provide utility

Brad Abare is posting on Church Marketing Sucks about his recent trip to Haiti, and gleaning tips for church marketing. In his first post, he writes about providing utility.

Electricity in Haiti is scarce. The government rotates the power grid so that you get about two hours of electricity in the middle of the night. This means days and evenings are without power unless you are wealthy enough to own a generator (few do). Businesses are also affected by this and very few of them have generators. The two churches we worked with did have generators and they could afford to run them once a day for a couple hours, sometimes longer if a service was in progress to amplify the sound. An auxiliary benefit to churches being one of the only places in town with electricity is that people will bring their cell phones and line them up along the walls to charge their batteries.

Most western churches are not the only places in town with electricity, but we can provide "utility" for our communities.

The first thing that comes to mind is third place. We're a little higher up Maslow's hierarchy of needs than Haiti, but there is a drought of social spaces in most of our neighborhoods. What if there was a cool, comfortable, WiFi zone in town that offered, but did not obligate, the purchase of coffee, etc? Revolutionary.

And what about those in your community who are somewhere in the middle? Maybe your facility isn't the only place with heat in the winter, but how many of those other places open their doors to the homeless? Maybe your building isn't the only building in town with a kitchen, but how many other kitchens are feeding low-income, single moms?

James 2:15-16//If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.