Developing a Tagline for Your Church, Step 4: Collaborative Awareness

When developing a tagline for your ministry it’s important to consider the taglines of two other kinds of organizations in your ministry environment. Think of this next piece as a step toward ministry environment awareness. There are two kinds of organizational taglines to consider.

  1. Collaborative environment: Other ministries similar or proximate to yours.
  2. Competitive environment: Non-ministry alternatives that compete for attention and time of potential members.

For a local church, the collaborative environment (we are being kingdom-minded by not calling this “competitive”) includes other churches in you area that are trying to position themselves and build awareness.  Many churches find two to three others in this category.  For a competitive environment, think of any place that people may go other than attending church. Do you live near a waterfront community? What is the competition saying? Do you have lots of kids sports around? What promise are they trying to make?

Why is this scan important?

Before you begin reducing your brainstormed list, you want to know what’s happening around you so you can differentiate your “voice” and messaging. If you use a tagline similar to another ministry it may create confusion. For example a church once advertised itself as “the church that rocks.” Right down the street was a big sign for the “Church on the Rock.Inadvertently, they were building awareness for the church down the street. (And as you might guess the promise didn’t fit.)

Keep your list from your collaborative awareness is a place for the team to see or reference for the next step:

GO TO Step FIVE: Reduce your list to the top five taglines

Return to Church Tagline Post Overview

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will Mancini

Will Mancini

Will Mancini wants you and your ministry to experience the benefits of stunning, God-given clarity. As a pastor turned vision coach, Will has worked with an unprecedented variety of churches from growing megachurches and missional communities, to mainline revitalization and church plants. He is the founder of Auxano, creator of VisionRoom.com and the author of God Dreams and Church Unique.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
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