It’s a popular thing today to use the word “revolution” in your marketing and branding. Whether you are talking about your church or your business the word REVOLUTION sounds pretty cool and denotes edgy, out there, new wave thinking. But to be a revolutionary…really revolutionary…can be a pretty scary thing. How many churches or businesses, schools or ad agencies have really counted the costs and are committed to the revolution?
Chevrolet loves to talk about the Chevy Revolution but unless you are seeing something I’m not…Chevy builds cars, trucks and SUV’s just like Dodge, Ford, Volvo and Subaru. I certainly don’t see a revolution there.
The producers 2003 box office bomb “Gigli” calls themselves Revolution Studios. Yeah right. Not only was the movie terrible, the studio actually tried to use a decades old movie marketing model…get the hottest male actor and the hottest female actress and then leak to the press a budding romance between the two stars. Works every time. Or should I say, worked every time. There was nothing revolutionary at all about that movie.
How about churches who say they’re cutting edge or revolutionary? In many cases, all you have to do is scratch the surface just a little bit to see that their supposed revolution is just contemporary worship songs, a pastor in jeans and a Saturday night service instead of Sunday morning. Being revolutionary is about much more than that. Just wanting revolution doesn’t make it so.
Cortez burned his ships. The colonials signed the Declaration of Independence. John the Baptist lived in the wilderness and ate locusts and honey. True revolution requires total commitment. You can’t just talk about it while clinging to the old ways and maybe mixing in a few things along the way. You cause a revolution by setting the course and then committing yourself to it no matter what. No matter what.
I started by quoting a line from the famous Beatles song, Revolution. What kind of music revolution the Beatles would have fostered if they’d mixed in some Elvis and Sinatra and maybe a little Nat King Cole tunes with their stuff just to appease the audiences they were singing to? Would they have gained a larger audience?
I think not. You can’t duplicate Elvis or Sinatra or Nat. The Beatles knew that. They had not intentions of trying to be all things to all people. They were totally committed to their revolution. They didn’t set out to win a large audience. They set out to sing their music. They were unique and different and the world had never seen anything like them. But they clung to the music that was in their hearts and the music industry was revolutionized.
What about you, or your church, or your business? Have you been guilty of just talking about change but never doing the things that would really bring that change about or lacking the courage to actually take the steps? Do you get wistful thinking about starting your own company but you’ve not been able to really quit the job and pull the trigger to start up?
What about your church? Do you see the fields “white with harvest,” but lack the courage to retool your local church in order to better build the relationships and provide the services that would actually contribute to your community?
Recognizing the fact that you really are, deep down, a revolutionary is a sobering thing. Once you have that realization you are responsible for it and you must live each day with the knowledge that you must be a revolutionary or you will never truly feel fulfilled. No doubt, that’s a scary thing.
It’s time to look down and see the big “R” emblazed on your chest and begin to live like it. Challenge conventional thought. Be an agent for change in your business and in your church or school. Be bold enough to ask the big Why questions…WHY are we doing this? WHY are we doing it like this? WHY aren’t we doing these other things?
You say you want a revolution? Start living like you really believe it.
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