I’m currently helping out with the marketing of an upcoming Christian event, and was sent this interesting post by Carl Trueman (thanks Ben).
Trueman is concerned about the rise of ‘super apostles’, and makes the following recommendations for promoting Christian conferences:
- First, market conferences on the basis of content not speakers.
- Second, why always bring in the unrepresentative guys from the huge churches? Instead, bring in at least 50% of your speakers from churches of, say, 300 people or less.
- Third, do everything you can to make the speakers just people in the crowd.
What do you think about these recommendations? You can read the full post here.
It’s good food for thought, and I’m still mulling over his recommendations. Trueman believes people will come based on the content alone – do you?
At Katoomba Easter Convention last week, Don Carson expressed his allegiance/sympathies (can’t remember the right word) for pastors of small churches, because this is where the bulk of ministry gets done (and where he saw his Dad serve for the duration of his ministry). At the same time (and he was speaking about John Piper), he acknowledged that God does raise up people at particular times, with a particular gifting to serve the greater church body.
I’ve had similar reflections to Trueman before, on how Christians are used to promote other events (e.g. fundraisers). The promotion goes something like this: “You’ve heard of Person X. They’re very successful in the business/sporting/entertainment world. They’re also a Christian. Come and hear them speak.”
Something about this makes me feel uncomfortable, but I find it difficult to articulate why. I think it comes back to the first recommendation from Trueman – about using content, not people as the drawcard. Perhaps this is just the egalitarian Australian in me.
Speaking of conference, Michael Kellahan wrote another thought provoking post earlier this week- “Knowing more doesn’t equal doing more“. He reflects on the number of conferences available to Christian leaders, and the challenges of putting the learning into practice:
“Is it possible for ministers to spend the entire year in back to back conferences on how to do ministry?…The other obvious thing I’ve been reminded of is that I already know plenty of things that I haven’t implemented. Going to conferences runs the risk of just adding to things I know but don’t yet do. Maybe its better to put into place some of the stuff I’ve learnt in the last decade of ministry conferences!”
Lots to consider.
