Rejection, Inbound Marketing, Geofencing and Why There Almost Certainly Is a God – What I learnt This Month.

Person making notes on what they have learnt this month

I have decided to start a new section for my blog – What I have learnt this month. It is a great place for me to reflect upon the things that I have learnt but I hope that it will also be useful to you in finding interesting resources to help you grow.

I will be covering pretty much anything I use to learn such as books, podcasts, videos, articles and courses.

So what have I learnt in the month of November 2017?

Rejection Proof – Book I Read This Month

Rejection Proof Book Cover
Most of us have an inbuilt fear of rejection.

It stops us fulfilling our dreams.

It inhibits our ability to act.

It thwarts our goals and desires and paralyses us.

We worry about humiliation and how the rejection will affect our confidence.

This was also the case for Jia Jiang (who wrote this book). He desired to be an entrepreneur, but due to fear of rejection he never made the leap and continued working for someone else.

After researching fear of rejection he came across “rejection therapy” and decided to embark on his own version of this therapy: “100 days of rejection”.

Starting a video blog to document the journey, he chose a different rejection challenge each day. 

These ranged from such requests as asking a security guard for $100, asking a stranger if he could play soccer in his garden, asking a pilot if he could fly his plane, to asking a flight attendant if he could read the safety announcements.

When he started this journey it was to overcome rejection, but what he found was that the more he asked, and got better at asking, the more people began to say yes!

In the end he not only got over his fear of rejection, but also learnt lots of skills to get better at asking, and also, get better at rejecting others (in a nice, kind way).

I highly recommend this book and hope to do my own version of the rejection challenge in 2018!

Inbound Marketing – Course I Took This Month (& It’s implications for the Church)

I recently switched roles from learning and development to marketing. To get into the swing of things I decided to take a few courses on marketing.
Inbound Marketing HubSpot Academy Badge
Before switching roles I had never heard of inbound marketing, but after taking the course it has totally changed my perception of marketing.

Inbound marketing is contrasted to the more traditional ‘outbound marketing’.

Outbound marketing is defined by cold calls, cold emails, and advertisements that interrupt us.
Conversely, inbound marketing is about drawing people into what your brand is doing by creating things of actual value.

The primary essence of inbound marketing is about identifying your primary customers (buyer personas), then identifying their pain points – the things that they are struggling with.

Once the pain points have been identified you then create things that address the pain points and help the person and distribute these for free. These can be articles, eBooks, webinars, seminars, podcast, videos, or anything else that could be useful to your customer.

Your product is also included as something that addresses the pain point (but is not free). The inbound marketing helps people who will actually be helped by your product to find it (rather than pushing it to a load of people who don't actually want or need your product).

I believe that this has implications for the Church.

I read recently that the largest boycott in history is taking place write now. It’s people installing ad-blockers on their phones and computers. Millions of them (over 198 Million!).

People are sick of adverts, they are sick of people trying to push stuff on them. And it is the same with the Church.

If we change the scope slightly, then running toddler groups, food banks, debt counselling sessions, marriage counselling etc. all these things are essentially inbound marketing. 

We are creating useful resources that address the pain points of the people that we are here to reach. And this is what we must continue to do.

How Tech Will Transform Event Management [Infographic] – Article I Read This Month (& It’s implications for the Church)

How Tech Will Transform Event Management

This was a fascinating article, talking about stuff I had never heard of, however I knew that it had potential implications for the Church.

Although the Church can never be reduced to an event, a church service as a gathering of believers is essentially an event. Therefore some of the emerging technologies must have implications for the Church.

The tech the article talks about are:
  • Geofencing
  • API (Application Programme Interface)
  • Email & Marketing Automation
  • Social Media
  • Live Streaming
  • RFID
  • Wearables
  • Virtual Reality
  • Robots & Drones
  • Crowdshaping 

Some of these are already starting to be implemented in church (Email & marketing automation, social media, live streaming), some I am a bit dubious about (robots & drones), and some I think may be a bit to early for any serious adoption (virtual reality – although it would be super fun to see VR versions of the places spoken about in the Bible stories like the Temple, or lake Galilee during a service!). However some I thought might be very interesting.

The primary one I thought looked interesting was geofencing.

Geofencing (as well as beacons – not spoken about in this article) involve mapping off (using coordinates) a geographical area. When people enter the area in question, you can send them push notifications or other pieces of information. This could be upcoming news, the bible readings for the day, helpful resources or anything else you can think of.

The Christian Idea Of God – Podcast I Listened To This Month

The Christian Idea Of God Homebrewed Theology Podcast
I absolutely loved this podcast from Home Brewed Christianity. It is an interview with Keith Ward, a philosopher & theologian who has authored loads of book (seriously. Loads!).

The whole interview was fascinating. The best part for me was the discussion regarding a potential movement from materialism to idealism.

Materialism being the belief that the material world represents the ultimate reality.

Idealism being the belief that consciousness represents the ultimate reality.

Keith makes the case that many physicists are so deeply perplexed by discoveries in physics (such as quantum physics & dark matter) that they are realising that we just don’t know much about the material world at all (seriously – 96% of the universe is made up of dark energy and dark matter – and we don’t even know what it is!)

This is my first foray into the work of Keith Ward but I plan to get one of his books and read it as soon as possible. I thought I would start with “Why There Almost Certainly Is a God”* as a good starting point – so expect to see that soon in the ‘book I read this month’ part 😊


Why There Almost Certainly Is a God Book Cover

Finally, of course, are the things that I have learnt from researching and publishing my own posts. For a recap, these are:

5 Things That Help Us Understand The Phrase 'Born Again' In John 3
3 Reasons Jesus Stopped At A Sacred Well In John's Gospel
How Body Prayer And Biology Enhance Our Prayer Life

What have you been learning this month? let me know in the comments below.
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* Please note that these links are affiliate links. This means that I receive a small percentage of the price of anything you buy through the links.

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