Phil Cooke‘s 2008 book, Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Nonprofits Impact Culture and Others Don’t, seeks to change some of these perceptions. Cooke specializes in the intersection of faith and media and acts as a consultant helping religious organizations to better tell their story.

Branding, according to Cooke, is all about the story that surrounds a business or organization. It’s what immediately comes to people’s minds when they think of the organization. With this in mind, he challenges Christian organizations to think carefully about what makes them unique in the world so as to better share their story and help people understand who they are and what they stand for.

Cooke does an admirable job of pointing out the potential dangers in “over-thinking” marketing efforts. He devotes an entire chapter to how churches and non-profits risk losing their identity to marketing “gimmicks” and trying to chase relevancy – and how potential parishioners are turned off by such efforts. I was especially relieved to see Cooke emphasizing the personal relationship between the organization and the individual:

In a world in which few people have  close friends, expand your community and get to know people. Enlarge your network of really close friends. Perhaps it’s becuase I was raised before the digital age that I still value face-to-face communication far more than phone conversations or email.

That having been said, the book should read with some discernment. Cooke, understandably, speaks almost exclusively from a Protestant point of view. Emphasis is placed on the importance of preaching (an emphasis which is complementary to, but different from, the sacramental view of liturgy in the Catholic Church) and, as a result, puts a heavy emphasis on the importance of the leader’s communication skills.

Nevertheless I think there are some good insights for any Christian organization trying to understand how to share its passion and invite others to work with them. It will certainly challenge those who think that marketing has no place in the life of the Church to reconsider their position.

1. Listen with respect to the stories that other people share with you. This could be your cousin who has fallen away from the Church, a co-worker with a broken relationship, or even a stranger in the doctor’s waiting room. By listening you enter into a relationship with the person and demonstrate your concern and love for them.
2. Share your own story. In particular, share a time that you had a similar problem and talk about how your faith helped you. Fr. Pable suggests three phrases to use in sharing your story: “Once I was…”; “Then God did…”; “Now I am…” For instance, if you are talking to someone who has lost their job, you might say something like: “Once I lost my job during a series of layoffs. I was really scared and wondered how I would make ends meet. I asked my friends and family to pray for me, and although I didn’t find a job for a few months, knowing that I was being supported and prayed for by so many people made that tough time much easier. God really helped me make the best of a bad situation.”
3. Extend an invitation to the person. You might invite them to pray with you, to attend a parish mission or just over to your house for dinner and further conversation! The point is to encourage them to take a step towards a deeper relationship with Christ, no matter how small.

If you’d like to learn more about how to share your faith with others, Fr. Pable’s complete presentation can be viewed online courtesy of the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association (free registration required).

Some quick background: My criteria for making these decisions when acting in an institutional capacity is different than my criteria for my personal accounts, especially re: Twitter; for my personal account I’m pretty indiscriminate about who I follow, since I believe the value of Twitter is in making connections and self-limiting those connections diminishes that value.

Twitter

My decisions about whom to follow via the NCCL Twitter account are based on two criteria: 1) Who has information relevant to our members? and 2) Who has need of the type of information NCCL provides? These two categories are not mutually exclusive; for instance, Nick Senger, as a Catholic educator, both tweets information pertinent to our members and can be a conduit through which NCCL information can flow to people not directly associated with the organization. So it makes sense to follow him and hope that he follows us (which he does).

Pursuant to the second criteria, this means that I’ve tended to follow anyone in a catechetical ministry in the Church as a way of establishing a connection with NCCL. This includes DREs, self-identified catechists and Catholic school teachers.

The first criterion is a little trickier since it requires a judgment call about the needs and values of our membership. I’ve picked the major catechetical publishers with a Twitter presence as well as groups and individuals that are representative of the broadness of the Church without straying outside the folds, so to speak. Figures such as Sr. Helen Prejean, Fr. Robert Barron or Christopher West, while appealing to different constituencies within NCCL, nevertheless stand firmly (and without major controversy) within the Catholic Church. On the other hand, if Fr. Charles Curran or Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, LC, (General Director of the Legion of Christ) were to start tweeting, I would not follow them, even knowing their appeal to some members of NCCL, due to their controversy within the Church.

My final criterion for Twitter is that anyone associated in a direct way with NCCL (past or current leaders, members) gets an automatic follow. Of course, this assumes I can identify them as being associated with NCCL.

Facebook

Linking fan pages on Facebook is not as integral to the experience as following someone on Twitter. Because of the terminology in use, I’m a little more selective about linking our Facebook fan page with other fan pages. Following someone on Twitter doesn’t have the same connotation as being a “fan” of someone on Facebook; the latter implies a level of approval that isn’t present in the former.

To give a better example of how I handle Facebook, for my diocese’s Facebook fan page I have linked us to groups with whom we have an established institutional relationship (CRS, Catholic Committee on Scouting, NCYC) and the schools and parishes of our diocese. This might be a model for how to handle future Facebook links and other relationships.

Recently I’ve been having some fun using ChatRoulette as a sort of evangelization tool/sociology experiment. For those unfamiliar with the site, ChatRoulette pairs you up with a random stranger in a chat room. If you both have web cams you can even see each other. (Note: Many people take advantage of this function to display highly inappropriate material. Enter ChatRoulette at your own risk.)

Using a piece of software called ManyCam I’ve replaced my image with that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (see above). The fun has been in seeing people’s reactions to Christ appearing on their screens. Most people quickly hit the “next person” button; some people laugh, ask “Really?!” or show a sign of disapproval. Some people smile or even write back messages like “I know!” or “Thanks.” Some just give a thumbs up. One young man actually made the Sign of the Cross and prayed. (As near as I could tell he was sincere.)

It’s been fascinating to see the wide range of reactions and responses — ChatRoulette really offers an interesting cross-section of people. If you’d like to get a sense of the reactions, you can follow the adventures of ChatRoulette Jesus on Twitter under the user name @ChatRTJesus.

Gilbert’s book is summarized in this 2008 TED talk (the whole talk is about 24 minutes long and is well worth watching on its own merits):

Gilbert’s explanation vis a vis how we make decisions about happiness over time got me thinking about the aims of evangelization. Given that comparisons over time are extraordinarily difficult to make and that, all things being equal, it takes a tremendous payoff to delay gratification, is it possible that the extension of the human lifespan makes arguments for religious belief less convincing?

The stereotypical Christian argument is: “Have faith in Christ and his saving work, turn away from sin, and you will be rewarded with heaven.” Putting aside whether this is an accurate representation of the Gospel, in Gilbert’s terms we are asking people to delay today’s gratification (at least as it pertains to immoral acts) in favor of a reward in the afterlife.

This may have been a compelling argument when the average lifespan of a citizen of colonial Virginia was around 25 years. Death was imminent. The frame of reference for questions of happiness were much more immediate. As a result, it would have been easier to put off gratifying (but possibly immoral) behavior in favor of a “heavenly reward” because that  reward didn’t seem too far off.

But today the average American can expect to live well into his 70s. Most people simply don’t think in that kind of time frame. I can hardly put together a budget for the next month, let alone think about the state of my eternal soul in 40 years. Couple that with a consumer culture that prizes personal autonomy and immediate gratification and the Gospel seems much less compelling. Again, in Gilberts terms, the payoff for waiting simply doesn’t compute for the average person.

So how do we evangelize in such a situation? We know that, in the long run, final happiness is to be found only in God. But when people today enjoy more daily comfort, longer and safer lives, and greater individual autonomy that in any other period of history, how do we convey that fact in a compelling and credible manner?

Catholics, in particular, have been hard  hit, with nearly 30% falling away in the U.S. One in ten Americans now describe themselves as “lapsed Catholics”; the gross number of Catholics in the U.S. remains stable only because of immigration.

As someone who works in the area of catechesis, its easy to fall into the trap of creating a new education program or finding the “teachable moment.” But the truth is, as a colleague said the other day, that most of these people aren’t ready of catechesis — they are in need of evanglization. We can’t take for granted that they understand the need for faith and a relationship with Christ and his Church; we can’t take for granted that they are open to learning more about their faith. We need to start with the invitation to join us.

This is scary. It means getting into the dirty work of actually talking to people about our faith, engaging others about why we love the Catholic Church and her teachings. Worse, it means more than just typing this on a computer screen and hitting the “publish” button. We have to act like Paul. It’s hard to remember that he did more than just write letters. Indeed, it may be fair to say that his letters weren’t the most important part of his ministry. Paul went from town to town talking with people about Christ, arguing with them and demonstrating the reason for his faith. He didn’t stay in the safety of his home. He walked the roads, left his country and his people — ending, of course, with his death in Rome.

And that’s why we’re scared of evangelization. It leads to places we don’t want to go, where we won’t be comfortable and happy. It has to start with us, but it can’t end there. We have to think bigger than ourselves and reach out with an invitation to others. “Go and make disciples,” we are told. I think he meant it. But it’s not enough to believe; we have to act. We have to take up our cross and show that our faith is more than just a relic of the past.

It’s the key to our present and our future.