Is “Suck” a bad word?

Brad Abare seems to think so. That’s why he founded Church Marketing Sucks, the blog to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.

Offended? Interested?

Keep reading in order to learn more about Brad and the Center for Church Communication. Here’s the interview:

1. How did you get from here to there? I started a magazine when I was 16 which turned into a small publishing company by the time I was 18. By age 19, I would be sued for millions of dollars which eventually forced me to lose everything. Although I won the case, I lost the business and in the rubble of failure emerged the rumblings of three things I’m involved in today: Personality, a consultancy that profiles organizations; Foursquare, communications director since 2002; and Center for Church Communication (CFCC), a nonprofit that helps churches communicate better.
2. You seem to be involved in several initiatives (CFCC, Personality, Foursquare). What are some strategies you employ which keep your from
   spreading yourself too thin? A few things come to mind: 1) I surround myself with super smart people who know more about their game than I do. I hire or recruit people who will take the team in directions I can only imagine. 2) I arrive to the office every morning at about 6 AM which gives a couple silent hours for accomplishing what I need to do. The rest of the day is about my team’s agenda. 3) I leave the office every day at 4 PM and spend an hour or so at night preparing for the following day. The rest of the evening is for life outside of work (family, friends, small group, etc.). 4) I’m not on Facebook.
3. Give us the Big Idea behind Church Marketing Sucks. The church has the greatest story ever told but not enough people are
   listening. That’s in part to a communication problem. Church Marketing Sucks (part of the Center for Church Communication), is the blog to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ. The first post went live in July 2004 and we haven’t looked back since.
4. Don’t worry about sounding arrogant or bold, but what are some God-sized dreams He’s placed in your heart? This is a loaded question and I honestly don’t know where to begin or how to squeeze my response into this short space. However, for the context of your readers, let me say that I have a dream to see the church re-calibrated over the next ten years to be more reflective of the bride Jesus is coming back for. This means looking a lot less like a sleepy corporate religion with all its departmentalized denominations. I want to be a part of a growing church that measures its significance not by the size of its building, but by the size of its giving. I want to win the attention of people not by clever sermon series but by incarnate living. If the woman at the well had attempted to come to church (temple in her day), she would have been stoned. The closer someone wanted to get to the Holy of Holies, the more death was risked. So Jesus comes to tear down the temple and access to God is now incarnate. So what does God do? He goes TO the woman at the well. I don’t want to be at the temple when my neighbors are at the well.
5.  In the circles you run in, what does it mean to be in the world and not of it…to integrate Christ AND culture? It means meditating on scripture (I’m currently memorizing the book of James) and contextualizing Scripture for today. It means being where I am and living locally. It means intentionally surrounding myself with inputs that don’t always support the way I view the world. It means prodding my religious leader friends (pastors) to get out of the temple and hang out at wells.

 If you’re still unsure if “suck” is a bad word check out this link.