Branding as an Exercise of Self-Esteem

In Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collins attempts to translate the work that he had done for analyzing the highly successful businesses to the non-profit areas. I appreciate the strong emphasis that what makes for a successful non-profit organization is not a simple transposition of business world upon the non-profit areas. I myself often am skeptical of corporate measures of success, often seeing that short-term and yearly gratification (and dividends) is often valued over things like the environment, social justice, and other uncapitalizable, yet necessary long-term needs for our future.

Therefore, it surprised me that what I found most interesting in this text was one of the most corporate ideas as one of the best fits for what a church needs and how it can help growth in the future. I found the "hedgehog concept" as the basis for creating a brand to be something that is deeply important.

In my experiences, most churches don't really know why they are churches. They like to meet together and they have a deep commitment to the community, building, etc, but they rarely are able to articulate the purpose that these congregations have. Honestly, congregations have low self-esteem. I think that the hedgehog would be able to help these congregations that there are passions and missions that congregations DO WELL and then give them the opportunity to be able to articulate why they come together as a community.

Here is what Collin's hedgehog concept looks like:



What are you deeply passionate about:
Churches have deep passions. Sometimes, these deep passions are about "Our church puts out the most beautiful creches for advent." Sometimes its: "We love the teenagers in our congregation, and even though they grew up in the inner city, we're going to make sure that they go to college." Each of these passions have a specific value attached to them. For the first congregation, clearly beauty and the advent story are important values. The second congregation prides itself on supporting the teens in the congregation to overcome difficult odds and values social justice. It takes a lot of work to "just do what we've been doing," being able to unearth what matters to us is a good first step for realizing we're awesome.

What are you best at:
I am often amazed at what churches accomplish. Forty people put on a monthly food and clothing bank. Four hundred people come together to provide 300 children the school supplies they need to go to school, drive a van to pick up homeless men and get them to warm shelter during the winter, send 30 people on a yearly mission, and twenty or thirty other small ministries. Every week they put on a different worship service, each with its own unique character. Often, when congregations talk, they see all of the things they haven't done, not the amazing things they are accomplishing. Asking "What are you best at?" reorients the idea from "I'm not doing enough" to "We're doing this really well, because we value this."
What drives your resource engine:
Time, money, and volunteers are something that every single church needs more of. By being able to articulate: "We do this, because." Makes the "So you should help," part much easier to do. Making ourselves known for what we do, gives us a focus and a way to overcome our hesitancy to act.


Jim Collins' hedgehog concept would be a way of recasting the dominant narrative of a congregation from: "We're part of a dying denomination and congregation" to "This is what we do, why we're awesome, and what we value. We're so excited to be here." I think perhaps instead of understanding ourselves in terms of relevancy as dictated by the outside (perhaps even corporate) definition of the world and recasting our self-evaluation in terms of our mission and bringing about the Kingdom of God. Congregations do things well and I think this model might be a good way to tell ourselves the story that we are awesome.