Home Pastors Articles for Pastors Must-Know Marketplace Trends for Huge Ministry Opportunities

Must-Know Marketplace Trends for Huge Ministry Opportunities

I am currently helping a large, nonprofit Christian retailer go through a visioning process. Last week, a retail consultant led two hours of dialogue in a meeting I attended. These points are heavily adapted from that conversation with some additional thoughts on how they relate to the church.

Trend #1. Tweets and Seats: Provide free wifi and places to sit.

This is fairly simple to apply at church. Don’t wonder whether you should have wifi or not in any church space. Provide it!

Retailers understand this is not a distraction for their customers, but is a part of how their customers live (constant mobile connectivity). In addition, it’s an opportunity for customers to engage the retail space itself in deeper ways like getting more product information, validating lowest price or seeing creative applications and outcomes of certain products.

In church, the connectivity that wifi provides can translate to deeper engagement with everything that matters for the mission. Examples:

“Can I download the music I am worshipping to right now for personal worship on Tuesday morning?”

“Can I sign up for a group while I am listening to a sermon on biblical community?”

“Can I use my preferred digital copy of God’s word while following the sermon?”

“Can I take notes in a way that will be automatically accessible in a cloud before I leave the service?”

The possibilities are endless.

Trend #2. Big Data: Know my wife’s birthday — and remind me — before it comes to my mind.

Big data is used to describe the massive amounts of data that retailers are able to gather, configure and use to better serve their customers. As connectivity, social media and technology accelerate, big data will yield mind-numbing implications for how people are served.

For example, imagine Hallmark cards reminding you of your wife’s birthday at the right time, the right place, in the right way (device and medium) for you.

Today at Elevation Church, every attender was strongly urged to tear off a response card and answer three questions. The first question was, “What year were you born?” The big deal is the appeal that was made in the moment of asking. The creative pastor shared that, “We want to do everything possible to design the best worship experience for you and this information will help us.” This is Elevation’s way of building their data.

There are a few big players out there in the church information space (I recommend checking out CCB). Be sure to select the one that is most usable and relevant for the future possibilities of big data.

More importantly, think creatively of the umpteen ways that you can collect and use information to serve people. For example, I was recently scolded by my church’s student ministry assistant for missing the cut off of camp sign up. (Okay, it was my fault.) But there are about three to four different ways that this ministry could have reminded me of this info, if they used the data they already possessed. Is a simple text reminder asking too much? Think of the implications way beyond event sign up, like daily discipleship tools, digital missions and social storytelling. Quite frankly, the possibilities are amazing if church leaders wake up to this opportunity!

My prediction: The pastor of digital engagement will be the fastest growing new church job of the future.