Church Marketing Sucks

Our associate editor and get-it-done guy, Joshua Cody, has announced that he’s moving on from his post here at Church Marketing Sucks. Josh has been a part of the Church Marketing Sucks team for a while and we’re sad to see him go. We hope to rope him in for the occasional guest blogging post, so he won’t be gone forever. You can follow the continuing adventures of Joshua Cody on Twitter and his blog. He penned a little fair well for all of you…

4 years, 5 months and 13 days ago, I sent an e-mail to Kevin Hendricks letting him know that I’d love to get involved with Church Marketing Sucks and that I was willing to panhandle, do spec work or send bribes to whomever in order to join the team. And after a few months of sporadic writing, I was officially introduced just about four years ago.

One of the dangers when you bring a 19-year-old on the scene is that you’ve probably got a better idea than they do on where their life is headed. And that dissonance between where 19-year-old me and 23-year-old me thought life was headed is the force behind this post.

Then, I thought surely I was headed down a road of professional writing and church communication. Now, my passion and career has moved toward technology and building things on the internet, and while the local church will always be near to my heart, I simply don’t have the time and energy to continue giving my best work to CFCC.

What does that mean for Church Marketing Sucks? Not a ton, honestly. I haven’t been able to give the effort I’d like to recently, and Kevin, the brains behind our editorial content, will still be moving things forward around here. The only difference is he can spend more time writing challenging posts and less time arguing with me about the serial comma and whether to use Web site or website.

And what does it mean for me? Well I hope to be able to contribute to Church Marketing Sucks occasionally still, as I have plenty of strong opinions and thoughts on how the local church communicates with a world in need. But beyond that, my life will consist mainly of continuing on my nerdy path and pursuing God through community in Austin.

Church marketing has grown leaps and bounds while I’ve been a part of Church Marketing Sucks. Though there’s still a long way to go, churches are learning that marketing is more than fancy tricks from Madison Avenue. Small churches are learning they have a story to tell, and big churches are learning to use their influence to show truth to the world.

It’s going to be exciting to see church marketing move forward from here on out, even though my day-to-day role at Church Marketing Sucks will be diminished. And I hope to be able to drop in from time to time and share what I’m thinking and hopefully continue to stir the church marketing pot.

It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with the entire CFCC team and an honor to engage with our readers, who are the ones out there really making the world a better place. I’m sure I’ll be heard from again around here, but until then, I look forward to the stories of how Church Marketing Sucks and the community of readers are communicating the gospel in new and exciting ways.