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Marketing Ideas for Vocational Evangelists: How to Close More Bookings (Pt 2)
By chris | June 23, 2008
Here are a few more ideas to close more bookings as a Vocational Evangelist. This goes a long with the idea I mentioned earlier about becoming known of as an advocate of evangelism. Besides preaching (or performing) in churches, Evangelists can become useful in a greater variety of church contexts by developing a reputation as an expert on topics that help the church. There are a few areas in church outreach that are broken in my opinion and you can be part of the solution. Here are a few I’d like to see:
Think about becoming an expert in one of the following areas:
Evangelism Rights: There is a real problem in the public square with the perception that talking about God is off limits and church members are being intimidated not to evangelize. The general media and public sector have created the impression that Christianity should not be talked about at work, in school, and in the marketplace. Someone needs to do the study about the Christian’s First Amendment right to Evangelize.
The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Our constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech is not just for the press, it is really centered on the freedom of religion (and religious speech). Churches will want someone to help lead seminars in this topic.
Relational Evangelism: help church members build confidence in talking with the people they already know. Too much evangelism training focuses on reaching people who are strangers to the witness. Most evangelism that is lacking is Christians sharing the Good News with the People they are closest with. Help Christians understand how easy it is to share.
Understanding the Unchurched Locally: Yes there are a lot of books about what unchurched are like nationally. But when you drill down to the local church scene, the data is not as relevant. You’d be surprised how small the sample size and narrow the research questions are for those national studies everyone talks about. Become an expert in the people in the area where you serve and you will be an in-demand consultant to the local ministers you want to reach.
Forget trying to be a national expert, you’ll get more impact (and bookings) by narrowing your focus to the area where you serve. Help churches become more Missional by doing the missions research for them and sharing what you learn. If missionaries can do it, so can you!
Mentor Youth Leaders and Younger Pastors: There are a lot of older Baby Boomer ministers who are presently serving in Vocational Evangelism. Develop a deeper understanding of the Generation-Y ministers (born between 1980-1994.) This is an ambitious group of young people who crave respectful mentoring relationships.
I’d tell you to try to mentor Gen-Xers (born 1965-1979), but they tend to be cynical and don’t usually respect older leaders—heck, they don’t even respect ministries they start! Start working with the younger generation there are much more of them anyway and they are open to relationships with older dudes.
Baby Boomer Outreach: While we are on the subject of generations, the Baby Boomers (born 1945-1964) are still the largest group of unreached people in the United States. The next few years will see huge changes in focus, as “old becomes the new young.” The Boomers have transformed Evangelical Christianity at every stage of their development.
Now that they are reaching retirement, someone needs to get up-to-date on how to reach them effectively. I believe they will become more open to spiritual matters as they reassess their lives. Already research indicates they are beginning to become more open to social service and leaving a legacy. Show how to evangelize the older Baby Boomer.
In the next few years, almost every church, even the ones famous for being young and trendy, will be clamoring to understand how to develop an effective “senior adult” ministry. Stop Obsessing on the Relevant Church stuff! Every one of the “postmodern” or “emerging church” experts will be sucking down prune juice in the next 20 years. Get in there and master the topic of older adult ministry so you can help shape ministry in the real future!
*Note: This should go without saying, but, please, don’t try to be all of these. Pick one! The Evangelist who portrays himself as an expert on everything is a cliche. Most people regard them as experts on nothing.
Five Ways to Establish Yourself as a Recognized Expert on Your Topic
I can’t give you a simple recipe but I do have a few tips for establishing yourself as an authority on the subject you want to use to impact the church for greater outreach. A good book on the topic would also help, read Credibility Marketing by Larry Chambers
Here’s a brief list I developed to get you started…
- Research your topic to the “Nth” degree: You can’t fake this, you really need to become a genuine expert on what you want to teach. Read everything on your topic. As you go, it will become easier as you become more familiar with the topic to blaze through books and articles on the topic. But it will take hard work on your part to get there!
- Get a Professionally Designed Identity: Get a good looking logo and design look that communicates the “brand” you are trying to establish. Put your money where your mouth is. Make your website, biz-card, and other materials you use scream, “this person knows what they are talking about!”
- Write on your topic all the time: If “readers are leaders” what are writers? Just start writing about what you are researching. Start a blog and write at least three posts per week on your topic. Not only will that help you as you study, it will help amass key words for your topic on your site which the search engines will find and that will help bring traffic to your site. Don’t give up it takes a year or two, but you will get to the point that you have a audience reading your site, that is, if you don’t “weenie-out!”
- Repurpose Content you have written: Your blog posts can become free e-books, articles and seminars. Take what you write and use it in more ways. Get an editor to help you “clean-up” your writing and submit it to other websites and publications. Soon when people are looking for information about your topic, they will find your ideas on all kinds of places on the web and in print.
- Make Use of Social Media: After you have established your expertise and are able to consult intelligently, post a profile on social media websites like LinkedIn or Plaxo so people can find you in their network. Also, since you are reading the books anyway, go ahead and post a profile on Amazon (see mine) and write reviews of the books you have read. People can find you that way too.
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June 24th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
thanks for the useful article. Couple question…
As a vocational / traveling “evangelist” who is only 28 I wonder how I become an expert at anything. Not that I couldn’t but to be respected as an expert I wonder if I will need to magically age 10 years. Any advice or wisdom their?
Second question. I was born in 79 so technically qualify as your gen-xser but I am VERY open to mentors. I even pray for those kinds of relationships often, but how do I find them? Especially with other vocational evangelists. Any ideas.
Again thanks for the great article.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Thanks for the comment Erik!
You first need to identify what you want to become an expert at. You have to become the expert first. Different things require more effort/time than others.
A shortcut does exist, though, since most people don’t finish the books they start reading, if you read entire books–and several dozen of them on the same topic (see your local librarian), you will have more information than most people have.
The information people have from long years of experience, is really the reason why people who are older are more often recognized as experts. Age alone would not be enough, there are plenty of older people who don’t know much. Expertise speaks for itself at any age.
The Gen-X crack was mostly an inside joke, don’t take that too seriously. Find the mentor you want to learn from, i.e.: pick an evangelist you respect and start a friendship with him. Mentoring comes through relationship. If you say, “will you mentor me” it might make people feel weird. Just make a friend, listen and learn from them.