Purple Cow
September 18, 2003Next week we’ll begin a new series of evotionals titled Extreme. You can check out the series trailer @ theaterchurch.com.
We are less than one week from launching our second location @ Ballston Common Mall. We have invested thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars preparing for it. It would have been much easy to stick with one church in one location. So why launch a second location? The answer is Luke 14. It’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.
Jesus tells a story about a “great banquet.” The invited guests start making excuses so the host says to his servant, “Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” The servant did as he was told but there is still room. Luke 14:23 says, “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house may be full.”
Live to Party
Jesus uses lots of different metaphors for the Kingdom in the gospels, but this is one of my favorite. When people think of church most people don’t think “party,” but that is precisely the metaphor Jesus uses to describe it. He likens the kingdom to a great banquet.
Last week I was shopping and I saw a conversational T-shirt that I would have gotten but they didn’t have my size. It said, “I live to party.” I’m not sure if pastors are supposed to wear a shirt that says that, and it might give the wrong impression, but let me share a story and share a conviction and then you’ll see why I wanted to buy that shirt.
Tony Campolo tells one of my all-time favorite stories. He was at a speaking engagement in Honolulu, Hawaii but his body clock was still on “East Coast” time so he woke up at 3 AM one morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. He found a greasy spoon, sat down at the counter, and ordered a donut and coffee for breakfast.
While he was eating at the counter, a group of eight or nine prostitutes came walking into the diner and sat down on either side of him. They started talking and he couldn’t help but overhear one of the prostitutes, a woman named Agnus, mention to one of her friends that it was her birthday the next day--she would turn 39. And she said that she’d never had a birthday party in her life.
Eventually the group left the diner and Tony Campolo called the owner over and asked him, “Do they come in her every night?” Harry said, “Yes.” Tony Campolo said, “What do you say we throw a surprise birthday party for Agnus tomorrow night here in the diner?”
Tony Campolo showed up at 2:30 AM the next morning and decorated the place to the hilt--streamers, balloons, and a big sign that said, “Happy Birthday, Agnus.” And Harry got the word out on the street that there was a surprise party for Agnus. By 3:15 AM, almost every prostitute in Honolulu was in that diner. Tony Campolo said, “It was wall to wall prostitutes and me!”
At 3:30 AM, Agnus walked in and everyone yelled, “Happy Birthday, Agnus.” They starting singing, “Happy Birthday” and Agnus was literally trembling. They brought out the birthday cake and Harry said, “Cut the cake, Agnus, cut the cake.” She said, “I can’t. I’ve never had one.” She said, “Let me go show my mom then I’ll come back and cut the cake.”
When Agnus walked out, the place was dead silent. Tony Campolo said he didn’t know what to do so he said, “What do you say we pray.” And he prayed that God would deliver Agnus and make her new again. When he finished, Harry leaned over the counter and said, “I didn’t know you were a preacher. What kind of church do you preach in?” And in one of those moments when the Holy Spirit gives you just the right words, Tony Campolo said, “I preach in a church that throws parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” Harry said, “No you don’t. No you don’t.” He said, “I would join a church like that.”
And Tony Campolo says, “Wouldn’t we all?”
Let me share a conviction. It’s not going to sound real spiritual, but I think the kingdom is where the party is at. I’m not saying there isn’t conviction and confession. There are times when you come to church and the Spirit of God touches a raw spiritual nerve ending and it smarts. But I think church should be the most enjoyable hour of your week.
I’m not sure what mental picture comes to mind when you think of “church,” but if you’re thinking in biblical categories, if you see the kingdom the way Jesus sees the kingdom, then “party” is one of the images that ought to come to mind. That’s why I wanted to buy that conversational T-shirt. I live to party! With one caveat: the kingdom is where the party is at.
One footnote. I think lots of people think of God as some kind of cosmic killjoy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Read through the gospels and you’ll find that Jesus was always going to parties and throwing parties for people like Agnus. Jesus didn’t condone sin, but he certainly wasn’t a killjoy. In fact, Jesus was the life of the party!
Sense of Urgency
Luke 14:21 says, “Go quickly into the streets and alleys.” The master doesn’t expect people to just show up at the party. He expects his servant to go out and invite them to come in. And he says, “Go quickly.” There is a sense of urgency in this passage. Let me tell you why. Because the stakes couldn’t be any higher! Eternal destinies are at stake.
Can I just be brutally honest? I think most churches, NCC included, and most Christians, myself included, need to repent for their lack of urgency. Blaise Pascal said, “Our imagination so magnifies the present, because we are continually thinking about it, and so reduces eternity, because we do not think about it, that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity.”
Let me just share my sixth sense about where we’re at as a church right now. I feel like we’ve got seven years of momentum behind us. There is a convergence that is tough to capture in words, but I feel like all the lessons we’ve learned, all the creditability we’ve earned, all the creativity we’ve accumulated are all culminating as we go into the launch of our second location. We’ve certainly have lots of upgrades to make, but I feel good about NCC version 7.0.
We’ve got a trailer on our website. We’re mailing over 150,000 postcards inviting people to our launch. We’ll hand out hundreds of invite cards and email thousands of evites. We’re going to spend three days handing out fortune cookies at metro stops near Ballston with a fortune that says, “ Check out the trailer @ theaterchurch.com.”
Why are we doing what we’re doing? Because Luke 14:21 says, “Go quickly.” There is a sense of urgency! We’ve got a window of opportunity as we begin a new chapter in our church history--we’ve got a new location and a new series of messages--and we’ve got to seize the day!
The Attention Economy
Let me jump back into the story. The master says in Luke 14:23, “Go out into the roads and country lanes and make them come in so that my house will be full.” The KJV uses the word “compel.” It means:
: to demand attention
: to urge irresistibly
The word “compel” means “to demand attention.” And therein lies the challenge. We’ve got so many things vying for our attention that most Americans suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. In their book, The Attention Economy, Thomas Davenport and John Beck cite lots of statistics, but the bottom line is this: we just don’t have enough attention to go around. So what’s my point? My point is this: the church needs to compete for people’s attention.
I think in some ways the church had it a lot easier five hundred years ago. There weren’t newspapers and TVs and computer vying for people’s attention. We suffer from information overload, but people living five hundred years ago suffered from information deprivation. The colors of the stained glass and sound of singing and smell of incense was the most multi-sensory experience most medieval people could have. But it’s a totally different ballgame today!
Can I make an observation? Madison Avenue is so good at marketing that sometimes I’m watching an ad for a soft drink and I’m thinking it’s the solution to all my problems. They do a better job advertising batteries than we do marketing the gospel. Does that bother anybody else? Here’s another core conviction: the greatest message deserves the greatest marketing.
Let me come out and say this because I think it needs to be said. Our competition is not other churches! I thank God for Capitol Hill Baptist and Washington Community Fellowship and Cedar Ridge Community Church and Mclean Bible Church. Do we agree on every point of doctrine? No. Do we do church the same way? No. But they aren’t our competition. In fact, they’re our teammates! Let me tell you who our competition is. Our competition is any alternate use of time.
More specifically, our competition on Sundays is the Sunday paper, the Sunday talk shows, an extra hour of sleep and whatever else people do on Sunday mornings! That’s what we’re competing against. And we can bemoan the fact that a majority of Americans don’t go to church or we can create an experience that is so compelling that it demands people’s attention!
In Acts 17, Paul walks into the Areopagus and shares the gospel. The Areopagus was the marketplace of ideas. Acts 17:21 says they “spent all their time talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” Paul walked into that arena and he competed. Paul wasn’t afraid of head-to-head competition. Why? Because he knew that he knew the truth. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, the church needs to get in the game and compete in the marketplace of ideas.
A few months ago, someone emailed an article to me titled Cinema: The New Cathedral of Hollywood . Our church was cited in the article, and the article compared churches and theaters. The author said, “What we want from church is actually precisely what we get from film.” It’s a “two-hour reprieve from the burden of self-consciousness.” Movies are “an alternate form of transcendence.” Then the author shared what for me was the clincher. She said, “Awe in the presence of a great film is something that very few people are even capable of feeling in church these days.”
When I read what she wrote it riled something so deep in me that it’s tough to put into words. Those of you who know me know that I have a competitive streak. I hate losing Candyland to my kids! That last statement --"very few people are even capable of feeling in church these days”—got my competitive juices flowing. We better not compete with other churches. But we better compete in the marketplace of ideas!
Fredrick Buechner said, “Hollywood consistently beats the church at its own game.” That shouldn’t be. We’ve got to compel people to come in. Why do we put so much time and energy into video projects like our extreme trailer? Because we think thousands of people who wouldn’t come to church will watch a trailer. And if they watch the trailer online maybe they’ll come to church in person.
Purple Cow
A few months ago I read Seth Godin’s book titled Purple Cow . He makes an observation about cows: if you’ve seen one brown cow you’ve seen them all.
He writes, “My family and I were driving through France a few years ago, we were enchanted by hundreds of storybook cows grazing on picturesque pastures right next to the highway. For dozens of kilometers we gazed out the window marveling. Then within twenty minutes we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common. Worse than common. It was boring. Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring. A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting.”
Godin relates the concept to doing business, but I relate it to doing church. He says, “Either you’re remarkable or you’re invisible.” There are 340,000 churches in the U.S. but I think most of them are invisible! They’re invisible because they aren’t remarkable. There is no originality or creativity or personality. They are brown cows.
George Barna is the George Gallup of the church world. No one has done more qualitative or quantitative research that Barna. Here’s what he says in the first sentence of The Second Coming of the Church. “Let’s cut to the chase. After nearly two decades of studying Christian churches in America, I’m convinced that the typical church as we know it today has a rapidly expiring shelf life.”
We are called to compete for our culture.
Irresistible
I believe in the drawing power of the Holy Spirit. God is always apriori. In other words, he’s working in people’s lives long before God brings them into our circle of influence. But we’ve got to extend the invitation. That’s our part in the parable.
Here’s what I know for sure: 100% of the people you don’t invite to church won’t come. You can’t accept an invitation that isn’t extended. We need to take this parable personally and put it into practice. And the way we put it into practice is by everybody inviting somebody!
When I look at NCC I don’t just see the 700 people who attend our four weekend services or the 1200 people who subscribe to this evotional. I see networks of relationships. Everybody knows somebody that nobody else knows! You are in a unique position to influence them for Christ. According to one calculation, the average person has 68 people in their circle of influence or network of relationships. So I don’t just see 700 or 1200 people. I see a relational network of 50,000 or 80,000 people.
Lifeboat #14
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Sea and began sinking. Twenty lifeboats were lowered as a precautionary measure, most of them half-full. You know the rest of the story. Fifteen hundred people ended up in the icy waters and crying for help, but the half-full lifeboats kept their distance. They were more concerned about their own safety than saving others. But things were different in lifeboat #14. Fifth Officer Harold Lowe made a courageous decision. He transferred many of his passengers to other lifeboats and returned to the sinking ship to pick up survivors. He couldn’t save them all, but he saved as many as he could.
Lifeboat #14 ought to be a metaphor for every church. We want to get as many people in the boat as possible. That’s the whole point of the parable in Luke 14. “So that my house may be full.” As long as there’s one person sinking, we can’t afford to play it safe and stay at a distance.
Don’t come by yourself next week. Invite someone else to the party!