What’s in this Episode?

Were you called by the Lord to lead a just a quiet little life with a few folks that come to church from time to time? Or were you called to lead a thriving, vibrant community of believers that does outreach and touches your community in ways that no one has ever done? You and I both know the answer to that. To get you to that point, we’re going to talk about that very thing in this particular episode. CMU will help you reach more people.

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Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:00
Hey pastor! Hey church leader!

Dick Hardy 0:02
Let me ask you. Were you called by the Lord to lead a just a quiet little life with a few folks that come to church from time to time? Or were you called to lead a thriving, vibrant community of believers that does outreach and touches your community in ways that no one has ever done? You and I both know the answer to that. To get you to that point, we’re going to talk about that very thing in this particular episode. Stay tuned. And here we go.

Dick Hardy 0:33
Hey, friend. It’s great to be with you on this episode of church tips. And we are with my good friend Ryan Wakefield. He is the co-founder of Church Marketing University, and it has been… What was it? Four and a half years ago? We were sitting when I was… five years ago, we’re sitting out at a restaurant, Mexican or pizza, which was it?

Ryan Wakefield 0:52
Probably both.

Dick Hardy 0:54
And we’re down in Arizona, and Ryan brings up this idea, you know, I wonder if we created something that would help churches market their church, if there’d be a market for that. And boom. He said, let’s run with it and we launched church marketing University in May 2016. And then he kicked Jonathan and I out the window, and he has just blown this thing up. And you may have been able to go to the church marketing conference, which was a week or so ago.

Dick Hardy 1:25
But now he has opened up with a Fall Enrollment, to jump into church marketing University. And I want to tell you, if you want to be able to master the ability to communicate the good that’s happening in your church, to people outside your church, you need to tag along with Church Marketing University, because believe me, you know what, we know that God is doing some great things in your church, whether you’re seeing big growth or not. God is at work at your church. And Ryan just has a passion to be able to help you communicate that good to people outside the church.

Dick Hardy 2:03
So, give us a little snapshot. CMU is open for enrollment, what all is up with that? Yeah, we do enrollment twice a year, spring and fall, as soon as enrollment closes, what we do is we work with all the churches that jump in, and we build out the foundation of the marketing system. We see a lot of churches trying a lot of things and getting really frustrated.

Dick Hardy 2:21
They’ll hear like, oh, Facebook ads, so they’ll go chase it over there and it maybe works a little bit. But at the end of the day, it’s like no we didn’t really see a whole lot of results. And we found it’s because churches don’t have the foundation in place. So the first 10 weeks, we work together to get their foundation in place. And what that does is it gives a church, (A) a system that’s going to get visitors coming to their church every single week. And then (B) everything else that you do, your christmas ideas, Easter ideas, Facebook ads, Google, whatever it is. Name it. Is way more effective at a way reduced cost.

Dick Hardy 2:53
So if I’m understanding they jump into Church Marketing University, they make that investment and then you immediately start them through this 10 week process of building this foundation. So that when they’re beyond that they’re not chasing here chasing there, they’ve got a strategy in place that’s going to take them all the way down the line.

Ryan Wakefield 3:13
Yeah, it makes a huge difference. If you asked me, Ryan, what is the absolute essential stuff every church needs in order to be effectively reaching into their community, like what are growing and thriving churches doing? Like we boil that all down. So that’s where we start.

Ryan Wakefield 3:28
And then beyond that, we have 30 courses, we have conferences, we have kits, we have plans for the entire year. So it’s kind of like, there’s a lot of other stuff that you can jump in after that. But we start with that foundational element, and then we go from there.

Dick Hardy 3:42
So if they want information on this, they can go to leaders.church/CMU. And they can get you all the information, you got everything in there, you get the samples, the templates, and you say, Oh, this, this, this, and this is really going to help you.

Dick Hardy 3:58
This is going to help you move your church to where you want to move. Listen, I know this to be true. I’ve had gray hair, I’ve been around the block a day or two. You want to reach more people for Christ. You have a passion and God has called you, no matter what your role is in the church to help advance the mission of the church to reach spiritually lost people. And I’m telling you, CMU is going to help you do this.

Dick Hardy 4:20
This is an investment that you will have a return on it. That’ll be far beyond what you could get on almost anything else. Let me tell you, thriving churches are doing these kinds of things. They’re not just chasing a little Facebook ad here and a little bit of something over here. And this week, we’re going to do that. And that week… they’re going to put something in place that’s going to go the long haul. And I have been so impressed with what I see coming out of Ryan and CMU. So just go to leaders.church/CMU, and you’re going to be able to get all the goodies and everything involved here. What else do our viewers and listeners need to know?

Ryan Wakefield 4:53
Man, I think there’s no pressure on this. I mean, our heart is to help a church reach into their community. Yeah, our goal is to get Church visitors coming every single week, whether that’s digitally or in person right now, that’s our heart. And when we started this with you guys back with the dream of like, in the first five years, could we get 1000 churches and imagine the impact that we could help 1000 churches reach more people.

Ryan Wakefield 5:15
Like, you know, and so we’ve already hit that. We were three and a half years in and we were able to hit that and celebrate that churches all over the world. And essentially, we’re just trying to say, okay, Pastor, you have a heart to reach into your community, you have the greatest news on the face of the planet. But the problem is, they don’t teach you how to use all these tools in Bible school.

Dick Hardy 5:36
You’re kidding me!

Ryan Wakefield 5:38
So there’s all these incredible ways to get the word out and preach the good news, we’re gonna keep the main things. The main thing is keep a focus on Jesus. We actually in all our coaching, like leaders.church, we’ve infused everything with prayer and pointing people to the Word of God. But how do you use all these tools effectively? And so that’s what we’re really trying to do. So if you’re a church that’s like, man, we would love to have more visitors every single week. That’s why we exist. That’s why we put all this blood, sweat and tears, then I think you’re gonna love church marketing University, there’s no risk whatsoever.

Ryan Wakefield 6:07
If you get into it. A lot like leaders.church in you’re like, man, this wasn’t for us. Or this really doesn’t help, cancel it and we’ll give you your money back within 30 days. So it doesn’t matter. Just cancel, we’re good to go.

Ryan Wakefield 6:18
But if your church is like, man, we need help. We need somebody to walk with us and show us how to reach people consistently. Because our goal is to help your church get more life change every single week. If we can do that, man, we’re both going to love that.

Dick Hardy 6:32
Talk to us a little bit about the word marketing. You know, it’s a word that feels like a secular word. We don’t think in those terms, but just flesh that out a little bit for the pastor or the leader who’s watching.

Ryan Wakefield 6:45
Yeah, oftentimes you see church and marketing next to each other, and people are like I don’t know it doesn’t feel right. And I get it, if by marketing, you mean, slimy tactics, manipulation.

Dick Hardy 6:54
Snake oil salesmen.

Ryan Wakefield 6:55
No, like, those two things have nothing to do together. We just simply define marketing as tools to help start new relationships. So, tools to help start new relationships. And here’s the secret, don’t tell anybody this, but every church is marketing. You have a website.

Dick Hardy 7:10
Whether you know it or not, you’re doing it.

Ryan Wakefield 7:11
Yeah, you’re doing it! Well, the question is, are you doing it effectively or not? And so if you want to use tools to start new relationships with people in your community, like a website, like social media, like live streaming, the list could go on and on, we talked about 30 of them. That’s marketing. That’s essentially what it is.

Ryan Wakefield 7:29
So and we think if it’s based in biblical principles, and it’s designed to help grow the kingdom, then we should be the best marketers on the planet. So that’s what we do.

Dick Hardy 7:40
And Ryan, you’ve talked about the over the history of the church, the things that have come on the the printing press that came on, and all of a sudden people can actually have the word of God printed in their language? Well, the church was smart enough to say, let’s do that, even though we hadn’t done it before. Let’s do that. The airplane, you talked about how all of a sudden, the airplane changed everything, because now we can get missionaries into places we could not.

Dick Hardy 8:04
So here we have a digital world where we have the capacity to actually do something great for the mission of the church in spreading the gospel. And I’ll tell you, I know this guy. I’ve known him for I don’t know how many years, what 18, almost 20 years. Yeah, you’re a snot nosed kid there. When we first met in 2000. You were hanging out the youth group back in the day. And I mean, he wasn’t a youth because he is old enough. But I’m just telling you, I know this guy. I know the heart for what him what he and his team do to help churches. I mean, he’s given himself to you. Yeah, I get it. You know, you buy into Church Marketing University.

Dick Hardy 8:45
This is a guy who believes in the church, just go to leaders.church/CMU. And you can go in there, kick the tires, look at everything that’s in there. What’s a parting shot you want anybody to know, as they’re thinking about whether they should do something here?

Ryan Wakefield 8:58
Yeah, I love your example. We’ve talked about that a lot. And sometimes the church has jumped on board and it’s like, let’s use that to reach more people. And then sometimes we’ve missed the opportunity. Like there’s a new technology or like, I don’t know, like, that’s the devil’s territory. And I’m more than mindset of like, man, if there’s an opportunity out there, and it’s, you know obviously aren’t talking about sin, but like, if there’s an opportunity to go into all the world, and that world means YouTube, or Facebook, let’s go into all the world. Let’s do it. So yeah, if that gets you fired up, we will show you how to do that we will guide you along the way. So for those who are ready to put a plan together and actually start seeing new faces being transformed, we would love to help go on that journey with you.

Dick Hardy 9:39
And again, leaders.church/CMU and you’re going to see that in the show notes. I also want to mention to you that I’m a numbers nerd. And the investment… I’ve studied this, I know what I’m talking about with this. The investment you make in CMU, you will generally have to gain somewhere between a half of a person or one person in a year. Now, let me ask you, do you think at all that you would make an investment like this.

Dick Hardy 10:08
Now, you think Ryan’s in the business to help you find a half of a person? No way. If you’re having to talk to a church board and get some authorization to do this, this is a slam dunk decision for you just go to leaders.church/CMU, and jump in there and Ryan will help you anyway.

Ryan Wakefield 10:26
Can I give them a secret?

Dick Hardy 10:26
Yeah!

Ryan Wakefield 10:27
The best part of CMU is it has nothing to do with marketing. You know why?

Dick Hardy 10:31
Why?

Dick Hardy 10:31
It’s the series that we did on generosity. Because honestly, like, I love marketing, but Dick and I worked together because one of the objections early on was like, man, it takes a lot of resources. And it does. So we said, let’s take that objection off the table. What if we work together on a series, gave them the best stuff, so that they could go through a generosity course. And they would have no more excuses, because it will pay for your investment in CMU, it will make sure you have plenty of resources to be able to do some of the outreach things that you want to do.

Ryan Wakefield 11:02
You do one 10th of the things, I think we have 37 points in there, we have a little bit of overlap. So they’re 30 individual, unique things for you. You do one 10th of those. And I’m telling you, you’re going to raise more money than you ever invest in this. So slam dunk, we got kind of excited about it. Go to leaders.church/CMU, jump in there, and you’re going to be glad you did. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. By the way, this goes up through October 15. Yeah, so you got to get it done for October 15. And you’re going to love the fact that you did. Thanks so much. Make it a great one today, and be blessed.

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