I didn’t make it to Catalyst One Day in Chicago last week, primarily because I live 20 hours away, but my friend Tim Schraeder was there. Tim takes great conference notes, and so I started reading his post from an Andy Stanley talk titled, “Creating a Come & See Culture.” As I read through the takeaways from the talk, it was clear that Andy Stanley understands the importance of design. In this particular talk he focused on designing environments that are conducive to ministry. Here are a few of my favorite snippets:
- Parking lots, hallways, children’s rooms, check-in process, greeting, worship experience, etc. are all ministry environments.
- Every environments communicates a message.
- The Gospel is offensive but other things in our church shouldn’t be.
- If you don’t tell people how to measure success in their ministry environment, they will default to numbers.
- We can end up rewarding things that don’t match our values if we don’t have a standard.
- All ministry takes place in a physical environment.
- Cleanliness communicates, “we were expecting you.”
- Organization communicates, “we are serious about what you are doing here.”
- Design, decor, and attention to detail communicate what and who you value most.
That’s just a sampling, but you get the idea. Andy’s talking about physical environments, but I think the underlying principles of design thinking could apply just as well to your communication strategy, your website, and so on. All in all, it’s refreshing to see a well-known senior pastor acknowledging the importance of design and non-verbal communication rather that insisting on Sola Pulpit. (Yes, I made up that term.)
I encourage you to read the entire post here, as well as Tim’s other notes from Catalyst One Day.
Image via Catalyst One Day.