Does your church ever argue about music? Do different generations or cultures within your congregation have different tastes? You might want to take in the movie, Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, about music in Istanbul. It’s fascinating to hear the perspective of the musicians, from the young Turkish rappers to Kurdish musicians whose music was banned until a decade ago, to an 86 year old woman who has been singing for 72 years. It’s mostly in Turkish with subtitles (including subtitles for the music). The respect they show for each other is noteworthy.

I’m rereading Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, for about the fourth time. I think it’s the best book I’ve ever read about finding yourself as a human being and as a leader. Here is one quote that always strikes me: “When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself—and me–even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.” (p. 49-50)

I mentioned recently that I was reading Greg Stielstra’s Pyromarketing, and wondering whether and how it might be applied to church outreach. Stielstra was the architect of The Purpose Driven Life marketing campaign which began by recruiting 1200 pastors to offer the “40 Days of Purpose” series in their churches as a way to get the word out about the book.

Here are the four steps and my thoughts on how it might apply to church outreach: I’m thinking out loud here.

1. “Gather the driest tinder: Focus your promotions on those people most likely to buy, benefit from, and then enthusiastically endorse your product or service.” Every church has people it can reach more easily than others. Sometimes that is geographic and sometimes it is demographic. It also has to do with reaching out to people who are already coming toward you, who are motivated to hear your message. (On the other hand, we are not only called to minister to people “just like us.”)

2. “Touch it with the match: To the extent you can, give people an experience with your product or service.” Stielstra is practicing what he preaches by offering the free audio download and other resources on his site. For churches, this might mean a two-step approach: giving people an experience outside the church walls in some way, and giving them an experience within the church walls.

3. “Fan the flames: Fanning the flames means giving people tools to help them spread your message throughout their social network. People spread messages more effectively than advertising.” Many people who join a church were invited by someone they know. Giving people tools means more than telling them they ought to invite theier friends. If a church offers some experiences as suggested in number 2, those could be opportunities for people to spread the message by inviting someone to an intriguing event outside the church or within its walls.

4. “Save the coals: Saving the coals means keeping a record of the people you encounter through your marketing so you can quickly and easily reach them to fan the flames or to tell them about new products that match their interests.” Does your church have a way to track visitors? To find out their interests? Are there creative ways you might contact them about programs that fit their interests and needs?

Church is not just about marketing, of course. But I wish that when I was a local church pastor I’d known a tenth of what I’ve learned about marketing in recent years. What do you think?

How often do you check your e-mail? How about your voicemail? Some people check every e-mail as it comes in, while some don’t even have e-mail. How connected are you? And perhaps a more important question is, how do your connections serve your goals as a leader? Developing relationships is an essential part of leadership, and electronic communication can facilitate that process, making it easy to connect with a lot of people.

However, being constantly available in the short term can get in the way of long-term goals. I’m working on a new book this summer, and I’m very excited about it, but at difficult moments in the project I find myself turning to e-mail to see if anyone has contacted me in the last fifteen minutes. It’s disrupting my focus and slowing down my progress. Leaders must have time to think in order to be clear about their own purpose and direction, and e-mail can distract from this higher-level thinking. Leaders also need rest, and responding to the needs and requests of others continuously is tiring. And leaders who expect staff and others to constantly respond to their requests run the risk of wearing their followers out.

Maintaining the boundary between ourselves and others will help us sustain ourselves over time. Developing relationships with our followers will help us sustain our leadership over time. Both are important. How to manage the balance? It’s more of an art than a science, and it will be different for different leaders. One leader may never check his e-mail on vacation. Another may turn her cell phone off in the evenings. It’s important to figure out where your limits are.

You may want to ask the question: which connections serve my goals, and which connections consume my attention randomly? This question is worth asking about people who want your attention in person as well as electronic communication. Setting limits with those who demand your attention is good for you and good for them. You may say, “I have fifteen minutes to give you now, and we can set a time later if you need more.”

Regulating your answers to calls and electronic communications can help lower your anxiety, too. How many times have you jumped to respond to an anxious e-mail and wished later you’d been more thoughtful? Mark Forster suggests answering e-mails and calls the next day, if possible, to avoid having your agenda constantly hijacked by others. Deciding whether and when to answer may make your responses more thoughtful.

Just as being overly available gets in the way of leadership goals, so does the opposite tendency. If you’d rather hide out than be available, you’ll find it hard to develop the kind of relationships that are essential for leadership. If no one can ever track you down, in person or electronically, they will find it hard to follow you. When anxiety is high, even if you’re an extrovert, you may find yourself avoiding people in your organization. But when things are bumpy, it’s even more important to stay in touch.

A strategy to build real connections with those you lead can help you be thoughtful about both face-to-face and electronic communications. Whether you thrive on e-mail and text messages or dread checking your voicemail, your interactions with your followers shape your leadership, and can help or hinder as you move toward your goals.

Here are five more books (actually, four books and a series of books) I’ve been enjoying this summer.

6. The Village Bride of Beverly Hills, by Kavita Daswani. “Chick lit” with a twist: an Indian bride comes to Los Angeles in an arranged marriage to live with her in-laws, then ends up working for a Hollywood gossip magazine. The detail of her experiences, like her first visit to an American buffet restaurant, is hilarious.
7. Donna Leon mysteries. A master of the genre. Her detective, Guido Brunetti, is Venetian, married to the daughter of an aristocrat who is also a professor of English literature. Moral dilemmas are always at the heart of her work.
8. S. by John Updike. The third in his Scarlet Letter series, about a woman who joins an Eastern-ish cult. A bit dated but as always with Updike masterfully written.
9. Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka. Helping me deal with the bounty of our farm produce subscription.
10. Everything is Waiting for You, by David Whyte. I don’t read a lot of poetry, but I find Whyte’s work accessible and evocative.

As the spouse of a librarian, let me remind you that your library welcomes you (and it’s free!).

Here are some books I’ve been enjoying this summer:

1. Eleanor: The Years Alone, by Joseph Lash. I’ve written about this book earlier. I finished it and was inspired by ER all the way to the end.
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I know, I know, this is number six. I’m a little behind. I’ll be reading seven next.
3. Kinfolks, by Lisa Alther. A memoir about her exploration of her family story. Alther grew up in East Tennessee. One set of grandparents came from Virginia, and the other from New York.She writes about her own learning about her own family, particulary in relation to issues of race.
4. Writing with Power, by Peter Elbow. An older book on writing. His writing process could be used by anyone who needs to write or speak anything.
5. Pyromarketing, by Greg Stielstra. He’s the guy who designed the marketing approach for Purpose-Driven Life. I’m planning in advance on how to get the word out on the book I”m working on, Leading Easier: Sustaining Yourself in Ministry. But it strikes me that his concepts could be used by churches in thinking about outreach.

What’s on your summer list?

Israel Galindo has an interesting post on “Releasing the Laity,” which is worth a look. I’ve been a member for several years of a Toastmasters Club, Columbia Center Toastmasters in Portland, OR. Yes, the Toastmasters where you practice speaking. Why would someone who’s been preaching & speaking for 25 years want to be in Toastmasters? I use it to practice for upcoming presentations, to get some feedback on my speaking, and to give back by supporting beginning speakers.

The church could learn a lot from Toastmasters. In a Toastmasters Club, you are given a role almost immediately. You may be called on to give a one-minute impromptu speech. You may time other people’s speeches. You can visit and do nothing for a meeting or two, but after that you are expected to jump right in. You get gentle and supportive feedback on how you did and how you might improve. But Toastmasters Clubs have no pew sitters. (Our club meets in the chapel of Rose City Park United Methodist Church, so we actually do have pews.) You are given a challenge to grow almost immediately.

How might churches structure their ministry so people are given small ways to grow right away, with some careful and caring feedback? What would your congregation do differently if you began to approach ministry in this way?

This year I’ve been cooking a lot of vegetables. I signed up for a subscription to a CSA farm, and every week I’m getting a big bag full of vegetables and fruit. I’ve been having a lot of fun in the kitchen, chopping cabbage, snapping the ends of beans, cooking up yet another pan full of zucchini. I’m finding it a great spiritual exercise, actually. I’ve been reminded of St. Benedict’s phrase, ora et labora, pray and work. Manual labor can be prayer, according to Benedict. I’m not much of an outside worker (I limit my gardening to deadheading roses), but preparing meals is a joy for me, and a way to stay in the moment.

Living in the moment is a great spiritual task (perhaps the most important one). Of course, leaders must think about the future, envision the future, articulate a vision for the future for their followers. But if we can’t be present in the moment, with God, with ourselves, and with those we lead, we will never get to the vision: because we can only make decisions and take action in the present. We can only listen to people in the present. The more we can be here in that moment, without anxiously darting into the future or recovering all the memories of past conversations gone wrong, the more likely we are to respond well to the actual situation in front of us. The future vision can only become reality if we show up for the present.