Jesus HTML Christ!

I met up with a friend yesterday who leads a youth ministry at the largest Church in the world - one that caters to approx. 300,000 regular Churchgoers.

Yes, 300,000. More than the entire population of a suburb of Dubai.

We started speaking about not just local but regional issues with regards to dwindling numbers of youth at the major offerings this Church has for that age group. After an hour of breaking it down to its core issue, we came up with a single line which is the foundation of all marketing today:

The game has changed, because the players have changed.

Pepsi realised that its core target audience is not watching the Superbowl on TV anymore but is actually following it on social media sites like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. So they switched the millions of dollars it would have spent on ad costs to social media marketing instead. And now they're reaping the benefits of being 'in' with the youth.

So too, do Church ministries need to take spreading their Good News online. Completely. Its no longer a matter of having a cliched Facebook page with a nice 'hook' slogan, or a smart stock photo. Its not about making a teenager in charge of 'handling that online marketing stuff for the group'.

Its about finally realising and taking the soul-plane online.

God bless your keyboard.