In their marketing world, Brains on Fire focuses less on the “product” and more on the “passion.” Marketing movements are more about passion than product; they talk more about what the product allows you to do than the product itself. I’m somewhat mixed right now in my desire for Apple’s iPad mini, wondering if the product has what I want. But what moves me toward Apple is their passion conversation.
In missional movements, passion ignites a conversation. Our product (the Kingdom) exceeds all expectation, but what makes it attractive is the quality of our passion conversation. Jesus always spoke of the Kingdom (the gospel in all its fullness) as ‘a pearl worth every price; the treasure worth every sacrifice; a cause worth dying for.”
Movements begin with the first conversation . They don’t start when “you pull the trigger and execute tactics.” They start long before.
As Brains on Fire argues: Movements start with a small group of deeply passionate and deeply dedicated people who believe. And plan. And pour blood, sweat and tears into going out, finding kindred spirits, looking them in the eye and talking…. Talking with them….Asking them questions…. Planting seeds. Igniting excitement.
Movements have inspirational leadership.
Movements have leaders driven by passion. It’s not merely about influence. Influence can be made—passion can’t. So look for passion in people and engage them to become leaders of your movement. Here’s how my daughter, Jody, describes their Water4Christmas effort, which raised $275,000 dollars for wells in Liberia and helped launch other efforts to help those who lack clean water.
Movements that change the world arise out of passions, out of hearts literally captured by causes worth doing. Passion-captured people just do things. They act. They don’t wait for approval or resources or some official position. Passions ignite dreams, they stir up voices of protest, they cause people to come together to make “what should be” into “what is.” Passions, you see, are contagious.
Our passion is for clean water. Several years ago, our hearts got captured by the reality that every day mothers are burying their children because they drank contaminated water. We found that unacceptable… Passion has power that isn’t rooted in celebrity, economic status or prestige. After all, we’re mostly moms from small town Iowa.
Yet here is what happened:
We paid attention to our tears. We explored them. We allowed ourselves to take on the suffering of others. To feel their pain. We opened the doorways of our hearts to the discovery of passion–and the passion took over. And we began to act. – Jody Landers
Movements require thousands of these passion-engaged conversations.
Think of launching and building movements as “one conversation after another”– thousands of conversations across a table, in the coffee shop, at the office, on the way to class – places where your passion causes your voice to crack and words to overflow and connect with another person. As I think about building movements, I keep reminding myself that it’s not just one conversation, but thousands of conversations. To remind myself of the long road ahead, I celebrate each conversation. I often say to my teammates, “I just had our conversation with ________. So cool.” Or I just say to myself, “Hey, that’s one more conversation, only 873 more to go.”
*Photo courtesy of Erik Kastner (metaatem.net)
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