People Want Nice!

Even though they may not admit it, all people want to be associated with excellence. It is in the human DNA. You only have to look at society and see what makes it tick. People want to better their position in life.

Over the last few decades, I have observed the cars that crowd our highways. When I was growing up, there were a lot of rusty cars and junker cars on the road. Not anymore! Today, it seems, everyone wants a new car, or at least a car much better than the old one. The quality of cars on the highways today are way above what they were just a few years ago.

When I bought my first house in 1981, it was an average size house for the suburb I live in. Today, the average house in America is about 2 1/2 times the size of that house.

People want nice!

Look at the dramatic transition of gas stations in the past couple of decades. In the past, any little building with a couple of pumps could seemingly do just fine. Not any more! If you are going to do well selling gas these days, you have to have a convenience store that sells just about everything . . . and it had better be nice!

Don’t think you are going to draw the unchurched with shoddy or mediocre. They don’t want it!

I once visited a church that left me puzzled. It was a small church that had been in existence for about three decades. On the outside, the paint was nice, but it looked like when you move a building to a location and just plop it down on the grass. There was almost no shrubbery or flowers around it. It did not look inviting. On HG TV, they would say it had no curb appeal.

Inside, it was worse. It smelled old and the lighting was dingy. It also looked like it could use a paint job. When I visited the bathroom, it was clean but the light switch was broken.

One of the men from the small congregation came over to talk to us after the service. He mentioned that they had lost a bunch of people just recently and he didn’t know why.

“Why?” was written all over the place, if you get my drift. Today, People want nice and they don’t put up with shoddy. It’s just like the convenience store principle. If you stop on a trip at a convenience store and you are disappointed, the next time through you will go down the road to the next convenience store.

When I started doing events, I looked for the best graphic designer I could find. Traditional churches don’t take design seriously. They think anyone can do design. Enlisting an amateur to do your design is like hiring a plumber to do open heart surgery.

Most of my events broke attendance records in the town or city I brought them too. Almost always a local designer was suggested, and I would explain to them that we would use my designer in Minneapolis. There was no discussion on the issue. The quality of all of the production associated with the event was one of the major reasons they were successful.

One event presentation to the pastors of the city was done by one of my board members, because I was in Texas doing ministry at the time. The presentation materials consisted of a recap video of one of our events, and a presentation folder filled with various print examples of other events. There were newsletters, magazine articles that featured our events, and event promotional pieces. I always brought white, glossy folders and we glued my full color promotional piece to the bottom front. The piece was a third of an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of card stock so when we glued it to the bottom of the folder, it looked like it was designed that way.

The presentation was very successful, and resulted in an event.

When I returned home, my board member remarked how rewarding it was to do the presentation. “By the promotional pieces, you would think that this is a really big company,” he remarked.

You can imagine the satisfaction that gave me, because at the time the ministry was just me.

On still another occasion, I got a call from a woman in Wisconsin, who had been getting our letters for several years. She was working locally in a ministry and had attended one of our events. I was so thrilled when she informed me she had mentored eight young men who came to Christ at our event for two years. The continued conversation revealed that she was hoping to come on board and be employed by us. It was obvious she thought we were a large ministry. Finally, she asked how many employees I had. I was extremely amused by this time. The answer was, “One and a half.” At the time, the ministry consisted of myself and one half-time assistant!

Quality pays off. If your ministry or church doesn’t reflect top-notch quality, the unchurched will not respect it, and they won’t come because they don’t want to be part of mediocre, or shoddy.

We are talking about the salvation of lost people here and their eternal destination. You can’t afford to be shoddy or mediocre.

In my years of producing events, I found that it was much easier to raise money for a large event with heavy hitters in the program, than something small. Small is happening all of the time, in church ministry, but people get excited about something big and excellent. It’s human nature.

Twenty-two pastors were involved in an event we did in a town of just under 3000. The budget came in at $22,000 and was all covered. In the next two years, some events were produced locally. They thought they could produce them for less money than the event that I brought in. After two years, I contacted the pastor who headed the committee for our Reach For More event to see what the feeling was after two years. She said that the pastors were talking about Reach For More just the week before at the ministerial meeting. They referred to it as “the event.” “We’ve produced some events on our own,” she said, “but they were nothing like Reach For More.” After that event, people came up to her and said they would put money into another Reach For More, if we planned to do one.

You can’t go wrong with quality, and if you really want to reach the unchurched, it is a must.

Because . . . people want nice!

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Photo created and designed by Lorraine