Church-iberish

I've been following the series at Church Marketing Sucks on Lessons in Not Sucking. In the Common Communication Mistakes lesson they refer to "church-iberish" and refer to this Dunkin Donuts commercial.



I've used the word "church speak" before; I kind of like "church-iberish". I tend to notice it because I do worship visuals at our church and come across some good ones in hymns ("unction", anyone?).

I love the expressions on the customers' faces in this video. I can imagine them as visitors to our church and saying "My mind can't find these words".

I also do our church's web site. I came across an article about Church speak and mission statements at digital.leadnet.org. We've had several discussions about mission statements, and this article hits close to home for me.

I'm pondering what to do about our web site. I know I can (and should) do better, but it's one thing to recognize it, and another to deal with it from a church-wide viewpoint recognizing the needs of a visitor.

Spiritual Mileage

As a new Prius owner for the past couple of months, I've been paying close attention to my mileage. I've been getting between 47 and 52 MPG for my first few tanks.

There's even a website where you can track your mileage and display it as an internet "badge"

After I filled up for the first time, I was going to post here how happy I was with my mileage. However, that got postponed, and then the second tank came and went, and then the third tank.

I then had to come to the grim realization that I just haven't posted here much. It occurred to me while my car's mileage is great, my "spiritual mileage" is about as low as it can get.

Like with the GreenHybrid link above, it would be interesting to track the ups and downs of my spiritual mileage on a chart. I have had periods of high mileage; right now its kind of low.

I can recognize it - I'm burned out. Even the smallest of tasks, like putting new information up on the church's web site, becomes a huge burden. I haven't really had a "Sunday off" in about 20 months, and it's very lonely as the web and media volunteer at our typical "aging demographic" Lutheran church.

I've been following a few online chat forums for Prius owners. Some owners are pretty enthusiastic about finding the best techniques for getting the highest possible gas mileage. What I need to to is figure out good techniques for increasing my spiritual mileage. I find great comfort and nourishment in the many online blogs I follow; that helps for sure. But for today, I think I'm just a bit "out of gas".