What Are YOU Known For?

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What are you known for? There's a man in the studio, folks, here at Truth Talk Live right now. This guy is asking that question to a lot of people, and he's helping a lot of people do it.

I think he is, Mark McDonald. Welcome to Truth Talk Live, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. This is great. I know you personally, and we've had that head-to-head discussion over what are you known for and what you are known for, that reputation.

How do you control it? Yeah, it's big. And what you're doing, speaking really all over the country to so many church leaders about this, and really how you have a heart to reach people with the good news of Christ, and yet so many times the church shoots itself in the foot unnecessarily. And so I want to talk about that today.

I want to hear your story. The book is Be Known for Something Recognizing with Community. Reconnect with community by revitalizing your church's reputation. That's true, and we have to make sure that we understand what our reputation is. What is that perception? So, what is your church's reputation?

That's a fascinating question. What reputation do you want it to be? Now, we're going to go into marketing here. We're going to talk about all these different nuances.

We're going to talk about how a church can effectively reach people in their community with the good news of Jesus Christ. Mark, tell us about you. Who's Mark McDonald, man? I hear Canada. I hear all kinds of things. I've known you forever, and it's been fun because I was just telling our other special guest in the studio, my former college coach, about how you always want to know marketing people because they always give you good insights.

Sometimes not like insights, sometimes painful insights, but good insights into how to more effectively do what God's called you to do. But it's kind of neat because you really did put the mark in marketing. Yeah. I've always wondered that, but I found the guy who marketing is named after.

Mark! Without me, it would just be editing. But you have a background in that, but you find yourself at this kind of like Bible belt fundamentalist college, growing up in Canada, traveling down, mom and dad drop you off, and it's adios. But get into your story. I don't know if you may want to start it there. Sure. Well, I mean, I am Canadian, A. Anyone who is listening that's Canadian, let's all raise our Tim Hortons mug.

There you go. But I grew up in Canada and in East Coast Canada, and it was really through going through at Bob Jones University. I graduated with a graphic design degree and in communications, wanted to get into the ad agency business, got back home. And God just had a plan for my life where I kind of clawed my way to the top of one of Eastern Canada's largest ad agencies. And I became senior creative director there. And the whole time that I kept struggling with how do I get better? How do I make sure that I take the products that I've been allowed to work with?

How do I take them to market? I kept thinking, you know, how does God use this? How does God use what I'm learning? Because we have the greatest product ever. And 17 years ago, we moved back to North Carolina, and we set up an agency that works entirely with churches. It's become an agency called Be Known for Something. And what we want to do is we go across the country, we talk at church conferences, and we encourage pastors to just take a step back. What are you known for?

What are the things that your community wants you to be known for? And the sad realization is that most churches have disconnected from their community, that they're so congressional or, no, that's the wrong word, congregational, inwardly focused, so that, you know, they hear what the person that's sitting in the pew wants, what the ministry should be, what they really need. And because of that constant conversation that happens between pastors and the people in the pew, the congregation tends to, the church becomes about them, rather than, why did God place us into this community? And how do we get into this community?

And how do we make sure that they pay attention to us, and the statistics aren't very good? Wow, so you get the church to kind of step back. And sometimes it starts with this, and you may show up at someone's church listing.

You're a blind shopper. I am. We call it a mystery visitor. I think that's pretty cool. I was reading your book, which, thank you for the opportunity to really look at this before it even came out.

I was kind of blown away by that. Who is this person? Excuse me, sir, you're in my seat. Me and Wanda have sat in that seat for the last 50 years. What are you doing there?

And it just happens to be the mystery visitor, you know, but what is that? Well, it's funny because I was just in a church in Florida, and when I sat down in the pew, a person hesitated right next to me and looked at me and gave me that look of, you're probably sitting in my seat. So it does happen, but the important thing, what we want to do when we work with the church is we want to take a look at where are the people coming from, what is the neighborhood of the church, what's the community, what we call the reach area. And what we do is we do a complete demographic study of that reach area. Who are the people that live there?

What's their average age? What's their main concerns, and what are their goals? And what we do as a mystery visitor, we take on us the persona of the people that are living around the church. And when we walk, you know, get out of our cars in the parking lot and walk into the church and experience the services for that first time, we try to take on that role of, what would a person who isn't a church person from the community, what would they feel like when they arrive? They just came upon this church, what would their experience be?

And what I found is oftentimes, in fact, there was a church that we were working with in California. I ended up with, you know, I got out of my car, walked in, experienced the service, it was a great service. Then I thought, well, I'll go to the info desk because that's where everyone needs to go, the guest services. So I walked up to the guest service person and said, I loved what I saw in there. Do you have any, like, small groups or Bible studies or Sunday school that I could actually go to?

And she looked at me and said, isn't this your first time? No one ever asks us that. And that's where the expectations oftentimes of the church is that people aren't coming through the doors, guests aren't coming in, and they're not seeking out that information. When we do seek out that information, oftentimes it's hard to come by.

Interesting. So Mark McDonald's our guest. He's got this new book, Be Known for Something, and it's just so fun to talk to a marketing guy who has a heart for the church, to see the church really grow. And that's really, I mean, talk, describe your passion.

If you were to narrow down your be known for something. Well, I really want the church to become concerned for the people that live around them, rather than just concern for the vision or the mission of who actually comes to the church. Everyone wants to talk about our church's DNA. But it's not about your church's DNA. It's about your community's DNA.

And you have to make sure that you look like your community if you ever want your community to come in. So my passion is, how do I help a church actually figure out what is it that our community needs, and how do we come up with that thread, what we call the thread concept, that will be an equalizer of all of our ministries so that that thread is talked about in such a way that the community will listen to it, and then how do we connect that thread to the scarlet thread of Jesus Christ. Okay, and that's what I want to go there, that whole redemptive, which is your heart. And I want to get into this whole discussion of how far do I go. You know, a great book which you quote in your book, or you recommend, Nine Marks of Heavenly Church, where Mark Dever says, he says, at what point does the church become more like the world to reach the world?

Is the church becoming more conforming to the world, worldly in that, or is it more of a transforming source? And your answer to the question is, you don't, I mean, well let me let you answer that, but it's a difficult... It's a tension that we have to face. Paul says we become all things to all people that we might save some. Well, if we are in a community, we should somewhat be an area where somebody from the community would want to come in.

So, you know, you and I both talked about this. This isn't crossing over and trying to do sinful things so that sinners will feel comfortable. Sure, now become a more worldly person.

Now, hold on to that thought, because we've got to take a break. When we come back, more with Mark McDonald, and how can your church specifically, friends, listeners, be thinking how your church can specifically connect and reach your community more effectively? Do you have to dumb the word down? Do you have to become more shallow? Do you have to be less discipleship?

Or can you be a biblical church and do all this? Mark's going to tell us how when we come back. I hope you are, Mark. Absolutely. Okay, more Truth Talk Live coming up after this.

Hang on. What is your church known for? Stu Everson, Truth Talk Live. I'm with Mark McDonald, who's not just a brilliant marketer and doesn't just love the church.

He's a very funny person. So if I start cracking up on this, in the middle of this interview, Mark and I have known each other forever, have a lot of great mutual friends, go to the same church, and he is a science school teacher. And I should know that, because every Saturday night I'm writing his lessons. Mark, it's getting old, but I hear that the class has grown too. I'm waiting for the next quarterly. When are you going to write it? I hear you guys have the biggest class at the church, and so now we know why, right?

I don't think it's the largest class. However, you know, it's interesting, because we have this group of people who come together every week, and I get to actually practice what a pastor would do, where he has to figure out, so what do I talk to them about? How do I engage them? How do I use the principles that I, when I sit down with a pastor, I'm trying to get him to figure out how do you engage with your audience? And good communications always rises and falls on your audience. See, if you don't know your audience, you will never communicate well to them. And as soon as you do know your audience, then you have to realize that every pastor has two audiences. They have the congregation, the internal, and then you have your community, the external, and we have to make sure that we're constantly talking to both audiences, or else one will lose interest, and we know that the community's lost interest in the church.

Yeah, and there's challenges. Churches are dying. There's a lot of good things happening. There's some great churches, but there's a lot of, sadly, buildings being sold. Yeah, 4,000 churches in America every year close their door. They just disappear.

Okay. And the sad thing is that the community drives by those empty buildings, and they don't miss them. And if your church disappeared today, would anyone miss you? Would anyone notice you were even there? Yeah, exactly.

That's a convicting question. And then when you look at the churches that do exist, 80% of them are in decline or stagnation, so they've stopped growing. In other words, they've lost connection with their community.

Communities are growing, churches are shrinking. Wow, so the book is Be Known for Something, Reconnect with Community by Revitalizing Your Church's Reputation. The author is Mark McDonald. The forward is by Dr. Gary Chapman, who speaks five languages according to some sources.

And they're all in love. Yeah, he's a linguist, apparently. But that's really cool to get his endorsement, and then you have some wonderful, you know, chapters in here all the way through.

Well, it's interesting, though. Dr. Gary Chapman did write this book called Five Love Languages, and the key to the five love languages is you can express love to someone, but if they don't accept it as love, it's wasted love. And in the same sense, this book is saying you can communicate, but if they don't accept the communication properly, you might as well not be communicating. And Jesus said in John 13, you know, right after they find out that Judas is going to be the guy, he leaves the room, and then they have this discussion over, well, what should we be known for?

It's not quite in those words, but it's very, very close. And then Jesus says, well, they'll know you're my disciples. They'll know that you're Christ followers if you have love one towards another. And oftentimes we, in love, we create a reputation around us in our church that our community doesn't feel that love, they just see it as a very negative thing. That's why the book's called Be Known for something, because the perception of the church right now is that we're against a lot of things.

Yeah, so is your church engaging the lost in your community? Are they doing things to be creative? So your philosophy of church can be creative, can enjoy and have fun, and do things completely out of the box with the goal of connecting the redemptive thread.

Now, I want you to talk about that part too, but take us through that thought process. Well, I mean, why can't the church be known for creativity? Oftentimes what I hear is, you know what, we probably don't want to do that, because we've always done it this way. And there are some things that the Bible's really clear about, and I'm not talking about, you know, deciding that the Bible's wrong, so we should be doing it totally creative. Instead I'm saying, okay, in the confines of the fences that the Bible has established, how can we have fun within those fences? How do we, how do we teach people doctrinally?

How do we raise up our kids in the way of the Lord? And what we want to do is, we want to do that in as creative way as possible. And, you know, God kind of taught us all about creativity, and I think that we need to emulate that. And it's sad that the world can be more creative and can be excellent in things.

And you look at even in the last few centuries, where the world, where the church and Christians were leading thinkers and artists, and in the Renaissance, and in all these areas of science, like Pascal and all these inventors, and yet what's happened? You know, we've kind of, we've kind of lost the arts, we've lost Hollywood, we've lost these things, so this is really coming back and saying, hey, use your mind, use your brain. And back to what you said to clarify to our listeners, this is Truth Talk Live. Stu Everson here. Mark McDonald is my special guest today.

His new book, Being Known for Something, just came out. And give this to your pastor, your church leader, as they think through what your church is known for. Hopefully they can ask that question, answer that question. But you're not, in this book, you're not setting up a, you're not setting up a doctrinal treatise here, or, you know, you're assuming a lot of things. You're assuming they're balanced Bible teaching, Bible believing, discipleship, biblical view of ministry, biblical philosophy of ministry. What this is, is now that you have those key axiomatic things in place, now what are you doing to be that shining light that Jesus talked about in Matthew 5, and to reach the world? Even before, in John 4, here Jesus is, and He goes and sits down at Jacob's well, and He waits.

It's a great place to wait, because every person who's coming along is going to have a need. And sure enough, this woman comes along with a need, but Jesus sees a much greater need. There's clearly a spiritual need there, but instead of engaging her on the spiritual need first, He talks to her about water. And by engaging her with her thirst and her water, instantly He gets her engagement. She starts paying attention. And then, see, that becomes the temporal thread. The thread of His communication was about water, and then He makes this shift, and He does such a great job. He makes this shift by saying, so what if I could give you water that you never thirst again?

And she says, well, yes. Well, and that's where I think a lot of churches, they stop doing the communication properly. You might have a temporal thread where you're breathing into your community, and you're in the community, and you've got engagement, but if you're not making that turn, that strong biblical turn to Jesus Christ and talking about the scarlet thread and the redemption that comes through Jesus's blood, then you're dropping the ball. Everything should take people ultimately to Jesus.

Absolutely. So you can have the best donuts, you can have the best light show, the best band, the best color scheme, everything. You even get into those things and all the phonetics and the aesthetics of a church. But if it doesn't take people to that redemptive thread, and talk about how important that is, that redemptive thread, and that's where you're trying to get these churches to go that are listening and out there. So every church needs to know what their temporal thread is. What is the solution to the needs of the community?

What is the path to the goals of the community? As soon as you get that temporal thread and you start uniting your ministries underneath that, then you want to make sure that that thread is clearly attached to what Jesus said we should be known for, which is love, and then that love connects to his love, which is why he died on the cross. So that scarlet thread that unites all 66 books of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, it unites all kinds of crazy stories and books, and no matter where you stop in Scripture, you instantly can say, okay, so I know how this ties back to Jesus Christ.

And in the same sense, your temporal thread can bring all your ministries together to make sure that they're united, so that the community will look at you and say, I know what they're all about. I love it. I love a new t-shirt, which is XL. Thank you for thinking about big people like me. You can play ball on this.

I tried to stretch it long. I love it. And the sunglasses, these are thread glasses. You talk about this in your book, right?

Yeah. Well, after you have your thread established, oftentimes what you need to do is you need to look around your ministries to see, so how does that connect to the thread? Most people's websites, social media, email, all those things are broken, the communication tools, because there's no one common thread that unites everything together. So what we want you to do is put on your thread glasses, and we have these sunglasses that we call thread glasses, but put on your thread glasses, and start looking to see how you can tie every part of your ministry together to the thread.

That's super. Mark, tell people how they can get this book to be known for something. Pastors, church leaders, maybe a fun gift for you to give your pastor, everyone listening, you know, somewhere if you go to church or you have a friend in ministry, be a good gift.

What's the best way for people to get this book in the hands of the people that serve them? Of course, it's on Amazon, and you can also go to beknownbook.com, and what we've done is at the end of every chapter we have discussion questions that a pastor can lead their ministry staff through. So this is an easy book to read and an easy book to lead, and we want to make sure that people are team reading it, and as groups of ministry leaders get together, don't pass a chapter unless you've answered all the questions.

Ultimately, at the end of this book, you should be able to figure out what you should be known for, and then the last part of the book actually talks about communication strategy, how to make your website, social media, email, print materials, all of those things communicate well. That is so cool, and ultimately the person listening that's not necessarily a pastor, minister, that's in that church, you're a huge light. You're the greatest marketing for that church. As you go bring people to Christ and bring them to be discipled at your church, and you disciple them, right, Mark? I mean, we're all sharing this against the body of Christ.

Absolutely. We are the church, and as the church person, you have a community, and this book will walk you through how do you actually engage with that community around you and show the love of Christ. That's so cool. Mark McDonald, his book is Be Known for Something, Reconnect with Community by Revitalizing Your Church's Reputation, forward by Dr. Gary Chapman. Some great chapters, very practical for the church. Who's your audience for this now?

I'm going to put it back, I'm going to turn it back on you. Who would you say your audience is for this, so our listeners will know too? Sure, I mean, mainly it's for pastors, people who are leading a group of people, the congregation, but also there's this new ministry leader that's growing up in the church, the communications director, the person in charge of the bulletin and the website, social media, and it really helps them focus and simplify. The church just has got to start simplifying the message so that it reaches a whole lot further, because a message said in unison will reach further than a message that's done in harmony. It's really everyone on the same sheet of music.

Absolutely. We know what we stand for, and of course the Bible is our mission statement, but here's some real practical ways we live in this culture. The Bible doesn't talk about a venti mocha light with soy, or caramel macchiato.

Nowhere in the Bible. So your church may set up a coffee station. It doesn't mean that's not biblical, it just means that's a cool way for people to connect. Right, Mark? I mean, this is really very practical, but it's something that we need to think about, because we want to reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ.

There's nothing wrong with having a safe area so that your community can come in and find out about Jesus. Okay, Mark McDonald. Mark, thank you, and you gave the website.

Give it one more time, if you would. Bknownbook.com. Bknownbook.com.

Very good. I know you've got cool videos and stuff like that, and you're all over social media, and if a church wants to have you out, a lot of churches like to have you out to say, hey, help us with all this stuff. Social media, Facebook, Instagram, it's a tough one, StuTube, iStunes.

I'm going off, sorry. But you don't want to have a Facebook page over here, and then a website over here that says something totally different. That's right, and if you go to BknownForSomething.com, you'll find out all about me, and then you can also follow me on social media under MarkMack1023. So after all these years in marketing, you finally hooked up with the ultimate winning team, the ultimate winning organization, or organism, should I say, the church, right? Absolutely. So you're kind of like, you're always going to be the champion, because you're part of the championship team.

You can't beat that, can you? Yeah, absolutely, and we have to make sure that we simplify our message and unite our messages so that people will be one for Jesus Christ. And the team would act like the champion that we are, like the winners we are, instead of being loser's limp, oh, well, we can't always cry in this and that. Well, hey, we're our colors, and let's lift up our Lord's name, and let's do it to bring Him glory, and let's do it in excellence, for Pete's sake. So that's what you talk about. I appreciate your friendship, man. I appreciate you coming on Truth Talk Live, and we will definitely be getting some feedback from our listeners. And, you know, you follow me on Twitter, at Stu Epperson. We have a Truth Network Twitter, at Truth Network. And then also on Instagram, I mentioned that before, and I follow you on Instagram, Mark, but you'll be known for something. When they go to your site, they'll see all your different social outlets and how to get plugged into that. God bless you, my friend.

Thank you. Church, be the church. Be known for something. Be known for something.