Maurilio Amorim

Author: Maurilio Amorim

  • Christian Publishers Reclaim Their Stories

    I’m blessed to be able to sit in strategic meetings with great people who work for several different Christian Publishing Houses. In years’ past I heard comments such as “our competitor is getting heavy into fiction. We need to buy more fiction work and be competitive.” But in time, the publishing house that had been know for its excellence in children’s materials, for example, began publishing too many titles outside its core competency. It couldn’t deliver on its new products and it weakened, as well, the very product line that had made it successful.

    In marketing circles, we cal this line extension. For example, just because Startbucks is great at making coffee, it does not mean it should become a media company, as it is trying to do by creating its own music label. To me that’s dangerous and has a way to dilute the Starbucks brand. What’s next? Shoes?

    But I see something encouraging happening in Christian publishing these days. Several times now, I’ve heard publishers say “we need to get back to what we do best and not try to play someone else’s game.” That’s music to my ears. Mature organizations coming full circle to create great product they are uniquely positioned to create and letting someone else do the rest. There’s a lot of talk now of co-branding products by two or more publishing houses. Film studios have done that successfully for years. I’m glad to see Christian publishers do it.

    I often tell my clients to tell or re-tell their story to the consumer; not their competitor’s story, but their own unique story that will resonate with them. I’m encouraged by the stories I’m beginning to hear.

  • Healing, Faith and Technology

    I have found myself complaining that technology makes us so accessible that it’s intrusive and often unnecessary. But after yesterday, I have found a whole new appreciation for the ability to connect with people at an instant.

    After my youngest son was diagnosed with pneumonia, our pediatrician was concerned about other symptoms Derek displayed. Without alarming us, he let us know that he wanted to test our little boy for juvenile diabetes. Gwen and I began to pray and ask God for healing.

    After days of waiting, we got a call. The results of the first two tests were not encouraging, but not conclusive. A third and final test would tell us whether or not he would have to begin a life-long battle with a tough condition.


    Gwen email loved ones all over the globe. I text messaged close friends and family throughout the entire country to pray with us for our little guy’s test; for healing and a negative result. Instantly, I received encouraging messages back. It meant so much to know that in a matter of seconds, I was able to mobilize an army of prayer warriors to intercede for us.

    Several hours later, I got a call from Gwen letting me know that the result of the final test was negative and they had ruled out juvenile diabetes. Thank God–an enormous burden was lifted from my shoulders.

    I’m so thankful for my community of faith spanning the world. People I work with and love whose stories and lives have intercepted with mine in a way that would never be possible without our current technology. Today, as I write this, I’m thankful for text messaging and emails and blogs and all the tools God has given us to connect in a meaningful and powerful way.

  • Training for a Marathon and the Power of Community

    We are only three weeks into the New Year and I have seen people toss their new year’s resolutions aside. The signs are all over the place: the couple with the matching warm up suits is gone from the Y, the “salad eaters” have gone back to the Chinese Buffet and,most unfortunately, Bedside Baptist has claimed a large number of would-be worshipers. But not all of us who made resolutions have given up on them. I, for one, am sticking to my guns. I have been physically active for several years and last summer I began training for triathlons, but I had never considered running a full marathon until a friend talked me into joining a running group, Innerstrength, late last fall.

    This has been a great experience in perseverance. In the past few weeks I have run under unimaginable conditions. I remember in the past driving to the gym on cold mornings with my car seat heater on high shaking my head in disbelief of the runners who braved sub-freezing weather to be out on a run. “What in the world are these people doing?” I often thought. Now I am one of them. In the past two months I have done a series of firsts: My first run in pouring rain–in the dark–nonetheless, my first run in single-digit temperature, my longest run to date of 13.5 miles (that’s half a marathon already!), and logging over 34 miles in one week. Tomorrow morning I’ll be up at 4:30 and by 5:15 I’ll be ready to run up Percy Warner’s 5.8 mile-loop staring down 3-mile hill as I huff my way up.

    But as resolute as I am about completing this marathon, I would not have done most of
    these firsts without

    the encouraging, prodding, harassing, and down right shaming of my training partners. I remember sitting in my car at the entrance of the park and looking at the 10 degree displayed on the dashboard as one of my running partners, knocked on my window, opened the door and literally pulled me out of the car (I’m from Brazil, ok; we don’t do cold, so cut me some slack!!).

    I realized, yet again, how the powerful community is in my life. I have become a runner through the eyes of new friends who didn’t know my limitations, my hang ups, my body-image issues (I always thought of myself as a slow, overweight kid). My running friends know me as a runner, and they have helped me grow faster and stronger in my running. Not long ago, I went from being a man who ran, to being a runner. I don’t know when it happened for sure, but it did.

  • First of the Year Window Holds True

    Historically, the first weekend of the New Year is a great opportunity to reach out to your community with a New Year series. 2008 was no exception. All of our clients who spent the time to plan, design, and promote a new teaching series saw a significant jump in their weekend attendance compared to previous years. Interestingly, those who did not promote their first-of-the year message series had marginal results.


    Easter is the next natural window for the unchurched to visit your congregation. And since Easter is early this year, March 23, churches should begin their creative planning now. Here are few tips:

    • Create a 6-8 week teaching series that connects with your community’s concerns and issues.
    • Promote it to your own people as a way to reach out to their network of friends and family
    • Be creative. Develop a visually compelling, graphical representation of the teaching series.
    • Make the invitation simple. Create business-card size invitations with message titles, a map and other pertinent information.
    • Start on Easter Sunday or the following weekend. Remember, give people a reason to return
    • Deliver the message you advertise! You’ll be surprised by the number of preachers who decide to preach a different message by the time the series rolls around. That will do more damage to your credibility than most any other mistake you can make.

  • Beyond Jesus Junk

    I’m often embarrassed walking around Christian bookstores and seeing isles filled with Christian “tchatchkes” (Yiddish for trinket) that add little or no value to the lives of believers. Most of them just get thrown into the already cluttered world we live filled with more stuff than we could ever use or need. After all, who really needs another velvet painting of the King, and, no, I’m not talking about Elvis here.
    But once in a while something comes along that blows away the chattel people consume.
    Such is The Word of Promise: a fully dramatized audio New Testament featuring Jim
    Caviezel and a host of great actors. These are not just good reads of the New Testament books, but a fully engaging, theatrical rendition faithfully taken from the New King James Version. What a great product–visit their site and listen to a few samples and you’ll see what I mean. I remember getting goose bumps as I first heard Romans 1 featuring the voice of Stacy Keach.

    The product stands alone in its quality, but there’s another side to this story. I’ve had to privilege to spend time with Jim Caviezel in the past few months and get a glimpse of his heart and passion (no pun intended) for God’s Word. Jim is the real deal and his commitment to God’s Word is evident not only by the quality of The Word of Promise Audio Bible but also by his personal walk. We need more projects like TWOP around and less tchatchkes ( I just love that word). And, as my new year’s resolution, I’m selling my velvet Jesus collection next year.

  • Living Through Church Business Meetings

    I have been around churches a long time. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the worst in people come out in the name of Christianity. And, sadly, most of this poor behavior I’ve witnessed during church business meetings. Once during a particular quarrelsome evening where two feuding segments went at each other’s throats with wild accusations, I noticed the church secretary taking very few notes for the official minutes. I leaned over and asked her, “How are you going to write this down?” “It’s simple,” she replied, “I usually write, ‘much discussion followed.’”

    Well, I’ve sat through church business meetings that started at supper time and ended almost in time for breakfast. Those marathon meetings usually have one thing in common: strife. You can tell you’re headed for a church showdown if a bus of inactive members who haven’t been around in years suddenly shows up for the mid-week business meeting. I’ve observed one of those as well. Suddenly, people who have not attended, volunteered, or given financially or otherwise in years—sometimes never–will speak with passion and conviction about what they feel “right” for “their” church.

    Last night was a different type of church business meeting for me. Pastor Pete opened the meeting with a short

    overview of the largest growth percentage in our short five-year history as well as a record year for baptism. His eye lit up when he talked about our new satellite church in Dickson, TN opening up in January. But even in the midst of such great news, he spoke candidly about our financial challenges in not meeting our aggressive budget for the first time since the church started. Brian, an Elder, went through the process of Elder selection and presented the two new Elders chosen for confirmation by the congregation. Shortly afterward, Jenni, our Director of Operations, talked about the new ministry hires and future staff growth. Rod, our treasurer went over the proposed 2008 budget and the financial implications a new campus would have for the new year. All of this was done in less than 45 minutes.

    I thank God for my church and for the great leadership from both our Staff as well as from our lay leaders who are able to keep the appropriate check and balances in place while creating a culture of entrepreneurship and creativity where our church spends most of its time doing the work of the gospel instead of fighting about self serving or meaningless and trivial things that, most often, have no eternal impact. I pray we’ll always keep it that way.

  • The New Yorker Features Faith Church and The Work of The A Group

    I’m often cautious when local media wants to feature one of our church clients because I never know the journalist’s intent and often hidden agenda. Needless to say, I was very concerned when I got a call early this summer from a writer for The New Yorker who was doing a feature story on Faith Church, in New Millford, CT. Local media is scary enough, but this was a whole new league of potential bad press.

    Faith Church is our oldest client and its Pastor, Frank Santora, has become a close friend over the many years we’ve worked together. I met Frank

    before he even had turned 30 years old, and have walked with him during
    three different capital campaigns, a church name change, 400% growth in the last 7 years, a relocation project, major stylistic and staff changes: the works. Faith Church is one of a few mega churches in New England and is making a difference in their community and beyond.
    The writer called and wanted to ask me a few questions which after discussion with Frank the situation, I agreed to answer. What was supposed to be a few minutes on the phone, turned out to be close to a two-hour phone interview. But as the days went on, I forgot all about the story until two weeks ago. Another reporter called to verify my direct and indirect quotes and I noticed that they were many. Only then that I realized that this was not a blurb buried somewhere in the magazine, but a long feature story.
    This week’s New Yorker, not only featured 9 pages on Faith Church, but also had a bonus slide show on their website. After apprehensively reading through the story, I must say that the writer, Frances FitzGerald, did a fair job in telling Frank Santora and Faith Church’s story. She quoted both Rick Warren and Bill Hybels on the seeker movement as well as John McCarthur’s criticism of the movement, but she did it well with not a hint of an agenda to discredit, poke fun or minimize the church’s accomplishments. By The New Yorker standards, this is a gracious and even positive take on both Frank and the church.
    I often hear that there’s no such a thing as negative press—any press is good press. That’s not so for churches who often spend years of work and tons of resources to build goodwill in their communities only to have a malicious reporter undo a lot of their hard-earned work. This time I’m glad that Ms. FitzGerald got it right. But I regret she didn’t include The A Group website along with my quotes. Oh, Well.

  • The Shoe that Spreads the Gospel

    I have the best job in the world because I love what I do. I have the privilege to working with people whom I believe in, helping them make a difference in our world. A few months ago I got a call from an old friend who sold his business to start a not-for-profit organization. While watching the heart wrenching footage of the devastating tsunami a couple of years back, Wayne saw a pair of shoes wash ashore. Being in the shoe business, he decided to do something about it and began to put shoes in people’s feet that needed them. In a little over two years, Soles 4 Souls, his ministry, has already given over 2 million pair of shoes worldwide. That’s amazing to me.

    Wayne Elsey challenged me to help Soles 4 Souls to develop a product that would impact people all over the world even more and to help S4S partner with churches worldwide. For weeks I wrecked my brain trying to think of what we could do. One day, as I sat at a client’s office,

    I saw a copy of the wordless book. It took me back to Brazil when I was first confronted with the gospel. I was 15 years old and someone shared the wordless book with me. For those of you who don’t know, the wordless book teaches the gospel by simply using 5 colors:

    • Dark: reminds us that our hearts are darkened apart from God
    • Red: reminds us that Jesus shed His blood on the cross for our sins
    • White:reminds us that if we accept His sacrifice on the cross, our hearts are cleansed and we are purified
    • Green: reminds us that God wants us to grow in our faith
    • Gold: reminds us of our future home in heaven with God.

    5 months later, a lot of work,several prototypes and late night calls to China, The GospelShoe (gospelshoe.org) is being launched this weekend at the Youth Specialties Convention in Atlanta.
    My prayer is that people will not only wear these shoes and share their faith with those who ask about the colors, but that they will donate them to those in need worldwide—soles4souls will distribute the GospelShoe world wide. They have even partnered with mission organizations that work in closed countries where the GospelShoe is a daily reminder that God cares for their physical and spiritual needs.