Yesterday Sally and I enjoyed afternoon tea (little fingers raised) at Wivenhoe House Hotel – a wedding anniversary gift we thoroughly enjoyed. The picture here doesn’t fully do justice to it, but you get the idea…

I was fascinated by the hotel’s strapline: “intriguingly different”. That is an intriguing strapline, it’s certainly different. It is very understated. It is enigmatic. It is memorable (at least I remembered it). Where some hotels will promote themselves on the basis of their value for money, levels of comfort, quality or other desirable qualities by which potential customers will evaluate them this hotel has chosen something that doesn’t tell us anything about them except that the difference will intrigue.

It got me wondering about whether churches use similarly enigmatic straplines. Our church is Colchester Baptist Church and our stated purpose (on a lot of our literature) is ‘to follow Jesus Christ and make Him known.’ It’s not really a strapline, more of a statement but to non-churchgoers I wonder whether that is as enigmatic as ‘intriguingly different’. I also wondered whether (copyright permitting) any church would choose ‘intriguingly different’ as a strapline!

How would you promote a church?

Be blessed, be a blessing