The Messy Middle

I heard a quote recently that pertains to faith and I find myself using it a lot,

“We define it by the center, not the periphery”

This seems to be the crux of pretty much every conversation we’ve been having in so many different circles and spheres of influence. It’s all swirling around the same core question: “How are Christ-led brands solving for the massive world-view disparities between the current life-blood generations funding God’s Kingdom work and the incumbent generation who will carry on that legacy?”

My colleagues and I argue all the time about whether things are actually generational disparities or simply life-stage disparities, but the life-stage argument doesn’t really account for the unique traumas each life stage is dealt with at the most formative life stage ie: being young.

The sheer impact of a COVID-19-sized trauma alone has drastically catalyzed the wounds and divides that were already forming within Christendom — not to mention BLM, MAGA, the Rise & Fall of Mars Hill, the Southern Baptist Sexual Assault scandals, Christian Nationalism, Wade v. Roe, on and on and on.

What’s happening is that Christ-led brands are trapped in the space between two world views that have their own trigger words. For older generations, it’s terms like “social justice”, “racial reconciliation”, “ally”, and “deconstruction”. For younger generations, it’s terms like “evangelical”, “pro-life”, “Israel”, and even “Christian”.

While I am speaking in massive generalities here, these are the examples that are being brought up in nearly every conversation and are creating serious relevance & resonance problems within the church & the parachurch.

We are at a pivotal moment in Christendom and many brands are really struggling to adapt their identities as these massive societal, technological, and generational changes continue to shape the marketing landscape. 

Legacy brands are struggling to reach a socially-minded generation of Christians without losing their older nuclear-minded donors. Newer generations are super-triggered by any non-profit that comes across as exclusionary and wants to invest more in bringing the Parachurch to the for-profit space to redeem the world.

“So what do we do?”

That’s the real question everyone is asking.

For us, it all keeps coming back to Matthew 9:17:

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine & ruining the skins. New wine is stored in new wineskins so that both are preserved.”

Let’s be frank, there might just be too much baggage with legacy brands to shift or rebrand in a way that can work to appeal to young Christians without devastatingly alienating their current lifeblood. That’s why our work in subbranding is so attractive to these causes right now.

But here’s another way to look at it: We’re on the cusp of what could be history’s greatest wealth transfer to date. And this is where the rubber meets the generational road — legacy.

Right now, older high-net-worth donors are feeling like the wealth they are about to hand over to their kids and grandkids is not going to be used to advance the same causes they care deeply about. And the younger generations feel like they’re about to receive a metaphorical old couch that doesn’t fit their home décor and doesn’t value as an heirloom.

This is the real core of the messy middle. This is what we get really excited about because there is a beautiful solution that lies in starting with values instead of causes. This is the time to stop pushing and pause for long enough to work to align our deepest values and really start to focus on the center, not the periphery.

But once common ground is found, we need to defang the money and the power; ie: throw out the ego of what exists today, and be willing to create new causes and identities that can be co-created in partnership between the generations. This is more like “neobranding” than it is “rebranding”.

If you start at causes or existing brands, you get boxed into corners. If you start at deep values, you find room for alignment that you can build upon.

Branding, Rebranding, Subbranding, & Neobranding organizations through this transformation is a very messy space to be in — and there's nowhere else we want to be. And that’s because we believe there's no other space that can make a bigger impact in helping to rebuild the wounded Western Church than through brands that points to Jesus.