Leadership Reading List: We Are All Weird

An article by Matt    6 Comments

Full disclosure: I have a rather large man-crush on Seth Godin.

That said, I think that the church could learn a good bit from his new Domino Project book, We Are All Weird.  The idea behind the book is that the bell curve that has for years defined our society is fading away, and that the “mass market” is going the way of the dinosaur.  No longer is one type of coffee, one style of car, or one widget designed for the mass market enough to work in this nation.  Society is organizing into tribes that define themselves by what makes them different (or weird) and in order to reach them, you need to really understand what makes them unique (weird) and “get it”: faking understanding for the sake of sales will do more harm than good to your efforts of knitting into the different communities.

Here is what the book has had me thinking through about the church, and where we are headed:

• Over the past twenty to thirty years mega-churches have been aimed at reaching the masses.  I am beginning to believe that in the next ten years or so we will see traditional mega-churches begin to fade away.  I believe that these will be replaced by multi-sites that are focused on a smaller campus size and more personal in feel: congregations of 300-600, with live teaching (instead of a screen).  I also have a feeling that we will see a resurgence of the mid-size church (less than 800) as people begin to look for locally based communities.
• We all know that the one way to make everyone in a church unhappy is to try and make everyone happy.  So why do we continue to try and make everyone happy?  As the mass market continues to fade away, the ability to craft a worship service, program, or event that reaches everyone the same way will continue to be a myth… what if we invested our time and effort into narrowing our target, and focusing on pursuing our vision and strategy and embracing the fact that some people may not resonate with it?  (Robert Barnes had a great comment about this on yesterday’s post.  You should read what he says about his church.)
• Weird is disruptive, uncomfortable, and weird to those who are in the declining mass.  Often times in the church world this becomes a full on knock down drag out war of attrition with words like heretic, apostate, and sinful thrown around by the bushel.  We need to get away from the mentality that dictates that we default to an aggressive defense of the status quo, before really searching, soaking, and praying through the changes that come.  Godin, whether he realizes it or not, nails it on page 84 of the book:

Hence the stress that so many organized religions face today.  When the religion ceases to be about faith and hope and connection and love and positive change and begins to focus on compliance, this organizational embrace of the status quo runs straight into the trend toward the weird.  Playing the morality card is a weak way to build a tribe.

Weird is not immoral.

What makes YOUR church weird?

Interested in getting your very own copy of We Are All Weird?  Leave a comment and spread some Facebook or Twitter love about this post (make sure to include @matt_steen or include me on your post).  I will give away a copy of the book at noon, eastern, Saturday October 29th.

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