Matt’s a Christian guy blogging on entrepreneurship, business, the use of technology (PowerPoint to web 2.0) and his life. We both seem to share similar motivation for moving to Liverpool – I went there in 1996 to ‘study’ and watch Liverpool play football but, unfortunately, couldn’t find a way to stay in the city. We seem to have a few similar interests, including marketing.

From: 'Update: a new definition of marketing' on Matt Edmundson's blog, http://www.mattedmundson.com/2010/06/update-a-new-definition-of-marketing/

That’s really what got my interest, especially his diagram on the movement of an individual from first contact, through being a customer to being an ally of your business/organisation. The final step looking something like this…

Movements come as a result of deepening the connection with Customers and thereby creating Allies. This is where I want to take the companies that I am involved in – not being just a business but a movement, and I guess to do that I have work at getting the customers in to the Ally phase, because here is where the magic starts to happen.

From Update: a new definition of marketing

I’ve got a busy day ahead but I plan to spend some time thinking through the full diagram and how it would impact on the operation of Wycliffe Bible Translators in the UK.

If you’re interested in this stuff it’s worth checking out Matt’s blog.

So I’m going back to school with iTunes. Yesterday I spent a while hunting down some courses from places like Arizona State University, Duke and the Open University to fill in some blanks. I’ve downloaded the first couple of lectures from seven different institutions and plan to listen to each one and pick three of the best to keep me going for the next few weeks.

I’ll let you know if it’s any good when I get to the end.

But, I’ve now seen the launch video and have to admit that I’m more than a little underwhelmed. This should be a fantastic event with icons that really make Britain stand out in the eyes of the world. I’m not convinced by the video that these characters do that, in this country or anywhere else.

Anyway, that’s my opinion, you should make up your own mind. Wenlock and Mandeville are below, enjoy.

Why?

Well, Jesus says that his house should be a place for prayer, not a den of robbers [read the full text here]. In other words, don’t use the temple for trade – there are markets for that – use it for prayer.

I don’t believe that the focus of our church communities should be trade. Aside from anything else, it should never be that someone cannot afford to go to church. But, also, as Christians we’re not supposed to be trapped by the things of this world – your value as a person isn’t ever to be determined by the stuff you own.

So, what’s a church implying with the following promotion

Easter eggs and more than $1M in prizes at S. Texas megachurch

Bay Area Fellowship, the largest church in Corpus Christi, is giving away flat-screen televisions, skateboards, Fender guitars, furniture and 15 cars — yes, cars — at its Easter services next week.

Read article here

It’s not just what we say that communicates our values, it’s what we do too. To me this just encourages consumerism rather than placing value in people.

I think I’d rather have read any of the following,

South Texas megachurch gives $1M to victims of Haiti earthquake

…or….

$1M given to local charities by South Texas megachurch

…and my personal favourite…

South Texas megachurch gives $1M in support of Bible translation in Central America

Suggest another headline in the comments – where would you want to see $1M used? Or vote on the Church Marketing Sucks website – the current poll is on the right hand side of the screen.

So this is going to take a bit of thought. I’ll have to put a couple of days aside next week to analyse the results and put a presentation together. To help me do this I’m going to close the survey at midnight – in the UK – in other words, in 12 hours of posting this.

Thanks everyone who has taken part.

It used to be that the big business deals were made over lunch, or on the golf course, but now almost all trade is done on recommendation or through some social communication.

This morning I was sold ‘at’ over the phone. At lunchtime I met with a guy who had sold to me, and also built a friendship at the same time – this wasn’t a quick process, it was done over time and there was lots of opportunity for me to think through decisions, ask for more information and get to know the people involved. It fitted with the way that I would buy almost anything else today – I read reviews on Amazon, when I book a hotel room I read reviews by other guests before staying there, most of the books and blogs I read and podcasts I listen to, I came by because of the recommendation of other people.

I guess we’ve always been influenced by the personal recommendations of our family / friends etc, but now we have easy access to more testimony than almost ever before. The first reaction to doing business with anyone today is probably to Google them and find out who they are before any decision is made to work with them. Of course, meeting them in person is one step better.

And, of course, nobody in the company is above personal selling.

Why Richard Branson is so successful

Iain Dale transcribed a recent talk he had given on speech making. Opening with the line, “The best speeches are made like I sing in the shower. With no notes. Anne Widdecombe taught me that.” That’s food for thought.

One thing that is making an impression is the power of stories. Right now I can think of two presentations that I heard today. The first told stories and I can remember the basic content, from that I can then piece together the facts of the presentation. The second talk tried to convey a lot of facts, most of which I couldn’t recall no matter how hard I try. In fact, it would have been more useful to have the content of the second talk in an e-mail to refer back to when I needed.

I need to think some more about this. It’s really easy in my job to want to convey the detail, but I’m not sure that I’d expect someone outside of Wycliffe to remember the number of people still waiting for Bible translation to begin. What they may remember are the stories about individuals, such as the one in my last newsletter.

A pastor’s simple request

A knock at the gate drew me outside. I expected to find my co-worker waiting there but to my surprise I saw, instead, a man I didn’t recognize. He seemed almost familiar, yet not quite. Who’s this? I thought to myself as I went to greet him.

The man at the gate turned out to be a thoughtful old pastor from a border city 100 miles north of my place. He had travelled all day on the back of a motorcycle over dusty, pothole-infested roads just to ask me one question: can you translate the Bible into our language?

“When did you become a Christian?” I asked.

“I was born a Christian,” he replied.

I thought about that. If he was more than 75 years old, as he claimed to be, his parents would have been alive at the tail end of the ministry of the first missionary to go to his area. The Bible had been translated into the national language, and was at that time being translated into the wider regional language. But when the local people requested a translation in their own language, the missionary said, “Your group is too small,” implying, it’s not worth the effort.

This pastor desperately wanted God’s Word in his own language. As he was talking about his dream to a colleague from another village, the colleague said, “I know some people who do Bible translation work. Let’s go ask them if they’ll help.”

So the colleague carried the elderly pastor on the back of his bike all the way to my place to ask for help.

“Do you speak the area minority language?” I asked. He said that he did, but the hesitation in his voice led me to think otherwise. For the next four hours, I administered some language evaluation exercises to determine whether or not his language was similar to other languages in the area. I discovered that it was entirely different and would need its own discrete translation.

After finishing the assessment tests, the pastor innocently asked, “When will the translation be ready?”

I had to tell him the sad news that, in situations like his – a language that is not accessible to linguists, a people group without higher education to assist in the process, and other factors that impact translation work – the average time for completing a translation is 15 to 20 years.

He then looked at me, steady and calm, and asked, “So when can we start?”

Now before you get excited and start e-mailing for predictions for this year’s Derby winner (Kentucky Derby, Melbourne Cup, Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, or any other horse race) I should be quite honest and let you know that I can’t.

What I do know is that the following statements are completely true:

• Being successful last year doesn’t mean that repeating the same thing guarantees success.
• Being unsuccessful doesn’t mean that it was a bad idea that can’t work in the future.

Mark wrote an interesting blog post this week about getting comfortable. He pointed out that it’s easy to look for the safe ground and never try anything new. Only repeating stuff means that you’re likely to miss out on the new and the exciting. For some it’ll be that they miss out on great food, others it’ll be seeing new things, for some it’ll mean that they’ll miss Jesus.

One great line his post though was…

But – we’ve never done it that way before, these 7 words would have to be the most inspiring words you are likely to ever hear???

Exciting isn’t it. Doing something new.

So share, what have you tried to do that’s turned to success or failure?

They did a fantastic job and the site’s now live and working well, you can find it at wycliffe.org.uk.

It’s all coming together with the new promotional literature and making the most of every opportunity to talk about the need for Bible Translation (including literacy, scripture use, education and all the other benefits brought through translation programmes). If you want the first look at the new Wycliffe material you’ll see it at Kingdom Come next week, or stop by the website and have a read.