Drawers

The drawers on the wall represent the brokens lives and blown-away homes of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina showed up.

Jana Napoli painstakingly collected the drawers, labelled each one and stuck them together. It's an evocative example of everyday things, at first ignored and 'taken for granted' in the lives of the people, then destroyed as part of a huge tragic event, and now faithfully representing both life and tragedy.

In the end, even the small things count.

Merdeka

The Pharisees maintained a 'better-than-thou' attitude. The Zealots planned revolutions. The Essenes migrated.

The Sadducees sold out the Jewish hope for political leverage. The tax-collectors continued their gleeful exploitation (whilst the prostitutes maintained their sorrowful trade).

Some Roman soldiers played gangster. The common Jew struggled, complained and cursed them all but basically did nothing to remedy the situation.

There were many responses to the volatility and instability during Second-Temple Judaism. Likewise, in Malaysia.

Jesus chose 'none of the above' walked a better, narrower and more painful way. He embraced the tragedy of Israel in such a way that made it clear he did not endorse it. And he did so out of a love which couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

Perhaps if Malaysians learnt to love our country the way Jesus loved Israel, Merdeka Day would mean, and promise, more. Much more.

Reinvention

Check out Coke's new coming-soon designs. Doesn't look anything like the traditional red.

That's re-invention i.e. doing something so new, daring and 'outrageous' the people gasp (and even curse at times).

We all gotta de-invent and re-invent ourselves every now and then.

Especially if you're a mamak restaurant facing competition from newly opened Chinese hawker stalls across the road.

Or if you're a super-store like TESCO (who tells customers, "Come in, take your time, enjoy the aisles, spend an hour shopping for groceries") facing competition from stealthy, nimble medium-sized stores, whose value-proposition is, "Come in, get your stuff, get out - in 10 minutes or less".

Or if you're a fading political party about two steps away from losing huge majorities (and especially if you've recently suffered a landslide defeat).

Or if you're a traditional church losing your youth members.

Because even God does it. He reinvented with Abraham (and aging nobody), with Moses (a member of the Egyptian household, i.e. the enemy), with David (a sherpherd boy), with Paul (a violent persecutor) and certainly with Jesus, the crazy Nazarene born in a manger.

Simple Seven

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wwjd crisis)

The Purpose-Driven Church Newsletter

Churches often give out newsletters. And yet often newsletters are produced for one purpose and one purpose alone: To share information.

This information could take the form of updates, news, upcoming events, mini-sermons, etc.

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to share information, except I feel that in addition to, "What do we want our members to know?", churches should be asking themselves, "How do we want our members to act?"

In other words, a church newsletter should an instrument of getting members to:

• Participate in church activities (e.g. mission trips, visitations, carolling, etc.)
  
• Give generously should there be a need
  
• Talk and think in a certain (hopefully godly) manner

The next step then becomes: Given these (and similar) aims, how would a church newsletter be different (if at all)? Some obvious consequences would be:

• Information would be selected based on pre-defined behaviour objectives of the church
  
• Articles (and their 'tones') would be written not from the usual "write-anything" or "thematic/seasonal" approach, but from the anticipated impact on the members (e.g. building curiousity on a certain topic)
  
• Biblical passages and homilies would be chosen as lead-ins' to the future events or programs
  
• Activities (games, quizzes, etc.) would be tailored towards eliciting more participation
  
• Etc.

Focus on desired action/behaviour and you'll get your information dissemination goals thrown in as well. Focus on information alone (as we, alas, normally do), and you probably won't get the behaviour part.

Talk about a (clearly specified) 'purpose-driven' newsletter.

Important Intervals

I learnt a while back that one should always put a good interval between modifications of documents.

There was a time my managers kept throwing me back my documents, pointing out really dumb errors on my part. And I was stumped. Haven't I checked and rechecked?

And then I realised that if the time between one doc-check and another is too short, your mind sees what it wants to see i.e. a near-perfect document(!)

So the next time you complete a proposal/report at 1pm, if time permits, do NOT audit the document until 4-5pm, when your head's cooled down.

Better yet, if the bosses are breathing down your neck to get it in by 1.30, get someone else to check it.

Never Exactly as Requested

Always try go beyond what was instructed. Always do more than the standard task description.

If you're asked to make coffee, throw in a doughnut. Gotta photo-copy reports? Sort it, clip it, bind it, whatever, make the recipient feel like it's some hot conference hand-out.

Asked to describe event XYZ? Don't merely describe - throw in an analysis, what-ifs', action-steps, risks (and mitigation strategies), etc.

You get the drift.

A New Kind of Marketing

Am halfway through Seth Godin's Meatball Sundaes, a great book on the New Marketing.

One of Godin's advice is: Stop making what you want to sell, and start making what people want to buy.

This requires, among other things(!), that:

• We need to be tuned in what people are talking about (which usually entails getting plugged in Web 2.0)
• We need to stop thinking 'masses' and start imagining 'special communities' interested in what we have to offer
• We need to get them help us make what they want (a.k.a. collaboration, customisation, etc.)
• We need to 'pop up' whenever they talk about a certain product or service (this usually means having something special enough for people to mention)

Selling to Folks Far Away

We need to imagine our markets to be far...further...much further away from the ones we're presently serving.

And I don't mean only if you're selling canned drinks or cars. I mean even - especially - if you're in the 'service industry' and you're small time at the moment.

Even if you're a dentist, a lecturer, a mechanic, an event organiser, an accountant.

Assume that reaching clients thousands of miles way was necessary for business survival in, say, two years' time, what would you do now? Assume everyone else was serving multiple continents, who would you talk to in a hurry?

Visiting the nearest, soonest, Web biz conference might be a start. But make you pick a good one (smile).

The Package is the Product

Theologians deal with spiritual (and sometimes historical) truth. But they tend to miss out on one key truth: That there is no division between the (ecclesiological, theological, spiritual) product and its packaging.

Yes, the design of the book cover matters. No, never drone out a theory or sermon as if your listeners were bots. Yes, what participants do (and don't do) - even in a 'serious' conference - makes a difference. No, the academic content alone doesn't hack it. Yes, mood and timing and hunger affect an audience's receptiveness to even the most ground-breaking paper ever presented.

The product may be eternal. But packaging is incarnational.