Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

Note: At the bottom of this post, I’ve added some photos we obtained during the video shoot.

Starting yesterday and lasting until early this morning, I was privileged to accompany and direct a video crew on a remote shoot miles from nowhere in the boonies. It was an all-nighter.

Our mission was to help capture and tell the story of a country church plant that meets around a campfire weekly. Yes, even in this freezing weather.

Our destination was a 3.5 hour journey from home base and the last leg was definitely off the beaten path.

Way off.

You had to pay the price to get there.

We went through several small towns before we finally got to the last “fillin’ station” that was still on a 2 lane paved (well, it was more like 1.5 lanes) road.

And then the pavement disappeared.

We were now on a “dirt” road that was really more like a few 4×4 mud boggin’ trails I’ve played on. For nearly 15 miles we trekked through the woods slushing our way over slippery ruts flooded with deep ponds of muddy water. For a minute, we were concerned that the smallest vehicle of the convoy would drown. Thankfully, it survived.

When we arrived, my son looked up in the heavens and cried out “look at those bright stars!” There were no lights except the camp fire and the porch light on the home-made cabin where the host couple lived.

We were then greeted by some of the friendliest folks I’ve ever met. They invited us in with arms wide open and offered us venison prepared more ways than I could count along with fried potatoes and mounds of brown beans. The food alone was enough to cause culture shock. Very tasty.

These were authentic country folk. In fact, they described themselves as hillbillies. It was rather clear that we weren’t from around there, but that didn’t matter to them.

They just acted like we were one of them.

The campfire was really a fire pit the size of a large refrigerator or a mini Cooper. It was blazing hot and smoke was swirling throughout the camp site. The cabin was littered with deer antlers, turkey gobbler beards, and animal hides (including a black bear killed in the area). The cabin had been hand crafted out of cedar pulled off the land where we were. Several men from the church had helped build it.

A superbly gifted blue grass band plucked and howled their way through several great hymns and songs about their Jesus journey. And the believers gathered there absolutely loved it. I too enjoyed it and kept battling the thought that these guys need to be discovered and lined up with a good label. In my heart, I surmised that it would probably just ruin them and that would be a shame.

Throughout the evening, we heard story after story after story of people who had been snatched by grace from the clutches of alcoholism, meth addiction and lifestyles that can only be described as hell on earth.

You know, the kind of scenes Jesus just loves to invade.

And He did.

In popcorn “old school” testimony fashion, one after another, people talked about how they came to Christ and the glorious work of Christ in and around them. In almost every case, their experience happened because another believer loved them enough to care and stayed with them long enough to help them get to Jesus so He could heal them.

The stories were truly amazing and I was humbled by God’s gracious acts of redemption reflected in each of them. It flashed me back to my initial salvation experience with Christ.

On the long drive home, we reminisced about our time with this community of believers whom we had never met and our incredibly rich experience with them.

My thoughts then drifted back toward the video we had been assigned to shoot and the story we had attempted to capture.

In my mind, I knew there was no way we could truly do the story justice.

Their story, like millions of others, is actually a symphony of personal stories closely intertwined and inseparable. It’s the story of God’s glorious redemption toward men, women and children from all walks of life. Grace knows no sociological boundaries.

Aside from the beautiful reminders that everyone has a story and that no one is beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love, I also left with this important thought.

There’s no better branding than that which authentically flows out of the story God is writing on the hearts of those of us on the receiving end—and we should be delighted to tell it.

That’s the kind of branding that resonates with others. That’s the greatest branding on planet earth.

What’s your story? What’s your brand? What’s your brand story?

Photos by Brian Cates of Brian Christopher Productions