Networking with Rick Eschenburg
Posted on 14. Aug, 2009 by Steve Swisher in Marketing, Personal Growth
I had the privilege of meeting with Rick Eschenburg over lunch recently. He just happened to visit my church for a Sunday morning. Anytime another pastor comes for a visit I try to get together with them to get their feedback, especially if it’s someone like Rick. He’s been in ministry for over 20 years and has served at churches that less than 20 people and in churches that have over a 1000 coming each week. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity to “suck the life out of him.” I wanted to learn from his life of ministry and service to God. Here’s the highlights of our time together.
First I asked Rick about his first impressions of everything: the signs, parking, entry, coffee area, interior signs, worship center, the worship team, my preaching, and everything else. Let’s face it, pastors are the most critical church attenders. We look at everything making judgments on it. So I wanted to know what he thought. He was kind enough to be open and honest and I was humble enough to give him the freedom to share the truth about what he saw. If you ever have another pastor visit your church I would encourage you to do the same.
The best critiques he gave me was on my preaching. I think every pastor has things that they think they need to work on to become a better communicator. For me, I’ve always thought it was that I talk too fast. Rick said that the speed of my delivery flowed natural and for him it wasn’t an issue. Rather what I need to focus on is cutting out the tangents. It’s true. I need an editor to review my sermon notes and cut out some stuff. I have a tendency to over-prepare for a message. What happens is that I’ve found so much good stuff I don’t want to cut any of it. He reminded me that people reach a saturation point where they just can’t absorb any more in the hour or so they are with you on a Sunday. Knowing that, I need to choose what I want them to absorb and cut out the rest.
One suggestion he had for me was to take the leftovers and use them for blog posts. As I’m preparing I find stuff and record it on my computer anyway. All I need to do is cut and paste it on to my blog. Then during the sermon or after the message I can just throw out there a teaser promo for them to check the blog to find out what didn’t get shared. Great idea.
Later on our conversation turned to things he learned in ministry. At one point he was talking about a ministry program in his church that never seemed to be embraced by the church. Over and over they kept trying to rebrand the program or find ways to better promote the program, but nothing seemed to work. What he said next was golden, “we reached the point where we had to ask ourselves are we going to freshen the brand or own it as a value.”What he was saying was that although they felt the program was important on paper, it really wasn’t something that the entire leadership held as a core value. If you are just trying to get people to go to small groups because you think it’s what your church needs to do, it will fail. If you feel passionately that small groups are vital to the life of the church because it has been a vital part of your life and spiritual growth, it will be communicated much differently and people will respond accordingly. If you live and breathe missions and community involvement your church will be involved in missions. But if you’re just out there trying to get people to do missions because Rick Warren siad it’s one the 5 things you got to do, it’s not going to work no matter how well you promote it.
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