The Buzz Commandments
This blog begins a series of blogs I’m calling The Buzz Commandments.
Q: What do an ice cream truck, an edgy billboard, a short film, and a community swimming pool have in common?
A: They are a few of the ways that innovative churches are reaching outside the four walls of their church buildings and creating a buzz in their community.
New Life Christian Church drives around its Northern Virginia neighborhood in a retrofitted Ice Cream truck giving away free popsicles while inviting people to church.
Granger Community Church launched a series on sex by placing mylamesexlife.com billboards all over Granger, Indiana.
Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois, shoots and edits a short film every week as part of its creative approach to multi-site ministry.
And after three bond measures failed to secure the funds to build a community pool in Billings, Montana, Harvest Church is forming a separate non-profit and raising funds to build a pool for the entire community.
The Buzz Factor
Luke 14:23 says, “Compel them to come in so that my house may be full.”
Compel (v): to urge irresistibly; to demand attention
Buzz isn’t a marketing gimmick. Buzz isn’t a publicity stunt or photo op. Buzz is an ancient mandate. Buzz is about sharing the love of Christ in practical, creative, and authentic ways.
The church is called to compel. And if that takes an ice cream truck; a creative billboard; a short film downloaded to an iPod; or a community pool, then so be it.
The average American is bombarded with 3000 advertisements per day. We’ve got more cable channels than we can surf. The average Sunday edition of the Washington Post contains more factual information than the average person living in the 15th century would encounter in a lifetime. And that’s before logging onto the Internet.
We’re inundated with information. We’re overwhelmed with options. We’ve got so many things vying for our attention that we suffer from cultural ADD.
So how does the church fulfill its ancient Buzz Commission in a white noise world?
The answer is found in the one who commissioned us to compel. Jesus should have lived and died without making a blip on the radar, but two thousand years later, two billion people claim to be Christ followers. No one was better at Buzz than Jesus.
The word crowd is repeated 101 times in the gospels. Jesus drew crowds numbering in the tens of thousands wherever he went. And he did it without public transportation, Instant Messaging, or Evite.com. Entire towns would close up shop and go without food for days on end just to listen to his parables. Tax collectors climbed trees. Prostitutes crashed parties. And wise men followed stars. Even the Pharisees conceded, “The whole world has gone after him.”
Jesus buzzed. And he left a trail for us to follow….
Stay tuned and I’ll blog the Ten Buzz Commandments over the next couple weeks…
