to hear”? He never sees? Don’t actions speak louder than words? What about the prostitute who was about to be stoned? No one knows what Christ wrote in the dirt as the Pharisees continued yelling, “Stone her!” Maybe He was trying some taglines on for size. In the mean time, she dies. Don’t actions speak louder than words? And okay, the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ robe? “Oh, that one is easy,” thinks the Lord, “I’ve got the tagline, and so I can heal her and honor her faith now.” And as He pauses because of the momentary touch of His robe by a faith-filled heart, He says, “Arise, ‘Woman in Red,’ your illness is gone.” Did the words of the tagline cause the action or did the heart respond with compassion and grace in order to share love and empathy with the suffering?
Taglines are “cool” and clever and are “cool” and clever things to imprint on t-shirts and letterheads; but does anyone ever read them? Do people ever enter but, more importantly, remain in a church because a t-shirt reads, “Got Jesus?” instead of “Got milk?” or “WTL (“…the Way, the Truth, and the Life”) Agent” rather than “FBI Agent” or “Out of Egypt” rather than “Out of Africa”? Because actions speak louder than words, wouldn’t time be better spent living unspoken and unwritten taglines with a heart and through actions that would not only show but prove, by the way we help others, that we’ve “Got Jesus” living in every ounce of our being; that we know and can share “…the Way, the Truth, and the Life” with others; and that we, like each of the others, are slaves “Out of Egypt,” set free, saved, and redeemed by God’s undeserved grace, Jesus’ incomprehensible suffering on the cross, and His hope and life-giving resurrection?
In the 21st century, the need for taglines is understandable. Competition is fierce and the dollar is scarce. Consumers, who, apparently can’t figure it out for themselves, have to be told where they can get the most for and from their dollar. But for churches?
“Give me [the teaching] of that old time religion” within the four walls of the church followed by the doing of those “actions which speak louder than words” outside the four walls of the church. The battered woman and her son will more likely come to a church where the eyes of love and the hands of support and understanding saw her when she was most bloody and offered a shoulder to cry on and a hand up rather than attend a church which proclaims its compassion yet never ventures into the “real” world in order to help those who need their help the most. The lonely man far away from family, scared because of his possible medical problems, and devastated by those which cause his mother and brother to continually be in and out of hospitals will, more likely, frequent a church where the hospitality of genuine handshakes and hugs is shared with him in friendship and community rather than a church where acceptance is determined by the label present on his shirt.
Leave the taglines to the “world that is too much with us.” One of the messages inherent in Jesus’ ministry was that He was counter-cultural; He was “in the world but not of the world”; but the universality of His message causes it to continue being heard and lived thousands of years later; and, like Him and us, it will never die. Leave the taglines to the secular not the sacred world. Leave the taglines for the advertising to and the luring of the consumer into the culture’s dog-eat-dog competitive commercialization.
“As for me and my house,” “give me that old time religion; it’s good enough for me.” God has written the best of all taglines possible. And…He didn’t stop there. He knows that “actions speak louder than words,” so He gave us His Son and not only told us to call His gift The Good News, but He also commands us to both live it as well as tell it.
…so…there’s my tagline: “Live the Love,” while at the same time “remaining faithful,” especially through prayers for the Lost and by allowing “God to be successful” — then “…they will come”; He will show them “…the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”