Alcatraz Island and Marketing Your Ministry |
Sep 30, 2009 |
In our Mission Increase Foundation workshops and labs on marketing, we asked the attendees to consider how everyday people—those who don’t necessarily know anything about the cause-- interact with the cause in their day-to-day existence. Why is this important? Because then you can design a signature participation project (SPP) in which you challenge new people to become active in your cause as the way to market your ministry.
The question of how the cause intersects with everyday people was one of the more challenging questions faced by the participants in our marketing workshops. Everyone seems to feel that their particular cause is more challenging than the others in the room.
But I contend that there are opportunities all around us. Consider the cause of prison ministry. In Matthew 25:36, Jesus states that we have an experience with him when we visit those in prison. But how does this cause intersect with us in our everyday lives?
My sister and her family visited this summer from Tennessee. Among their stops in California were trips to Disneyland, the Hollywood Bowl and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.
My 12-year-old nephew bought a book in San Francisco for his summer reading called “Al Capone Does My Shirts”, a children’s story set in the 1960’s about a little boy who goes to live on Alcatraz when his dad accepts a job as an electrician at the prison.
They were unable to tour the island, as they didn’t make their reservations as suggested, a full ten days in advance! 1.3 million people a year visit Alcatraz, and in the summer months they regularly turn away thousands more who want to go.
These are all paying customers. People who are willing to stand in line to visit a prison.
So what does this say about our culture and those who are incarcerated? Perhaps there is an interest and fascination that we might at first overlook. But if we are to engage people in carrying out works of service relative to our causes, we first need to understand where they are at, and how their lives are already, for good or for ill, intersecting with the cause
Sep 30, 2009 at 4:56 PM I was one of the attendees in your Marketing lab earlier this month and I have to say it was definitely a challenging project. Working through the assignment I kept hitting walls trying to find a signature project that really met all of the assignment goals. In the end I think the problem was not really in finding 'the perfect signature project' that also happens to meet all of the goals but more in finding a new perspective on the ministry... My ministry does intersect with the day-to-day lives of normal people. Thanks for the perspectives.