Church News

It is always sad to see a business closing down due to bankruptcy, but it’s far worse to see a Christian church not reaching its full potential. Direct response can help any congregation grow with engaging and consistent outreach efforts. You already know some people who you believe needs to hear the Word of God, or probably just someone who has not been attending a church regularly. But to effectively market them, you need to gather more specific details first.

Here are five guidelines you can use to achieve a progressive marketing campaign for your church. Bear in  mind that not all of them may be suitable for your congregation, so might as well try a few then move on to the rest if you get good results.

First up, create a list of people whom you think might be interested or those who already are searching for the right church. Divide them into certain groups according to age or occupation, depending on you. A targeted list has a higher chance of getting better solutions. Be sure to focus on the main message of the letter to the people you’re reaching. A letter you would send to an unbeliever will be different to a letter you would send to a believer who is just a little confused. With an unsaved person, mention about the present situation and tell how Jesus Christ can help them face it with courage. The format or design of the letter should be not so formal, as if talking on a face-to-face manner. This would look more appealing and casual. Provide illustrations and examples to further elaborate on your purpose.

Direct response mail is one of the most powerful methods for Christian marketing and it has proven its potential to reach hundreds and even thousands of people. Sadly though, it’s still untapped by most congregations. These basic rules should apply when creating direct response mails. Always hand-address the envelope, it makes the mail more personalized. Use powerful and accurate testimonials; do not give them a reason to throw the mail away in a trash bin. End the letter with something that they need to do, perhaps join one of the church’s local activities. And finally, give something away for free as a token of them taking some time to visit the church. These are all easy to follow and if you could add an extra mile in doing so, the better.

Second, have an ad in the newspapers. This can reach a lot of people quickly. Not just once, though. Having a weekly or monthly column would suffice more. Provide people with something solid, and you will quickly generate a response. This would need an adequate amount of funds, as newspaper space is quite a premium, especially if you want it placed in the prominent section. Third, if the news ads won’t work, try voice. It is a more powerful tool than print. In the current world we have, most people like to be surrounded with noise. Though you only have a couple of seconds, it’s still rendered more useful than having it in print.

Lastly, statistics show that doing a one-on-one visitation is still the best means of reaching out and encouraging more attendees in your church. Though this may take some time and effort, it’s still worth it eventually. It just takes patience and dedication sometimes. Nonetheless, if you’re really willing to take the risks and submerge yourself on evangelizing, then go on with it. There is nothing to lose, but definitely more to gain.

Originally published here.

A comparative study of the fundamental theologies of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism points out to some surprising conclusions, something that scholars have been ignoring for so long. The adherents of the two religions were each other’s bitter antagonists for a long time. Iranians even hated the God of Indians and considered him evil, resulting in the birth of the first evil spirit of humanity. This evil spirit then found its way into the Satanic concepts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and a large number of theologies across the world. Let us take a look at the fundamental theologies of the two religions and see what they have to offer.

Zoroastrianism was the most prominent religion of Iran. What are their beliefs? Firstly, that their God is Ahur Mazda. Secondly, they believe in a certain powerful Satanic spirit called Ahriman. And their scriptures talk about two types of people—Yazats and Devas. Devas are symbolic of the evil spirit, an embodiment of all that should not be. Even now, when people of the Iranian region talk about Devas, they talk about them with disgust—that is the kind of hatred that the Devas have generated. And most importantly, they are led by the demonic evil spirit called Ahriman. On the other hand, Yazats are the followers of the Supreme God Ahur Mazda. They are the righteous people, an embodiment of everything that should be correct.

Now let us come to the subject of Rig Veda, and the scriptures of Hindus in general, of India. There are two types of people—Devas and Asurs. Devas are the righteous people; they are an embodiment of all that should be right; they rule the heaven and earth and maintain peace and righteousness all over. Their God is Brahman, the Supreme Being, who has created everything in the universe. And there are the Asurs, who are evil beings. These Asurs are an embodiment of all that is wrong, an embodiment of all that should not be. They are led by their evil guru/teacher Shukra.

Do you see anything that relates the two beliefs? In today’s geographical terms, these are two communities of people who lived on either side of the current day Afghanistan. We have the community on the west side of Afghanistan call the evil spirit as Ahriman, and we have the community on the east side of Afghanistan call their God as Brahman. Do you get a feeling, or sense something fishy here? Yes, both are the same: Ahriman is the same as the Brahman. The god of the Vedic people is the evil spirit of the Zoroastrians! The name of Brahman got morphed slightly after it traveled over to the Iranian region, and it became Ahriman.

The evil spirits feared by the community on the west side of Afghanistan are Devas. And the good-natured gods of the Vedas on the east side of Afghanistan are also Devas. Both are the same. Zoroastrians hated the Devas of the Vedic people!

The god of the people on the left side of Afghanistan is Ahur Mazda. And the good people who follow Ahur Mazda are called Yazats. The evil spirits feared by the Vedic community on the east side of Afghanistan are called Asurs. We can easily see that the name of Asur has been given to the followers of Ahur Mazda. In the later literature, these are called Rakshas—a phonetic similarity with Yazats can be noticed. Zoroaster is the Persian name for the prophet. The Greek name for him is Zarathushtra. Phonetically, this ties in with the name associated by the Vedic people to the guru (teacher) of the Asurs—Shukra! – The evil Asur Guru, derided even today in a large body of religious legends all over India. And the usage of these terminologies survives to the current day, even after eons, across the scores of languages of India. Killing a demon or evil person is called Asur Vadha in Indian languages; and an extremely evil deed is even today called Rakshasic.

What we clearly see here is the presence of the two communities on either side of the present day Afghanistan, separated by a few hundred miles. They were battling each other for a long time; the exact duration of their fights cannot be definitely attested to. But the kind of feelings that they generated against each other certainly points to the possibility that they were each other’s antagonists for hundreds of years or probably even thousands of years, on a sporadic basis, as attested by the huge amount of literature dedicated to the battles between the communities in their respective scriptures. They were battling each other for survival, each fearing that a loss would decimate their culture and everything else with it.

What is the source of hatred for each other? Why did they fight each other so much?
The scriptures of both the communities once again provide the answer.

Indian scriptures tell us that their civilization was made up of two types of beings — Devas and Asurs — born of the same parent. Devas, being virtuous, were the toast of all and were bestowed with most of the important and responsible posts of the world by God, while Asurs were deemed incapable and got the raw deal. Asurs were miffed by this and were led away to a far off existence of their own, in defiance of the divine ordinance. Once in a while, they waged wars with Devas to reclaim their motherland. This description of the sequence of events tallies with the legends of Iran. Zurvanism, a branch of Zoroastrianism, tells us that their homeland was temporarily given away by God to Ahriman and the Devas; and they hope to regain the land back after some time. The legends of the two regions are tallying with each other.

India was the original homeland to the two communities – a group of people called Devas, and to Asurs. Devas and Asurs lived together in India in what is termed today as Indus Valley (present day Pakistan and north-west India). In the ensuing economic and civilizational progress, Devas got most of the pie, while Asurs felt left out. Their leader Zoroaster revolted against the Devas. He even felt that all this raw deal to his people was being meted out in the name of religious practices, which were being misused to subdue his people. So he rejected the religion of the Devas as well. He felt the necessity to unify his people under a new religious setup; and thus was born the religion of Zoroastrianism. Historians are to this day confused on why Devas and Ahriman, who were once worshipped and held in high esteem, were suddenly shunned as evil beings by later day Iranians. Here is a Wikipedia extract regarding the confusion.

“While it is likely that the daevas (Devas) were once the ‘national’ gods of pre-Zoroastrian Iran, there is ‘no known Iranian dialect attests clearly and certainly the survival of a positive sense for [Old Iranian] daiva (Deva).’ This ‘fundamental fact of Iranian linguistics’ is ‘impossible’ to reconcile with the testimony of the Gathas, where the daevas, though rejected, were still evidently gods that continued to have a following.”
“This essential contradiction has yet to be conclusively explained. Given the fragmentary and discontinuous information in the sources, it is an extremely difficult issue. In general, ‘rejection of the [daevas] is linked to Zoroaster’s reform’ and Gershevitch and others following Lommel consider the progression from ‘national’ gods to demons to be attributable to the ‘genius of Zoroaster.’

Historians and theologians are still so confused even today because they have still not understood the events that led to the birth of Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism was born as a revolt against the religious setup in India. The mount on which Zoroaster received divine revelation was, in all probability, in India. He formed a new religion and called his God Asur Mazda, meaning God of Asurs (this later got morphed to Ahur Mazda). He rejected the religion of Devas, and termed their god as evil spirit, whose worshippers would go to hell. This new religion was repellant to Devas, who then expelled the Zoroastrians. This event, when Asurs were expelled out of India, is frequently termed in Indian scriptures as ‘Devasur Sangram,’ a bloody pre-historic war. Zoroaster led his people to the nearby region of Persia. However, even after moving away to their new home, they were always desirous of reclaiming their original homeland back, and led repeated wars against India – it is these wars that got captured in an extra-ordinarily large body of legends in the scriptures of both the communities.

Historians often date Zoroaster to between 1000 BC and 600 BC. Because of this late date, his influence on the Satanic and other concepts of Abrahamic religions is not fully appreciated. Zoroaster existed at a time when India had only the worship of Brahman, and the currently popular cults of theological Vaishnavism and Saivism did not even exist in India. Mahabharat, a scripture relatively late into Vaishnavite thought is itself often dated to 800 BC to 1000 BC. Zoroaster must therefore be much much earlier than this. Some scholars have already been pointing out that he lived around 6000 BC.

Zoroaster’s terming of the Indian God Brahman as evil spirit led to the birth of the first Satanic evil spirit of humanity. This Zoroastrian evil spirit then found its way into the other theologies around the world, including the Satanic concepts of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This is how the Satanic concepts of our religions originated. 

Originally published here.

Over the past several weeks we’ve been looking at church marketing in social media. We’ve looked at using video sharing sites, like YouTube and GodTube, and now I’d like look at using social networking sites, specifically Facebook, currently the number one social networking website and third most popular social media site behind YouTube and Wikipedia. When looking for places to market your church, Facebook has a pretty big audience.

So what is Facebook?
Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family, and coworkers. The site provides a variety of features to facilitate communication between people as well as between organizations and people. Some of these features are news postings, chat, article distribution, photo sharing, and video sharing. With Facebook’s design, you can share information, pictures and videos quickly just by posting the info or media to your profile. That information or media can then be shared with all your “friends” or “fans” automatically.

The History:
Originally Facebook started out as an online college “facebook” at Harvard University created by then sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004. More than half the students at Harvard had joined up within the first month. Considering that response, Facebook was opened up to all the Ivy League schools and then to pretty much every college and university in the US and Canada within a few months. In 2005 Facebook expanded to include high schools and finally in 2006 Facebook was opened for anyone over the age of 13.

Other than the fact that I find this history interesting, I wanted to share the history of Facebook to demonstrate the explosive growth and prominence of social media to demonstrate its value to church marketing.

Who’s Using Facebook?
In its first 2 years, Facebook grew from half the student population of Harvard, to a majority of all college students in the US and Canada. Since then, according to Facebook’s statistics page, Facebook has grown to more than 130 million active users. It is the 4th most trafficked website in the world, and it is the most trafficked social networking site in the world.

Here are some other interesting facts about Facebook:
• More than half the Facebook users are outside of college
• Over 85% of college students use Facebook
• The fasted growing demographic are people 25 years and older
• Facebook is also international with 35 translations currently available

So, who is using Facebook, a lot of people, probably a lot of your own congregation, and certainly a lot of people who you would like to bring into your congregation. In short just about everyone.

Facebook can be a great means of communicating with your congregation. It can also be a great way market your church and help your church members tell others about Christ and your church.

Over the next couple of articles, we’ll be looking at various ways to use Facebook for church marketing as well as church communication.

Originally published here.