Harness the power of imagination — guide by Peter Jones.
Continuing on from the last story — Cultivate Entrepreneurship — Turn Creativity Into Cash — I would like to talk about the weaknesses and strengths of the idea “The Shared Church”.
First and foremost, what are the strengths that it brings with?
- Democratization and decentralization of church operations.
- Raising awareness of responsibility as a member of church.
- Prevent any possible corruption of church by securing transparency of financial transactions.
- It could provide one universal platform for all believers to have the same faith and same doctrine in shared church platform.
- A church is not going to be a person’s legacy but a legacy owned by everyone.
- Every member and function of church is treated equally, not putting someone above the other.
Then, what are the weaknesses of the idea?
- The concept of “The Shared Church” has never been before, so how are you going to talk people into accepting the idea?
→ Make the use of all kinds of social media to spread out a new platform for all people to know and get engaged in new innovation. The Shared Church is going to be a place where all people can freely devote themselves to church activities and organize their own community online based on their physical proximity and they can easily keep the track of how money is being spent on to check out if money is really being used for where it’s needed.
- It’s not clearly defined like what that is in reality. Is it a real estate property or online web application or a combination of both?
→ So far, I believe it’s going to be in the form of a combination of both. We are going to provide a web app where people can donate their money and decide altogether how to spend the money by the virtue of voting. That’s going to be the first form of “The Shared Church” and then we need a procure a place to hold worships where pastors will be preaching. Even how much pastors can get paid is also dependent on the evaluation of church people. Of course, baseline should be negotiable among them by voting so that we can evenly distribute opportunities of preaching to any pastors that have certifications or ability to preach. Thus, “The Shared Church” will do exist in the form of on and offline combination.
- Most importantly, what is exactly the business model to attract investors’ money? how are you going to generate profit out of it? what are the markets that you are targeting at? is this a business model or church innovation?
→ To be honest, it’s not something aimed at generating profit, which is a huge weakness. But if I have to, the only way to make profit is commission. In return for unified operational platform with transparency, people are obliged to pay commission. I am not sure how much rate should I apply for the commission per what base? and even the profit will be used for running and managing applications and church operation, so technically speaking it’s not something to be considered as profit but sort of offering. Therefore, there is not business model to make a profit, thereby no means to get investment.
- Can you build the web application on your own or need to team up with somebody?
→ No it’s not possible to build it on my own. Definitely, I need to team up with a bunch of good software engineers, product managers, and marketers. If that is the case, I need to get investment to hire people. But it’s obvious that the idea is not suitable for any business model.
- How are you going to build a church or rent a place to hold worships?
→ No way to build a church but instead rent a vacant place to hold worships which also requires money in.
- Who is going to give sermons where and how?
→ on the premise that all voluntary eligible pastors are registered in the platform, they can give any sermons according to preaching schedules aligned in advance.
- Do you have people to actually operate a church ?
→ We need to hire people to actually operate a church in the platform. They will be paid decent amount of money.
Based on the analysis of the idea, the ideal is too ideal to make a business model out of it. Even if it brings with good effects on the current religion, it does not seem to be plausible, realistic at all.
