Last night I experienced the most amazing thing I think has ever graced my taste buds. Better than a nice home-cooked cheeseburger. Better than any gourmet meal. It was popcorn. But not just any popcorn. This was Cinnamon Creme DrizzleCorn from Dale and Thomas Popcorn. The second it hits your mouth, you’re engulfed in an ocean of sumptuous cinnamon-white chocolately goodness. This is popcorn so good, you just have to share some, but desperately don’t want to do so. And what do you know, Dale and Thomas’s tagline is even “Share Some”.
But let’s back up a bit. Let’s hop into our handy-dandy time machine, and go back about two months. Dale and Thomas (hereafter D&T) was giving away free $20 gift cards. Little bells were going off somewhere in my head that I had heard D&T was good popcorn, so I signed up and got my code in a matter of seconds in my email inbox. So it sat there until two weeks ago I got a genius idea. Wouldn’t popcorn make a great Christmas gift? I proceeded to buy the 12-pack sampler, with all twelve of D&T’s current flavors. I then divvied them up and made gifts out of them, while keeping four bags for my family.
Now, back to last night. I was craving a snack, so I pulled out the case (yes, case) of popcorn. One bag of D&T is 12-inches long, and serves 2-4 people. We decided on the Cinnamon Creme. I do not know that I could ever go back to regular movie theatre-style popcorn again. It almost seems like a sin.
D&T has not spread by multi-million dollar TV ads, magazine ads, full-page ads in the New York Times, or all-out web blitzes. No, they’ve spread simply by word of mouth. It just so happens, their popcorn happened to hit some very famous mouths. They’ve included Oprah (as one of her “Favorite Things”), People Magazine, the Today Show, CNN, and many others. D&T has a product so spectacular, so awesome, you can’t help but “Share Some”, just like I’m doing right now.
What do you do or what can you do in your ministry that will simply make it so that people can’t help but sharing it with their friends? What game can you play, element can you add, media component can you slip in to make your ministry so totally remarkable that no one can stop telling others? Do your kids tell their friends? Do your parents tell their friends?
As Ryan has mentioned here before, the power of a personal invitation is paramount to any number of mail flyers, door hangers, or take-home sheets. What is really effective in spreading the message of hope we have to offer is someone saying, “My church has this really awesome thing we do in Kids’ Church. You should ask if you can come this Sunday.” Getting kids (and even adults) to a point at which they can’t help but sharing it is simply remarkable. And that’s the way I see it.