“Marketing” is a bad word in church circles. It implies manipulation, impure intentions and other chicanery. This is not without reason; corporate marketing has become a science, with companies spending millions of dollars to understand the psychological and sociological impact of advertising. Many Christians, understandably, believe it would be unseemly — if not sinful — [...]

This weekend I listened to an interview with Roy Spence, author of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For. Spence is a marketing and communications expert and was part of the team that came up with the slogan “Don’t Mess with Texas.” The slogan came about when Bob Linear, who was the [...]

Last year I had the opportunity to listen to Fr. Martin Pable, OFM Cap, talk about how Catholics can reach out to their family, friends and others in order to share their faith. His approach, which he calls “relational evangelism,” consists of three parts: Listen with respect to the stories that other people share with [...]

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 [...]

I recently finished reading psychologist Dan Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, an examination of how the human brain attempts to make decisions about what will make us happy — decisions that, if studies are to be believed, we don’t make very well. Gilbert’s book is summarized in this 2008 TED talk (the whole talk is [...]

The past couple of days I’ve been listening to a series of presentations from a conference put on at Union University. The conference, Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism, looked at the future of Protestantism in America. While focused on the Southern Baptist Convention, I think the presentations have a lot to say [...]