Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Late Night Church Leaders

Todd Rhoades published an interesting article yesterday entitled Are you a Jimmy Fallon or a Jay Leno Type of Church Leader? Here's an excerpt:
You would think that Jay Leno had it made. 
He was the King of late night television.  He was (on most nights) crushing the competition.  Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel would have LOVED to have the ratings that Jay Leno enjoyed… right up until his departure last week. 
But Leno was, by most accounts, forced out early by NBC.  A new article/commentary at Mashable tells why:  Jay Leno, while he was doing great in the traditional measures (nationwide TV audience in a given demographic) could not make the switch to the future (which included youtube, vine, twitter, facebook, and all the viral directions that TV and late night was going). 
Enter Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon can post a self-contained short-form video to youtube and garner a couple of million views in a short period of time. Fallon regularly plays to the younger audience via social media… crowdsourcing many of his gags from the internet itself. 
Leno would never turn the corner with that audience. 
And… NBC needed him to in order to insure the future success of the Tonight Show franchise. 
So… how does this apply to the church; and to you as a leader?
There's more... follow the link and read the rest of it.

(For the record, if you simply measure the "switch to the future" by Twitter & Facebook, my pastor is Jimmy Fallon AND The Roots. Hmmm... would be interesting to see Ed Stetzer with a pick in his hair like Questlove.)

One of the commenters added something both sad & true:
Unfortunately, for some churches, the question needs expanded — Are you a Jimmy Fallon or a Jay Leno type leader, or a Johnny Carson or even Jack Paar type leader because of how far behind culture you are? (Earl Mills)

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