3 Lessons I took from Echo 2010

The Echo ’10 was this week and if you weren’t there you missed out. There were some good keynotes, fun breakouts, and best of all was I didn’t feel like the nerdiest person in the room for once. (I’m mean that in a loving way, and am a proud nerd).

Here are the three big points I walked away with.

1. Tell A Great Story

Donald Miller (Author: Blue Like Jazz), Jonathan Acuff (Stuff Christians Like), and Michael Buckingham (Church Marketing Sucks) all hit this point hard. I’m not sure if they planned it that way though. Their big point was find the compelling story in your project/ministry and sell it hard. People connect with stories, identify with stories, fall in love with sorties.

It’s good to have sleek art work and fun videos, but dude, us designers are the only ones who will care about that if your story sucks. Find that story and support it with the art.

2. It’s All About The Gospel

This is a tough one for me. I love the Gospel, but I can get really wrapped up in the presentation. I’m a showman and that’s what we do. Let’s not get lost in our methods but be reminded that our message is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the glory of God.

Todd Wagner, pastor of Watermark Church in Dallas, dedicated his entire sermon to this. Thanks Pastor Todd.

3. Protect Your Message

This lesson was learned in a very different way. The first keynote speaker was Dan Merchant. He’s the filmmaker who made Lord Save Us From Your Followers.
His talk was going ok until he decided to play a game with the audience where he would bring people onstage and quiz them about pop culture. Then, in a hilarious but unfortunate turn, one on the guys he brought on stage decided to steal the stage in a dramatic Andy Kaufman or Sacha Barren Cohen fashion.

He put on a character that was so socially awkward that it was embarrassing and entertaining all at the same time. Unfortunately, Dan fed into this guy who called himself “Infinity”, and every moment he kept Infinity there Dan’s message got more and more lost.

The only thing most people remember from that night was how hilarious Infinity was, and he was pretty funny. It was that easy for Dan to loose his message because he got wrapped up in something that didn’t really matter. Dan had some good points, but they were all lost in the void that was Infinity.

Don’t let people distract you from your mission or steal from the message you have been give, especially if it is as important as the Gospel.

35mm Challange

I heart challenges, and I found a really fun little test for every movie buff out there. Felix Meyer recently posted up a student project he created called 35mm and it is tons of fun.

Here’s the game…

Watch Felix’s 2min short ; and try to guess the 35 different movies he references.

I’m up to about 15. Post your guesses here if you figure them out.